Now I’m NOT talking about authors who suck, or even just realizing years later that some beloved fantasy book was being racist with the whole “Far East” thing.
I want to know what books you finished reading and thought they were fine, but over the next weeks or months, the more you thought about it, the worse they were. Books that you had an okay time reading but got frustrated with once your brain really marinated on them.
For me, it was Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey. I picked it up for the cover design and spent the whole novel flinching at the potential that it was going to be a series, and when I finished it I felt comfortable with the prose and the completion of the plot. Then I realized, I didn’t actually enjoy the mystery. Or the fantasy. Or even the interpersonal relationships that the character had. Using the perspective of a detective main character doesn’t excuse you from the rule of show-don’t-tell, and I didn’t feel thrilled or even conclusive when the mystery was unraveled. The book betrayed an admiration for the noir genre that lacked understanding of its structure, and it’s a shame.
So which books made you frown at a glacial pace?
by funnyrabbits
49 Comments
The A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas.
The Crank series by Ellen Hopkins. I used to be obsessed with those books as a teen, but now I can’t get past the way Hopkins writes teenage dialogue.
Ken Follett books. I love historical fiction and the first few of his books I read I really enjoyed…then I started noticing the repetitive formulas he uses in his books and that really made me sour on them. I still read them, but I’m always like…’Yup! And here we have the couple who will not be allowed to be together until the end of the book.’….’Yup! This is the evil one who will likely rape someone at some point.’ …🙄
Brandon Sanderson. When I first read his books I thought they were the most incredible books I’d ever read. A few years later and some hindsight, and I’ve not necessarily “soured” on them but I’m definitely harder on them than I used to be.
The Tearling series by Erika Johansen
It was fine but the ending left a bad taste in my mouth and the further I got away from it, the more I disliked it.
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>!The main characters mother was dead the whole series, only in the last book it turns out she faked her death because she was unfit to be queen, ONLY so that when Kelsea like reset the timeline, she would have something to compare her mother to in that timeline. It was weird and I did’t like. !<
Lots of other things I didn’t love in the series but the more that sat with me, the more I disliked it.
oh man, *life of pi* so so so much. i read it in a white heat, think i finished in like a day, but something about the conclusion didn’t quite sit right in comparison with the rest of it. well, the more i think about it and the more i read criticism of it ([adam cadre’s review](https://adamcadre.ac/calendar/14/14231.html) is excellent and broadly parallels my own feelings, both on the book and its broader themes, but is way more coherent and incisive than my own thoughts), the more i grow to just outright dislike it. at this rate, in a few years i’ll be blaming the resurgence of fascism and continued inaction on global warming on yann martel.
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The Midnight Library
I had only ever seen good reviews before i read it. I didn’t really love it but thought it was a nice, simple, fell-good kind of a quick read. But I discovered this subreddit a couple weeks ago and was surprised to see that most people here seem to really hate it with a passion.
And the more I read, they make some really valid points.
The Iron Druid chronicles. i loved the begining of the series, up to book 5 it was OK. Exactly what I needed at the time, light, fun fantast with vampires, warewolves, sarcasm and jokes. But the series just degrades to the point where I feel dirty recommending the series to anyone knowing how it ends. A fun rollercoaster ride that lands you in manure. Is the fun at the start worth it? Dunno
**Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock**, first published in 1984.
This is now part of the Fantasy Masterworks series for a reason. It was groundbreaking when published in the organic way it integrated mythology into the real world, in its elegiac tone (it’s set just after WWII), in the sense that you were following human dabblers in magic that they truly didn’t understand and probably never would, rather than Future Mighty Wizards in Training. The magic in Mythago Wood is shamanistic: literally embedded in the soil, ominous and alluring, disobedient to formal ritual, and liable to alarming sproutings of sheer life force. Carl Jung would feel right at home there.
Sorcerers who shoot fire from their hands are not my style. I loved the magic in Mythago Wood; it felt genuinely ‘wild’.
But…if you guessed the snag would be the book’s one female character, have a hand-foraged acorn cookie. And when I re-read it, her problems became more acute. Guiwenneth the Fierce Young Princess would have been fine — she’s plausibly depicted as a formidable warrior — had she not mainly been an object of desire for three successive magicians who happen to be a father and his two sons. And OK, there are no showers in Bronze Age Britain, but there is *so much* about her untamed yet alluring body odour. So much.
