What was the worst book you’ve ever read?

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Wizard’s First Rule by Terry ~~Brooks~~Goodkind. I suffered through the whole thing because I was young enough that I thought that’s what you should do when you’ve started a book, but I was also old enough to know that it was very bad. I’ve heard many people say they read it as teens and loved it, but I assure you, it does not hold up.
- In the later books they accidentally open a portal to the part of the world where there are communists and for a while afterwards Richard finds himself unable to eat cheese as penance for all the communists he's killing but then he realizes that communists are so evil it's ok to kill them so he can eat cheese again
- I don’t know if it’s the absolute worst I ever read but the parts I read were pretty bad. At some point I was like “What kinda Ayn Rand bullshit is this?” and quit reading. It turns out that he was a Ayn Rand make-super-improbable-and-convoluted-examples-in-my-fictional-fantasy-world-to-justify-terrible-political-views school of writing type guy.
  
  It’s probably not the worst for me either but it’s easily the first thing I think of. Really left a bad taste I guess.
- I read a bunch of those books because my roommate was in love with them. It established an idea of a writing flaw in my mind that I called "The Heirachy of Cool". Basically the guy practically has an established character list of who is the coolest. Whichever character in any given scene is at the top of the hierarchy is mythically awesome. They have their shit together, they are functionally correct in their reasoning, they lead armies, they pull off grand maneuvers, they escape danger whatever...
  But anyone below them in the Heirachy turn into complete morons who serve as foils to make the people above them seem more awesome whenever they share page time together. These characters seem to have accute amnesia about stuff that canonically happened very recently (in previous books) so they can complicate things for the hierarchy above, they usually make poor decisions due to crisises of faith in people above them in the hierarchy... But because that hierarchy is infallible it's predictable. Less cool never is proven right over more cool.
  ... Until that same character is suddenly alone and they go from being mid of the hierarchy to the top and all of a sudden they have iron wills and super competence...
  Once I caught onto that pattern it became intolerable to continue.
  
  Remember when Richard defeated the evils of socialism without his magic by pulling himself up by his bootstraps really really hard by (without practice or training) carving a really really good statue and all the lazy worthless slacker librulls were like dang, I love capitalism now, and then everyone looked directly into the metaphorical camera and said "Communism: Don't let it happen to you"?
  
  To be honest no... Because I think I violently expunged it from my memory and mind as my brain probably interpreted it as some kind of threat to my cells.
  
  That was the beginning of the end for me. I think by the time I got to that part the series had already been going downhill but I remember that being a really sharp turning point.
  I tried to press on a little further. The introduction of the straw man nation with the innocent child king who's only existence was to be blown the fuck out by the brilliance of objectivism is when I finally decided I just couldn't go on.
  
  Funniest part of that was that Terry Goodkind clearly did not know anything about socialist realism
- On a somewhat lower pedestal: Eragon. What a hugely derivative poorly written piece of crap. I've run D&D campaigns with better dialogue and pacing than that.
  
  Oh yes I agree! And I’m a huge dragon fan, so it was extremely disappointing. That one I gave up on after maybe 50 pages. I couldn’t get past the prose. So I didn’t even get to the heavily recycled tropes, but I did see the movie once and they were plenty obvious from that.
  
  I got to "Barges? BARGES? We don't need no steenking BARGES" and threw the book away
- What I remember most vividly from that series is how absolutely bone-chilling everything about the Confessors were. You could absolutely have a really cool and interesting fantasy series in which they're the main villains, but Terry Goodkind's political views just wouldn't allow it.
  
  Or even just digging into their internal struggles due to the inherent loneliness that their powers creates. Instead we got a wierd post period sex blowjob to Richard role playing as his brother or something stupid that I can't remember
  
  Glad I've blocked that out
- Wizards First Rule is Goodkind not Brooks, Brooks wrote Shanarra
  
  Ack thank you, I mix them up even though I’ve never read Brooks, who seems to be better loved.
  
  I'd rate them about the same, personally. Though Brooks is at least just derivative and juvenile; Goodkind gets increasingly self indulgent.
- Damn I legit liked this book, one of my top series. I just enjoyed the magic system, the antagonists, and the over the top nature. I might just have bad taste though lol.
  
  Me too, friend.
  After ruminating on it though, everything I liked was just lifted from better works.
  Leatherclad red-themed group of women who enjoy causing pain and are able to negate men's magic? Red ajah.
  What other examples are there?
  
  I for sure see the links between SoT and Wheel of Time. I started seeing a lot of things lifted after reading both. But I still find myself liking both for different reasons. I dunno, I've accepted that I do like some things that are generally viewed as "bad" and I've come to terms with it haha.
  
  Yeah but some things are bad because they are deliberately trying to make you bad too
  
  Maybe. But I think it matters of entertainment it's not as evil as that. Sure engaging with bad media might fuel them to repeat that behavior, but IMO if it harms no one it's not an issue. Like for example I've read the SoT series a few times and I'm not a Marxist or what have you.
  
  Ahh I think you've misunderstood.
  He's a raging, obnoxious capitalist who thinks poor people are poor because they don't try.
  
  Haha that's how much I missed it I guess. Well I do appreciate you clarifying that, I never got a good, concise answer about what people we're hating on it for.

236 comments