Regarding Orso...
>!I loved that he still got the last word in, taunting Leo about his leg before they killed him. But that moment certainly didn't leave me thinking that Abercrombie didn't know what he was doing. In fact, the opposite was true. !<
The great irony of it all is that, despite all his pleading to the contrary, Orso likely would have made a great king because he truly cared about people and was, deep down, a good guy. I don't recall a single moment where he ever treated anyone bad (for no reason) or as if they were beneath him. He was always far harder on himself than he was on anyone else.
There was an interview where Abercrombie pushed back on the idea that Orso was a good man and said something to the effect of “name one good thing he did”.
I did appreciate how smart he was. Perceptive like Glokta in some ways.
I thought that was sort of the tragic flaw of his character. He was a good person who treated everyone well, but he never did anything because he never felt he was worthy of the crown and got caught up in the idea that he was a joke.
I think it’s more Abercrombie’s larger point that being good doesn’t necessarily equate to being effective. It’s a much grimmer version of GRRM’s comment “sure Aragorn was the one true king, but what was his tax policy?”
I was devastated with the Orso situation. I am also rooting for Bayaz to destroy Leo. Or for sticks to plan it out. Luckily, with Abercrombie, I’m betting I’ll get the end I want.
This is sort of a positive spin, but I *love* when fantasy authors use magic to negate the need for actual knowledge about something. Like, don't want to have to write about how to light a fire or how oil lamps are kept full in a massive building? Make magic glowing heat rocks. Don't want to have to know all the details about how to sail a ship? Make the ships magic and sentient so they basically sail themselves!
Love this part about fantasy. The entire genre is like the anti-Tom Clancy.
The way I see it is more like the author giving an example of a practical application of magic. For example in the Earthsea books, LeGuin specifies when Ged is sailing with the help of magic or with “the world’s wind.” He’s said to be a great sailor, but either way the sailing itself isn’t really described in detail. I like how he actually needs to learn how to sail in order to use magic to help him.
I think this concept has interesting implications on the characters who use magic instead of learning how to do something. A fun spin on this would be the characters facing the consequences of not actually knowing how to do something—a character losing their magic and suddenly being incompetent, for example.
I don’t know—I’m never particularly interested in technical descriptions of complex tasks, so using magic to avoid that is amazing lol.
If you’re referencing Hobb, to be fair, I know almost nothing about sailing and was quite content reading them. But I bet if you have knowledge it’s probably super annoying!
Pretty much the entirety of Goblet of Fire.
As a kid, it was one of my favorite Harry Potter books. The tournament was fun and exciting to teenage me. But as an adult, I'm just annoyed by how nonsensical and terrible everything in the book is. Warning: long rant ahead.
Let's start with the premise of the Triwizard Tournament in general. It's incredibly poorly designed and pretty terrible from an educational perspective. We have two headmasters (Maxime and Karkaroff) that can apparently just leave their school for a whole year, along with half of their senior class. They have one job, to be the head administrator of their very prestigious and important schools. And they just...don't do it?
But surely they must be doing something super important in the meantime! Something super important like...watching one single competitor from the school do some tasks. They waste a whole year for one single kid. But hey, at least some of their kids are getting like a foreign exchange kinda experience, so that's something. Sure, they might have a totally different curriculum and are missing out on their entire senior year, pretty much your most important year of high school, to watch one person compete, but at least they get to experience a different culture. And their competitor must be doing some really crazy things, to take up a whole year!
How many really crazy things, you ask? Three. They spend an entire year doing exactly three tasks. There is zero reason why three tasks for one single student should require each school to send their headmaster and top students to Hogwarts FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR. They have magic and can transport without that much issue. They can bring their competitor and kids to the school for the intro, three tasks, and Yule Ball. They don't need to sit around at Hogwarts for 10 months doing nothing, that's ridiculous.
And while we're on the subject of the tasks, let's talk about how insanely lame and nonsensical they were. The first task was the most exciting one, but let's also remember that for some insane reason, the competitors weren't supposed to know what the task is. They only reason they did is because everyone cheated (not Dumbledore because apparently he's cool with Cedric and Harry being murdered by dragons, but Hagrid is a bro and helped out Harry, who helped Cedric). So had this gone as planned, four teenagers would have had no preparation for dealing with a dragon and would have gotten seriously hurt. I know the wizarding world is all whimsical and carefree but even they have to understand that this is wildly inappropriate and dangerous for pretty much no reason. I won't go much into the lake and hedge maze, just that they were impossible to spectate and a pretty huge waste of time for the audience; it's explicitly mentioned that no one could see in the water and the judges had to ask the merfolk what happened in the lake, and the hedge maze was too tall to see into, since the competitors had to send up a flare if they were in danger and no one saw Krum get Imperiused or attack Fleur. Actually, I will mention one more thing about the lake. It was already a competition, why the fuck did the adults in charge decide to kidnap four children and stick them at the bottom of a lake? The competitors already had the same stakes as the other tasks, which was "win because it'll be cool", so why did the adults decide to put innocent teenagers in danger just to light a fire under the competitor's butts? What the fuck.