I’d like to point out again that the writing in Mythago Wood doesn’t suck, far from it, and that it’s still considered a masterpiece within its genre. The pace *is* slow, but that’s in line with the rooted, organic nature of the magic.
Mythago Wood is the start of a series, and the second, Lavondyss, follows the daughter of Harry Keeton, the burn-scarred ex-fighter pilot who was actually a decent person, and my favourite character from the first book. I might give it a go some time.
Ok so this might sound weird but The Shadow of the Wind. I did enjoy it while reading but afterwards it kept bothering me. It’s been a minute since I read it but if I remember correctly, I felt like the whole plot was something you’d seen or read before so many times, it was too easy, almost? I kept thinking, oh it can’t possibly be that twist, and then it’s that twist…
The Sword of Truth series.
It basically became Super Mario Bros. where you just kept getting “Your princess is in another castle.” but with the added plot armor of a War Wizard always stumbling upon the exact, never been even idly mentioned before, power to win the current epic battle… my favorite being a point where the ancient, magical Sword of Truth has to be left behind in a “leave your weapons at the door” moment and the hero is described as pulling all the sword’s power from it and into himself to take anyway, leaving the title weapon behind for a little while like a regular blade…
Can it be science textbooks? If so, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
The Burning White by Brent Weeks. To be fair, this is a bit of a “cheat”, since I think it ultimately comes back to Weeks just not being the author for me. But given that I enjoyed the first 3 books of Lightbringer, I think I convinced myself that I didn’t hate the final two books as much as I really did.
Reflecting on those books in the few months after I finished The Burning White, I just got angry about how disrespected I felt by some of the writing choices in both of those last 2 books, as well as the ending itself, which I felt just made everything else that happened in the whole series completely pointless.
Bill Bryson. I used to love his travelogue books but the ones where he toured England and America have not aged well.
I recently reread them hoping to enjoy his wit and hilarious turn of phrase but the casual racism, sexism, and classism just oozes He really comes across as a pain in the neck and just a dick, and I was dismayed because I didn’t remember that when I first read them. The whole thing just reads like teenage snark.
Dismissive and arrogant and just one long giant whinge from beginning to end. I guess that kind of sarcastic snarky Schtick felt hilarious pre internet but after 20 years of internet culture I couldn’t crack a smile. The average reddit comment is 10x funnier.
Maybe it’s because im rereading by audiobook.
I thought he was fairly liberal but the sexism and racism is quite shocking. But on the plus side, if his attitudes are representative of a typical liberal American in the 90s, then it’s really heartening to see the progress we’ve made as a society since then just in terms of attitudes to women’s rights, racial equality, not stereotyping, more awareness around social issues. We really have made progress. But also disappointing because I really counted myself as a fan when I first read these books, but I would no longer recommend them.
His popular history/science stuff written later on might be less offensive….
Sword of Truth. For some odd roll of the dice Goodkind’s series was my first foray into fantasy and wow was it an eye opener for a young teenager. For all that it opened doors to some of my other favorite books of the genre from other authors I just could not revisit SoT
The Kingkiller Chronicles. Aside from all the shit with the author, I think I was taken by the beautiful prose and the magic system to realize just how much of a douche the main character is and just how little I cared about his goals or his relationship with whats-her-face. Even things like the warrior people in the second book, which I thought was cool and unique initially, now feels very cringey and creepy
Laurel k Hamilton, Anita Blake vampire Hunter series.
Starts off as a police procedural in a blended modern / fantasy setting, very new and handled well
And there’s a vampire love interest, cool, and a werewolf love interest, cool, I guess we need a little romance to spice things up and lighten the grim…
And a few books in we’ve had some really dark revelations and good character arcs established…
And then it all turns into an orgy. Every new book. Practically every chapter.
The Eragon series. I read them as a teen and LOVED them but as I’ve grown older, read more fantasy, and heard the critiques it’s hard not to see them as a fellow teenager hastily remixing elements of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
I still love David Foster Wallace’s work. I think he’s funny and smart. All his pieces are resolved, dense and intricate.
But nowadays, every word I read of his, reads like his suicide note.
It all reads like a cry for help. It’s fodder for my addiction to hopelessness.
