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TR Contest: Worst Single Fantasy Book


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I’m a bit disappointed I only got one commenter miffed about my derogatory remark regarding the late yet still obese Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series, earlier this week. I guess the other fans stopped reading TR when I said Jordan got his hand caught in a Pringles can for an entire year. Good times!

So in honor of Mr. Jordan (who actually lived in his mother’s basement for the last five years of his life, but he had the entire room and everything in it gold-plated) I’ve decided this week’s contest subject should be on shitty fantasy books. I actually went back-and-forth between Jordan’s sixth WoT book Lord of Chaos and R.A. Salvatore’s first book, The Crystal Shard. Admittedly, The Crystal Shard is very clearly someone’s real (shitty) D&D campaign come to boring life in the most unimaginative prose possible; even to think about the book makes my skin crawl with embarrassment.

But although Robert Jordan could actually string together sentences to form a narrative, and he chose to use his powers for evil, creating an 800-page novel in which nothing happens. I’m serious. Were you unfortunate enough to read the Wheel of Time series, you could skip Lord of Chaos completely and not have missed a thing — other than another 800 pages of Jordan’s uniquely juvenile depiction of women and uber-seriousness about his shitty patchwork world of ideas ripped off from other, superior fantasy series. While Crystal Shard might make me ashamed of humanity, Lord of Chaos makes me want to kill, so it gets the nod.

Now your turn. You only get one book, so make sure you pick it well. And be sure to describe why it sucks (not too long, not too short) because just naming it won’t do me any good when picking the winner. The rules are here, and the contest ends at 3 am EST on Monday, April 6th. Dovie’andi se tovya sagain!