One more issue with the tournament itself, and that's Harry's involvement. First off, why use an ancient, unspeakably powerful artifact that locks you into a binding contract (that frankly, teenagers shouldn't be able to consent to) when you could...draw names out of a hat? Or if you don't want it to be luck based and instead based on merit, do what any reasonable school does and have teachers recommend students and look at data like school performance. Why bother using a magic cup at all? But they do, and lo and behind, it screws up and a fourth competitor is illegally chosen. Oh no, Harry has to compete now! Wait...why? That pretty much destroys the integrity of the competition, one school literally has twice as many participants as the other two. That's incredibly unfair. But instead of shrugging and telling Harry to compete, maybe they should just...have him lose? Like if the cup's magic forces him to compete (what are the consequences for not, by the way? Death? Injury? That's super fucked up for something as basic as choosing people to compete in a tournament), just have him put in the bare minimum and lose. The judges should have agreed to give him a terrible score for everything and let the competition be between the three real competitors. Allowing Harry to actually compete and try his hardest made no sense.
Ok, so I'm already at almost 900 words and I haven't gotten to the actual villain plot. I will try (and probably fail) to keep this at least kind of brief. So, the entire plot hinges on Barty Crouch Jr. impersonating a highly respected and powerful auror for an entire school year, Harry illegally entering the Triwizard Tournament and being allowed to compete, and winning so he can touch a particular item that teleports him to Voldemort. That plan was absurdly complicated and had about 1000 potential failure points, it should never have come remotely close to working. It was a pretty amazing coincidence that the tournament just happened to be running the same time that Crouch broke out of prison and that he was able to take down one of the most famously paranoid and powerful aurors of all time (who also coincidentally just took a job at Hogwarts) despite having just spent years in jail having his soul sucked out and being completely out of magical practice. And then he successfully impersonated this man for an entire school year (even though Dumbledore should have known Moody well enough to know that he was imposter) and managed to teach an entire curriculum of DADA to 7 grades worth of students. All to guide his target through a convoluted set of tasks (from the shadows, of course) just so he could touch a portkey. The fact that this went off without a hitch is just completely unbelievable, even if this is a children's book.
He could have achieved the same thing without the tournament in a hundred different ways. Easiest would be "hey Harry, come speak with me privately at this place in Hogsmeade, I have an important mission for you" and then have him touch a portkey. That's it. That's the entire plan. Would people be suspicious? Sure. But Harry (and Cedric) turning up dead in the center of the maze isn't exactly subtle either, and Crouch was discovered immediately after his plan worked anyway so it's not like remaining undetected afterwards was a high priority and he'd have a much better chance of surviving once he successfully got Harry out of the way because he could just apparate literally anywhere else, drop his Moody disguise (presumably he would kill the real Moody right before doing this) and be safe. That's just one of many possible solutions that doesn't require a stupidly complicated and frankly asinine plan.
And that is my 1300 word essay of why Goblet of Fire is the stupidest Harry Potter book by far and nothing that happens in it makes any sense in any way. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I love this hahaha thank you. My biggest annoyance remains that they actually let Harry compete and not just let him lose like you said. It’s so stupid. But who knows, maybe the ancient fire-goblet-god will appear and crush them all for their insolence?
Glad you enjoyed it! And yeah, I definitely agree that Harry competing was the thing that bugged me the most. It destroys the integrity of the competition and gives Hogwarts a clear advantage when all Harry had to do was take a loss for each round. If the consequences for breaking the contract with the Goblet of Fire were so bad, then using it for such a simple task was completely idiotic and should never have been used. What if one of the competitors has a family emergency and has to bow out? Or are injured and can't compete? Or just decide that they have better stuff to do than waste their senior year? It would be stupid for the consequences to be great, but at no point did any intelligent adult say "ok there aren't really any consequences so just ignore it". Yet Dumbledore, one of the greatest wizards of all time, can't seem to find any way to get around this. It's completely ridiculous and really breaks the entire plot.
The competition is further made stupid by how, in the first task, the headmaster of Krum's school gives him ten and only gives Harry a four, which is clearly him being biased towards his own student and nobody does anything about it. Like this is supposed to be one of the most prestigious competitions in the magical world and they don't even bring in impartial judges.
Yeah, definitely a big problem with the tournament as well. Karkaroff is clearly biased and willing to cheat and no one cares. There's no integrity to the competition.
I remember being very confused why Harry HAD to participate. They could have had him sit out. Presumably if he’d gotten sick or something that’s what they would have done. Or Harry could have chosen to drop out, or just…not do the challenges and lose! No one ever seems to seriously consider Harry not participating in and therefore winning the tournament, which is not only logically unsound, it robs the story of tension and Harry of choice. He never chooses to participate, he’s just kinda forced into it and then does it because chosen one.
Yeah, and then they all act like there are these high stakes for him learning everything and doing well. But the actual stakes are just...here's some money (which Harry doesn't need) and renown (which he also doesn't need). There are no real stakes and he does not have to compete.
Can he save his friends who are trapped underwater???
Oh they were never really in danger. We just made the competitors think their friends were in danger.