Babel by RF Kuang
A Little Life by Yanagihara
A song of ice and fire – length between books and the rather toxic fandom, that and i’m rereading it the prose around female sexuality and all the torture/gore/injury stuff have soured it for me. That and all the characters in places have become some what unlikeable to me as a result
The Sword of Shannara. I liked it a lot when I was a kid, but looking back it’s pretty derivative. I also read Elfstones, and thought it was a copy/paste of Sword.
The Incarnations of Immortality series, loved it when I was younger then went back and tried to read it recently and it was so…. icky
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
At first, it felt like a travelogue with some philosophy thrown in. It was good, I liked it, I finished it. Then, I realized I didn’t like the narrator. I realized that if I met him in person I’d have some bones to pick about *actual* motorcycle maintenance and safety and gear and all that. And also, as the philosophical bits tumbled around in my head, I realized I didn’t care for how they’d be phrased, explained, the pompous attitude and Know-It-All vibes, and the kinda sophomoric feel of it. Maybe that’s all intentional, but I still definitely soured on it.
There are a few select passages that I do like and will stick with me for a while I’m sure, but in general I think it’s not a book I’ll read again or recommend.
It’s definitely Twilight for me. At the time I read the series, I was in a controlling, emotionally abusive relationship. I think that normalized Edward and Bella’s relationship for me. I also had four family members with cancer at the time, and I think there was something comforting in reading about characters who were immortal.
The Lies of Locke Lamora is an awesome book. Love the setting (some fantastic ideas), characters are believable.
But holy cow, is Locke exhausting as a person. I read to rest, and this adventure was not restful! There’s more out there in the series and I just… don’t.
Mistborn. When I first finished the trilogy, I was like “Okay, that was a lame way to end it”, then as time went on, I thought, “If that was the plan, that was the dumbest fucking plan I’ve ever seen technically work.”
Where the Crawdads Sing.
I read it for my bookclub as the first book after joining and at the time I was just getting back into reading a lot.
I loved it at first! It was a quick read (3 days) and while I felt off about the last 2-3pages I overall enjoyed it and rated it highly.
The more I thought about the book though the more the off-ness about the ending started to bother me and fester. I really dislike it now. The information we know about the author makes it more disgusting to me too. It feels like the book was a ploy to make you root for a murderer because that’s what the author is, a murderer.
*Ready Player One* by Ernest Cline.
It’s not just because of the rampant sexism and how Art3mis is definitely a manic pixie dream girl through a “nerd lens.”
If you take away all the pop culture references and nostalgia, there’s not much there. Ok, so Wade wants to solve a puzzle and stop an evil company from…putting ads in a game?
PS: There is no sequel to this book. Nope. Doesn’t exist.
House of Night series
I loved it as a teenager cuz it was edgy, it had “sex scenes” which were taboo for me, it was about vampires and had secrets and mystery and tattoos and overall was really appealing
As an adult I cant stand it?? The writing is god awful, its an adult writing how they “think” teenagers think so its really trying too hard to be “hip” and as an adult you can clearly see it. Could just be that it didnt age well either.
And I just cant read it anymore without stupid cringing, and it just feels wrong to read the intimate scenes now… IDK its just not the same fun book series I loved anymore, and I never finished it when I was a teen so I guess it stays unfinished now
Please could somebody explain OPs first sentence about the racist far east fantasy thing
The Mists of Avalon. I used to love it. But the whole thing with MZB’s husband turned it for me. I read her comments defending him in the trial and they were despicable, and also in alignment with the philosophy espoused in the book.
Edit: I just googled her and discovered there’s even more to this sickening story than I realized (the latest allegations came out after I had learned about the husband). Good lord.
Ready Player One.
ACOTAR books.
The Poppy War trilogy by R.F. Kuang. On a technical level, Kuang’s writing is solid, and I loved so many aspects of the world, but as I kept reading the series, I was just numb, waiting for the next horrible thing to happen, knowing that when it did, it would be described in minute detail without any kind of restraint or suspense. The fact that the protagonist is mainly defined by being easily manipulated didn’t help. I know that Kuang based the story on real events, but while she may have improved in her more recent books, she doesn’t really seem to want to dig into interiority, or what these horrors do to the characters.
I liked the first book, and was in a grudge match with the series by the middle of the second book. By the end, I was forcing myself to finish.
Also Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers. I really enjoyed it the first time through (I find his writing very readable and fun), but the more distance I got, the angrier I got at how bloated and self-satisfied the book was. Now it’s a solid two stars, at best.
