In response to a recent post asking about a book that turned you onto a genre…what’s a book that turned you \*off\* a genre (at least for a while)? And maybe for wildly different reasons–I imagine that it could be anything from it-was-my-first-try-in-the-genre and was terrible or it-was-so-incredible and nothing else held up?
For me, I can think of one of each: The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett turned me off of mystery (especially 1930s) for quite a while until I dipped my toes into Agatha Christie again, as it had nothing I liked and everything I disliked of that era and genre; controversially, while I love reading SFF, both Octavia Butler and Ursula K LeGuin have temporarily ruined the genre for me, as many things I read after those authors feel like they simply can”t meet the standard (again, at least for a while).
So what was a book that turned you off a genre and why?
by Abject-Hamster-4427