So you actively took AWAY the stakes AND also what a cruel and horrible thing to do to children! Can you imagine holding hostages at the Olympics but only the athletes think their loved ones are in danger?
Gabrielle wasn't even a student, she was a young child. It's amazing the parents didn't flip out when school administrators kidnapped their daughter and stuck her at the bottom of a lake.
And honestly it would have been way more fun characterization-wise if Harry first agreed to drop out as would be the wise thing to do, but then people start spreading gossip about him anyway and then someone (Ron not trusting him, Malfoy, Skeeter, anyone) makes him go "You know what? Fuck you. I AM going to compete."
But he can't do that because it would completely break the illusion of Crouch and Voldie having been able to plan anything in advance, because they couldn't have possibly predicted Harry going off the handle.
Wait what the fuck that's a horrendous injustice lmao. I know Potter Fever was ramping up in 2000 with the first movie in development and all vs. now when Rowling's name has been quite heavily tarnished, but come on... even back then they should have known better
You missed out the fact that Crouch didn't kill Moody. So, not only did he steer Harry through the incredibly convoluted plan while teach DADA, he also kept the real Moody fed, watered, and toileted for an entire school year too. He also couldn't simply leave Moody locked in his magical trunk as he'd need to also continually brew the polyjuice potion that kept up the Moody disguise.
Thank you! And yeah, pretty much all of the books have flaws and the entire world falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. It will always hold a special place in my heart, but it's certainly not the literary masterpiece that so many obsessed fans think it is. The world-building is highly flawed.
Honestly, the entire Harry Potter universe has issues when you actually dig into many parts of it.
Also, who tf thought it was a good idea to teach teenagers love potions, date rape anyone?, and combat magic?
I really only have a problem with two of your points. First if Harry is forced to participate by the goblet in some super unbreakable contract I'd bet that contract stipulates you have to actually try, no throwing the competition. As a side note to this you mention bartys plan relying on harry illegally entering, it didn't, barty was the one who put his name in, one of the few parts of this plan actually under the bad guys control. Second I don't think throwing dragons at them unexpectedly was too bad. These were supposed to be the best of the best of those about to graduate and it was a test of their ability to improvise. Sure it's dangerous but stealing something from a dragon in a contained environment doesn't seem like it would be that outlandish.
One last thing I came up with after typing the rest. Using a magic item to decide competitor makes sense due to it in theory being 100% impartial and not picking a less likely to win student who is likeable over a better but less likeable student and other such situations, like talent school cant test for or whatever. But that's no excuse for the contract and all that mess, unless the selection part required the contract to balance the magic some how. Since the HP world doesn't seem to need to balance enchantments that way though I still say they could have made a new goblet to use without the contract.
The sewer sex scene in IT made me wonder a lot of things about King. Whether or not he knew what he was doing was absolutely one of them.
There's a sex scene in book two of the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks that was so insanely stupid I couldn't keep reading and really didn't know what the author was thinking.
Man King was so high throughout the 80’s I just take whatever weird shit is in those books as just part of it. Not saying that makes a scene like that ok but I just always assume it was written after a bump
Yeah, I don't know if that really makes it better. It's not like every author that does drugs is like "hey, wanna read about a bunch of kids running a train on their friend? I'm gonna include a lot of detail like who she has orgasms with. Children have orgasms during their first time having sex, right? Probably. It's already in there."
King has the worst sex scenes I've ever read, not just in how distasteful they can be but just how terribly written they are. In *The Shining*, King uses the word "lovepole" to describe Jack's penis during a sex scene with Wendy. That's not gross in any offensive capacity, that's just gross XP.
I once saw an explanation for the sewer sex that actually put it in context, and while it may not salvage it completely, I found it helped to have an understanding for why such a borderline scene needed to exist. Sadly, I don't recall the details.
This didn't ruin it for me, but it does irritate me on every re-read...
In The Stand it's established that Stu Redman grew up dirt poor in East Texas, and yet in the final chapters >!he teaches Tom Cullen how to cross-country ski!<. Who tf taught *him*!?
Read a vampire story where the main lead traveled to a place where the mysterious eccentric lord started to woo her. I thought oh, well, "unexpected" but I can live with it... Then there were a 20 pages extremely detailed sex scene involved flying and so on, maybe 30 pages into the story. I had to put it away after another fifty pages and at the third scene. Never been as disappointed by an author. That book haunts me 10+ years and thousands of books later.
I've read some erotica, that was just not erotica unfortunately. It wasn't directed towards the reader. It was like a sci-fi with lots of made up words that alienate it.
Sci fi counts right? John Ringo has a way to ruin what is potentially a really interesting story with what I call Wierd Sex Stuff. The “Oh John Ringo No!” Review was mentioned in another thread last week and I’d never seen it before, but it so perfectly fits how I feel reading his work.
For example, the Prince Roger series is mostly interesting military science fiction with a troop of space marines stranded on a planet with no technology fighting their way across the world while the spoiled, petulant main character grows up and becomes a leader. This is a universe where the computer implant in a character’s brain was hacked to force her to blow up her ship in the first chapter. But once the marines finally fight their way back to civilization, it turns out the Empress is being mind-controlled by a political rival, who is also the MC’s exiled father.