Basically every series I was obsessed with as a kid. They were very… not good. I recently tried going back to house of night, evermore, and my “favourite” meg Cabot series and god are they bad. How did I never notice 😭. I should have been able to smell the rancid scent of “not like other girls” a mile away lol.
Maze runner was fucking awesome for like the first 10 chapters, I haven’t read it since and it was a long time ago so could be more or less. The maze and little colony of people was extremely interesting, and the threat (the metal abominations? again haven’t read in awhile) was actually terrifying. When they start figuring out the maze is a test set up by a group on the outside, it really disappointed me. Never tried reading the other books.
Ready Player One.
I’m a nerd from the 80s, and the Wil-Wheaton-narrated audiobook was a ton of fun.
Then I thought about it, and then after a reread…
It’s not very good.
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. It got me into urban fantasy, and I liked the world building. I read an interview where he said he wanted to combine the “detective noir” theme with fantasy, but with every single book, it just got darker and darker.
The last book came out in Septemver 2020, I think. I read it, I had some issues, but at first, it was like, “Oh, interesting.” However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t like where he was taking the main character or how he was treating the side characters. I just don’t need that kind of darkness in my fiction anymore.
I had the same trajectory with The Midnight Library. The more I thought on it after finishing it, the more frustrated it made me. It just felt like the literary equivalent of a McDonald’s happy meal with some processed, deep-fried to shit nuggets of cliché “wisdom” and some flaccid fries made of flowery prose. I feel like his style has veered more into the “pop culture psychology” realm lately, where it’s mostly clichés regarding depression/anxiety/mental health rather than anything actually meaningful. Very “You’re depressed? Watch a sunset and you’ll be farting rainbows in no time!” In retrospect, I feel like The Humans was a better story of finding the value in life/living than TML and RTSA combined.
God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
I loved the book until the last few pages the first time I read it. Even after the ending ( >!incestuous sex of the two leads who are twins !< ) I was able to push past the discomfort with the ending and appreciate the rest of it. The prose was beautiful. The way she described the people and beauty of Kerala was amazing and I loved it (my family is from there though I didn’t live there). The story was good and I liked the non linear story telling.
I forgot all about it until I picked up her book Ministry of Utmost Happiness. I couldn’t finish the book because the way Roy recounted major events in Indian history and wove it into the story did not seem genuine. It felt like a bad version of Forrest Gump. Here her prose felt pretentious and over the top rather than beautiful. I wanted to enjoy it but was struggling and went to GoodReads. Read all the negative reviews there and fell into a rabbit hole which refreshed my memories of God of Small Things.
The more I stewed on it, I feel like God of Small Things is also tainted for me now and I start to think if that book was also pretentious. It made me question why the ending was necessary. In general, a change in heart about the book I originally loved.
The divergent series soured as I made my way through the series until eventually eventually a book that I loved at the start, was ruined by the sequels.
Ayn Rand’s books
The second Tyrion came back from the dead in ASOIAF I knew I’d been tricked into reading something I thought was clever and unique and ignored fantasy tropes, in actual fact it’s just GRRM jerking himself off the idea of this amazingly intelligent character he thinks he is (but actually isn’t).
Unrelated but can you even say (to) sour instead of (to) turn sour?
Actually for me its the opposite. In the process i often find myself not being able to enjoy the book but then im finished i feel like “damn that was good”
Yellowface by RF Kuang, it is fast paced and engaging but it falls apart intellectually once you hear any good critique about it.
“Ender’s Game.” I loved it as a kid, and to this day i still find the action and tactical stuff fun. But over time i’ve come to see it as “Persecuted-hero-complex-catharsis: the Novel.”
In the book Ender is the best and everybody hates him because he’s so much better than them and the situation is written such that he has to keep proving he’s better than them over and over (which he doesn’t *want* to do, he’s being *forced* to, so he gets to be humble, too). And the stakes of the story are such that if he ever loses even once the book would be over, so there isn’t really any narrative tension because you know he never *will* lose, and, spoiler, he never does.
Ransom Riggs’ Peculiar Children series.
The first book/movie was great. It was magical, I feel invested with the characters, but as I worked my way through the third book I realized I’m just forcing myself to finish it. The plot is no longer as captivating as it did. I find myself reading a paragraph over and over again because it just doesn’t sink until I finally gave it up. My brain feels ick whenever I don’t finish what I started but I just can’t bring myself to it anymore.