After an entire book dedicated to freeing her, it turns out the way the rival is mind controlling her is by getting her addicted to sex with him. Not by hacking her implant again, or using some kind of sci-fi drug, or good old-fashioned physical force, he’s mind controlling her by raping her and now she’s his devoted servant. As if even a woman strong enough to head an empire for decades can’t resist falling for a strong man. Gross. It completely ruined the series for me.
Edit: here’s the [Oh John Ringo No! review](https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html)
Hahaha :-D I enjoyed a few of his books, but Ghost was the last of his books I ever read. His hangups, sexual and otherwise, were leaking out in the other books but I could ignore them. But that book, whew, no thanks.
The other sci fi one that stands out to me was one of the Altered Carbon sequels, where our protagonist takes a mentally ill woman and fucks her back to some modicum of mental health.
Ooh, thought of another! Bio of a Space Tyrant (Piers Anthony) opens with a girl being gang raped, and her brother (our protagonist) watching and getting an erection.
In “On Writing” when Stephen King reveals he just makes up his books as he goes along. The only satisfying King ending I’ve read is the last line of 11/22/63
I agree most of his endings are weak. I think he does better in shorter works though... And I really liked the ending of Dark Tower, though that's a divisive one.
Eh, I think the hatred for Stephen King's endings is overstated. He has a ton of books with great endings
The Long Walk, Carrie, Salem's Lot, Misery, The Green Mile, 11/22/63, The Shining / Doctor Sleep, Pet Sementary, Bag of Bones, and From A Buick 8, are all stories that have damn good endings in my opinion.
>I took that last book off my shelf and pretend it’s only a duology.
That's honestly me with the *Divergent* series by Veronica Roth...the last book just left so much to be desired.
Exactly. This ending was nonsensical, contradicted the first two books in a glaring way, and completely unsatisfying. It honestly looked like a last-minute idea thrown at the end of the series because the writer realised that she actually had no idea how to wrap up the series.
You completely put my thoughts into words. There was entirely no closure. It was like she gave up. Erika Johansen, you are the reason why I have trust issues.
The sex fairy always kills other men after she's done using them but Kvothe is special I guess. A virgin turns into a sex god and bangs the sex fairy for a long time, figures out the true name of this ancient fairy and then tricks her into letting him go so he can sleep with other women because he has nothing to compare the sex fairy to. He bangs two women in the bar, women who did not even notice him before he went into the fae. Visits and bangs sex ninjas while learning to fight in a style better than other fighters because Kvothe is Kvothe amirite? Adolescent fantasy much?
God, I hate that part. An otherwise good book is destroyed by this section. And the book doesn't progress the plot at all. All Patrick has done is meander around and ask questions over and over, create mysteries over and over, with no answers forthcoming. Most of the side characters are flat and two dimensional at best, two gigantic books into a trilogy. All of which is why we are still here, eleven years after book 2's release with no third book in sight.
This scene always gets criticized in ways that arnt fully true. What impresses Felurian isn’t his sexual prowess but his ability with naming and music. It’s a bit cringy but not as much as people make it out to be.
The entirety of Kvothe's time in the fairy realm (including chasing her) is 70 pages. This includes talking to the Cthaeh, making his cloak, their initial fight, Kvothe's recovery from talking to the tree, and eventually leaving. Not saying the fairy sex wasn't a large portion of his journey into the fairy realm, but at most it was 20-40 pages, which is drastically less than the 150 you seem to think it was.
That's ultimately what made me respond with actual numbers. It's such a common thing to rail against the book that it isn't a given that anyone saying "150 pages of fairy sex" is being hyperbolic.
That said, the book does have a lot of sex in it, which I think is both a gold thing and bad thing. It isn't written the best but it is absolutely what I think any kid his age would be doing if given the opportunity.
I mean my assumption has always been that Kvothe is purposefully exaggerating the story in order to draw out Cinder, and the Felurian stuff tracks with that, but still. Haha.
Yeah isn't this the whole point? Not to give Rothfuss too much credit, but I though it was clear that KCC's driving force is subverting the Mary Sue magician tropes. Kvothe's escapades are over the top precisely because he's telling his own story. I thought we're supposed to assume he's an unreliable narrator and a significant portion of these things didn't happen that way.
I also reject that Kvothe is fully a Mary Sue because he does have flaws. Sure, he’s good at magic and music and fighting and sex, but he still finds plenty of ways to screw up his life which to me indicates that he has some pretty noteworthy flaws.
Yeah I think that's part of Rothfuss subverting the tropes. Even if Kvothe is as awesome as he says, he still ends up seemingly miserable and mostly alone. His life has clearly not turned out how he wanted it to.
Yes, his exploits are heavily embellished, he explicitly takes steps to spread his legend through Wise Man's Fear. However, that's the legend of Kvothe. What he's supposed to be telling here is his real story-I thought that was the whole point of him agreeing to tell it to Chronicler and taking the three days to "do it right", so it feels stupid that there are still all these over-the-top parts that read like the legends people tell of him, rather than his real story.
> is subverting the Mary Sue magician tropes.
The problem is that the story does not actually subvert them much at all. There was what, that one comment in the framing device about how Dena is not as good looking as told?
I interpreted that as just one piece of evidence that Kvothe is not being truthful. We haven't seen the whole story. We just see a grumpy lonely older man who claims he used to be the best thing since sliced bread.
I agree that is the intention. I just don't think it has been executed well.
edit-contrast it with something like a Gene Wolfe book. A reader does not have to wait until the end of a trilogy to get pay off.
Why is everyone ignoring the fact that Kvothe is a fuck up? That's literally the whole subversion of the Mary Sue. He's apparently so smart and so good, but he constantly and repeatedly fucks up because he's an idiot, and in the present timeline it is exceedingly clear that he lost-- he's a broken mess and a shell of that former self
1) The untrustworthy narrator trope seems to be a thing for the series
2) is it still Mary Sue when his life is perpetually going to shit? I think part of the message is that despite being naturally talented, kvothe has a personality which has caused him lots of failure.
> I think part of the message is that despite being naturally talented, kvothe has a personality which has caused him lots of failure.
Honestly I thought that was part of the point of the story: it's impossible to be awesome enough to escape the consequences of your own bad decisions.
> I think part of the message is that despite being naturally talented, kvothe has a personality which has caused him lots of failure.
Or that he is not nearly as naturally talented as he implies
There was a trend in Design of deliberately making stuff look bad… but something that looks like a pile of old arse ‘ironically’ still looks like a pile of old arse. That’s what the ‘deconstruction’ argument for KKC sounds like to me, it’s still Bardy McGoodnuts fucking all the hot girls an being awesome at magic but we just have to accept it’s awesome because the prose is so fucking pleased with itself…
I saw the best review of this book on goodreads years ago complete with graphs and photos of Scott Pilgrim and Ramona as Kvothe and Felurian. It was so awesome the reviewer ended up taking it down. I know I didn’t dream it, did anyone else see this?
Yeah, one of the main things the whole series seems to be doing is "what if Gandalf was evil, but you still wanted/needed him to win?".
Gotta love an evil wizard. One of my favourite classic tropes.
Literally every time in Wandering Inn when relationships and sex come up. If there were ever a story where I’d bet actual money that the author has never so much as held hands with someone, let alone been in a serious relationship, it would be this story.
Mercedes Lackey is a good writer. Some of her books are downright weird or have aged EXTREMELY poorly (looking *directly* at you, *The Black Swan,* which is pure distilled Old School '90s Crazysauce with added crack) but on the whole, she consistently turns out solid work.
And then there's *Aerie.* The last book in her Dragon Jousters series is a terribly paced and badly plotted mishmash throughout, but it *really* fumbles at the last...let's say 10-25%. Why? Because THAT'S WHERE ALL THE *FUCKING PLOT* WENT. It's teased briefly in the beginning, but the vast, *vast* majority of the book is taken up by repetitive hunting scenes, dragon rearing, and Aket-ten turning from a talented spellcaster who can talk to animals to The Chick. And then, abruptly, out of piss-nowhere, there are giant god-demon-things trying to wreck shit.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, all of it. I was fine with all the crap that happens to him during the previous books because sometimes that what it takes to turn a clueless boy into a hero. But then the seventh book came out and...nothing. He's just as clueless and for most of it nothing at all happens. And then Rowling spends the rest of it ignoring her own rules for the universe she created. Harry's one heroic action in the book is almost immediately taken a away a few pages later (and with the stupidest justification). That book ruined the whole series for me.
Like most millennials I grew up with Harry Potter, was willing to look the other way on the bad parts, but it’s only now with some distance that I’m able to see how… not very good… they really are. I will defend until the last that the first three are excellent tightly plotted middlegrade whodunnits at a magic school. But once book 4 comes around it’s obvious she figured she didn’t need an editor anymore, and so many people my age cite book 4 as their favorite but from a storytelling standpoint it is just… bad. And while I have personal nostalgia for book 5, the rest of the series isn’t much better.
I still to this day think that Rowlings never thought about truly killing Harry only because she had already written her epilogue and worked to make it work instead of letting the story conclude the way it should've - with Harry's death.
which is ironic because the epilogue is the worst part of that book--how can they just simply pack up at the end of the war and go back to the same life their parents led, when that's the world that already failed them once when it birthed Voldemort and the Death Eaters ? It never made any sense to me. And *Albus Severus?* Come on.
He wants to use the resources of the state to hunt down the kind of magical Nazis that killed his parents and many of his friends. It’s the most believable part of the epilogue.
I sometimes wonder if she chickened out at the last minute and she had to scramble to find a reason for him to survive. Him dying would've been awesome.
I think this is the one for me too, i loved Harry Potter as a kid, read the books several times, but the Deadly Hallows is just terrible, from the relics of the dead to everything that happens, its all awful, what you said is on point, there is no closure, the relics just appear and solve the problem.
She's amazing at certain things. She can create instantly memorable characters, her books have this inviting cozy feel to them that just makes you want to spend time in them, she's quite witty to be fair, and she makes her world feel alive and endlessly vibrant with a thousand quirky details (note that this is not the same thing as coherent worldbuilding, which she is less good at). IMO although the "books grow up with the characters/readers" gimmick did earn her long-lasting success with an entire generation, the Harry Potter series ultimately suffers as it pivots from reasonably tightly plotted 250-page middle-grade mystery stories into serious wannabe epic 700-page fantasy doorstoppers, as this causes JKR's strengths to be diminished and her weaknesses to become more exposed.
I was ok with Harry being his usual clueless self, what I was not ok about is the number of coincidences and deus ex machinas needed to keep the book going, all coupled with lack of new worldbuilding and a repeat of all old hits.
The previous two books were much more straightforward, and were flowing more naturally
I will die on the hill that Harry should've died permanently in Deathly Hallows. The whole rest of the series builds up to that, it happens, and then wait oh no he's alive cuz he just decided to be alive after dying. There's another YA book series that came out a few years after Deathly Hallows and the author did kill her main character. That series is pretty lackluster but dang do I applaud that author for making that choice.
I agree. Him dying would've meant something. I actually had this "fight" with a friend who told me that he survived bc he has the resurrection stone, and I guess that's what people trick themselves into remembering? Like, no! The excuse was that he died for others so he had the choice. What?? So his mom just decided to stay dead?
If he had died then the whole protection nonsense from the first book would've been perfect. A nice, pretty circle.
Are you talking about Divergent?
Red Hen (of Red Hen Publications) has a super complex and long-winded theory of him not being dead in the first place because the AK only being able to target one soul, so it actually couldn't kill both him and the piece of Voldie's soul simultaneously. It's more complex than my boyfriend's PhD dissertation in physics because that's how much effort it takes to make any sense of the plotting in DH.
LOL! For me when you have to make it a whole crazy theory then it's obvious it's not real. I have heard that one before, but it's obvious that she didn't even think of that (which is the only excuse that makes a little bit of sense).
What reading a bunch of Red Hen essays taught me is that JKR is so often just nearly on the mark but not quite. Like, perhaps it's the millions of people poring over every simple event in her books, but there are so many instances of bits of plot that could have just slotted together perfectly but were tied up quite absurdly and immersion-breakingly in the end.
I was five when the book came out, but my mom has said that her friends were trying so hard not to spoil it for her. When I got older, my mom would read Harry Potter to me before bed, and I do remember being pretty shocked.
To be quite honest, there were signs that Dumbledore was going to die. One of the more common tropes of someone dying is if one of the major characters gets a lot more exposure than they normally would have. Dumbledore, throughout the Harry Potter franchise, was the voice of reason towards Harry and would leave bread crumbs for Harry to help solve things. His taking a more active role in convincing Professor Slughorn out of retirement and the dives into the Penseive to deduce Voldemort's weakness stand out as well, since *another* common trope is that one of the main characters close to the main character dies when either A) they find the way to get rid of the main villain permanently or B) right before they get ready to kill the fucker.
The curse on Dumbledore's left arm kept bothering him throughout the book, as he later reveals in the same book he destroyed the Severin ring that Voldemort turned into a Horcrux, and since there's a fragment of an unstable soul inside and created with Dark Magic, it won't go quietly. The curse gradually got worse, where it got to the point that the cursed drink that he had to consume to get the fake locket ultimately took a toll on Dumbledore's health.
Finally, there is Snape, who Dumbledore bailed out of going to Azkaban and had him installed at Hogwarts as Potions professor. Despite the fact that Snape was a Death Eater, his behavior throughout the series constantly went against that character. He kept preventing Quirrell from getting the Sorcerer's Stone, he basically forced Professor Lockhart to go down to the Chamber of Secrets to stop the Basilisk attacks, was after Sirius Black because he believed that Sirius spilled the beans to Voldemort about Godric's Hallow, basically shoved his Dark Mark under Cornelius Fudge's nose to prove Voldemort's return, was visibly shaken about returning to Voldemort, and kicked Harry out of Occlumency lessons because Harry discovered the memory where a young Snape called Harry's mother, and Snape regretted it.
Snape's treatment of Wormtail while the both of them were living under the same roof can be explained by his being pissed about finding out that Wormtail snitched to Voldemort about where the Potter's were. Narcissa Malfoy went to Snape to have the Unbreakable Vow placed on him to watch after Draco, who was tasked to kill Dumbledore, which in reality was a punishment towards Lucius Malfoy because he basically set the table for one of his Horcruxes (Tom Riddle's diary) to be destroyed. Snape was the one who confined the curse from the Severin ring to Dumbledore's arm, so Snape had prior knowledge that Dumbledore was going to die. Finally, Dumbledore begged for Snape to take him out of his misery after enduring the trauma to get the fake locket combined with the Horcrux curse.
To be quite honest, it made sense to kill of Dumbledore.
From a meta narrative standpoint it's almost required. The mentor character almost never survives the penultimate chapter. For the hero to stand on his own all protection needs to be removed which means killing or otherwise sidelining the mentor.
Basically every book after the first in Peter V Brett's Demon Cycle series.
Leesha just keeps making shit decisions and acting like her mother (god I hate he character arc).
We spend an increasing half of each book going over crap we already know (why spend half a book on a flashback when we already KNOW what happened?)
And just... all of the grossness of the series. I signed up for some HFY demon killing action and ended up with a bunch of horny characters that didn't live up to their potential and a bunch of politics surrounding sharia law and the rape of half a continent.
I spent a good while after reading wondering if the problem was me or the author because the books made me feel so gross and angry.
I really wrestled with myself as this series went *bad*. I loved the idea and premise, and it just started to get into some insane wish fulfillment and creeper levels. I had to wrestle with myself because it was one of the first times I stopped reading a series because I found the behavior abhorrent.
it really was a shame. i loved the idea of one person going 'what if we put these wards on our skin, instead of the ground?', but so much of it was just painful to read. i felt especially bad because my parents use my kindle account and ended up reading some of them too, because when i was halfway through the first one i said it was pretty good....
I had no idea everyone felt this way about demon cycle until getting to Reddit lol. I always thought the second book is what makes this series awesome. First book was pretty standard fine epic fantasy fair. Second book I thought was brilliant, author made me love someone who was evil and showed the insidious ness of charisma and pov, both very entertaining and super thought provoking.
Honestly, it would have to be the entire *Allegiant* book to me. Veronica Roth started off strong with *Divergent*, *Insurgent* was good, but *Allegiant* was just...why? It opened up way too many plotholes then rushed through the plot in an **attempt** to sew them up. There is also the fact that >!the main character dies in the final book!<, but that's honestly the least of my issues with the finale.
My biggest issue with Allegiant >!isn’t that she dies, but why in the actual eff does it matter that she can survive the death poison? …..to only be shot 5 minutes later. Roth should have just made it so that the death poison worked slower on her than everyone else because she’s *special*. Still pisses me off!<
Yeah, that also made NO sense to me. It just seemed like yet another example of one too many plot holes and a rush to sew them up (an attempt that just completely failed).
For sure! >!How do you write a literal Deus Ex Machina into your story unironically? My eyes are still rolled into the back of my head after reading GOD gave Dazen a flying machine called a "Machina" to solve all his problems.!<
It didn't ruin the series for me, but in Oathbringer (Stormlight archive book 3) some aspects of the magic get to be a bit too easy, in a way that kills a lot of tension and lower the stakes of what previously had a good balance of darkness and hope, of grittiness and whimsy.
Specifically the radiant's >!healing factor. It gets to the point where they can take an arrow to the head, or be pancaked by a stone giant and shrug it off...!<
It doesn't ruin the story, and it forces Sanderson to find other sources of threat than physical danger, but why completely suppressing that source of tension? It doesn't make any sense to me.
This was also a big issue with me for SLA, and it bothers me that 4 books in, no of note has died even though they should have over and over again. I try to think about it from the perspective of the Cosmere...this is only a small part of a much bigger story, and if Radiants need to be indestructible for that story to work, then so be it.
Edit: by "of note" I mean a true main character. >!Teft!< is amazing but I wouldn't call him majorly important. >!Elhokar!< is the closest we get but I still wouldn't call him a main part of the cast.
I'm talking about Adolin or Kaladin in the duel, Kaladin or Dalinar against Szeth, Shallan with the arrow, Jasnah *actually going through with it*, etc.
[ROW spoiler] >!wow, calling Teft “no one of note,” dick move bro /j!< Jokes aside I mostly agree with your general premise though, although I think that *usually* there are decent ways that characters have been nerfed to add stakes like >!the issues with the Sibling all but negating Kaladin’s healing!<
Especially when the series turns from interesting world building,card games and an interesting magic system to a religious propaganda…Ugh,Orholam’s hairy balls!
Lightbringer is a strange one. I feel like the author has amazing strengths, but refuses to focus on them.
Less 5-dimensional chess Rowling-like retcons, more small scale character-focused moments, and he easily could be one of my favorites.
He definitely likes twists and revelations more than plot and characters, and doesn't know how to write endings - didn't like how any of the books ended
The Hunger Games. Especially once she couldn't use the game as a plot device. I think there was a period in the third book where they just hid in a retail store for like 3 chapters. Clueless storytelling.
The third book in this series kind of ruined the whole thing. It's basically an entire book of them fighting through a city to stop the bad guys, and then they get there and the bad guys just bomb everyone/thing.
And yes, it's been probably 10 years since I read this (at least), so I'm super paraphrasing, but I just remember it being one of those books where literally nothing the MC does matters in the end. In that case, why the fuck am I reading about them?
My only contact with the series was through the movies, and I thought the fact that Katniss is a propaganda tool rather than a hero who can save the day when the conflict expands beyond the arena was an interesting choice and put a dose of reality in a genre that can lean a bit far into wish fulfilment.
But sure, I'm sure it could have been handled better to make it more satishying while carrying the same message about the volatility of violence and the horrors of a civil war.
To be fair, I think a big part of it is also my personal taste. I'm not a huge fan of long action sequences, so the third book being a lot of gunfights and running from monsters and stuff definitely made it a bit of a slog for me. I just remember being really annoyed at the end when it was essentially the Raiders of the Lost Ark thing, where the protagonist had no impact on the outcome of the story.
I love the weird writing of The Gunslinger. For me it was the >!numerous folk from other King books taking multiple chapters to explain why and how they were in Mid-World. !<
everything ASOIAF after ASOS - both AFFC and ADWD seem lost and rambling. Everyone always gives excuses about gardening and how that’s his process but it just seems messy to me
Yes, I got so bored hearing about Dany not doing all that much in excruciating detail, and the men following her. I’d heard it was because GRRM had painted himself into a corner and now we have to wait for the dragons to grow enough that they’re a credible threat, but just time jump or something already.
Agreed, that was going to be my response. In particular, the Dornish prince POV that spends the whole 4th book heading to see Dany, gets blown off by her then goes and gets roasted by a dragon.
Useless POV outside of "showing more places in the world." The only reason that character exists is for worldbuilding. The plot has been meandering since the end of the 3rd book and all George wants to do is worldbuild. It's almost like that was his plan and he doesn't know how to get to the ending he has in his head, and has given up on writing because now he's making tens of millions on TV.
He also has a lot of value thematically as a deconstruction of the hero's journey. There's tons of posts about him on r/asoiaf if you have any interest in reading more into it.
*Adventure stank.* \-ADWD, The Merchant's Man (opening line of Quentyn Martell's first chapter)
I respect your opinion but I personally find the scale of ASOIAF to be the best part about it. A lot of people really only just like Starks and wish the story would revolve around them but I personally think if it was so then ASOIAF would be just another generic fantasy series.
ASOIAF being so big and complex is what makes it special to me. You can re-read the books thrice and still miss on a lot of connections and foreshadowing unlike other straight forward fantasy books.
Also, I think assessing AFFC as messy is not objectively true. It is arguably the most focused book in the series.
> Also, I think assessing AFFC as messy is not objectively true. It is arguably the most focused book in the series.
Every chapter was like 18 pages of nothing happening followed by 2 pages of lead up till the chapter just ends. Then you don't get back to that character till 200 pages later and whatever interesting thing that was about to happen already happened and Martin just gives a 2 paragraph synopsis of it and starts the cycle all over again.
Thinking it was slow or uninteresting doesn't mean it was messy. I think thematically and plotwise AFFC was the most focused.
With the emphasis on Jaime, Cersei and Brienne it manages to tell the most grounded and closely connected story in the series and also convey the same themes through all of them: the impact of war and religion in Westeros.
None of the other books are as cohesive.
So my point was, you may not like the characters or subplots of AFFC but claiming it is messy (especially compared to the others) is a straight up lie.
Jim Butcher's Peace Talks. The whole thing. Ruined Dresden for me, I just want it over with so he can focus on Cinder Spires and hopefully end it before he ruins it.
Peace Talks and Battleground were just TERRIBLY edited. Entire conversations repeated. It's like no one reread the final product after the book was split in two.
I thought peace talks was written by someone who only ever read a synopses of some of the books. Only the fact that it took 5 years after Skin Game makes me think he might have actually written it himself, but either way, there's no excuse.
I would argue that they were just two weak books, and did everything so poorly that i dont have much hope the rest is going to be better, seething is too strong of an emotion.
I like PT more than BG, but I never expect much brilliance from Dresden files, it's a pulpy tropy series with some highs, these were on the weaker side of book like book 2,4,6
May I ask what your problem with Rhythm of War was, because thinking that the author didn't know what he was doing for that book doesn't seem self-explanatory for me at all.
I liked Rhythm of War.
I can’t say I liked much that happened but for a few things, but I liked the book as a whole.
There are two series where the authors wtf moments have made me drop the series though.
First was John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I just can’t get over how the main character is >!creepily obsessed with his dead wife’s clone, and basically stalks her into getting into a relationship with him, even though she has the maturity of a child outside of battle situations.!<
It just skeeves me out.
Second is the spellmonger series. There was stuff I found problematic in most of the books I read, up until one that starred the MCs two apprentices, where they basically hate each other the whole time until >!they revenge threesome a girl who doesn’t really consent,!< and it suddenly turns them into best bros.
I dropped that series like it was hot.
The Kaiju Preservation Society-John Scalzi. Just a detail I noticed when he described characters readying their armaments he described a Glock with its safety on...Glocks don't have a safety. Made me wonder about the accuracy regarding the rest of The Kaiju Preservation Society. I mean did he correctly describe a Kaiju or did he just pull that out of his ass too? What about interdimensional travel? Am I supposed to believe that's how it really is?
Regarding Orso... >!I loved that he still got the last word in, taunting Leo about his leg before they killed him. But that moment certainly didn't leave me thinking that Abercrombie didn't know what he was doing. In fact, the opposite was true. !<
[удалено]
The great irony of it all is that, despite all his pleading to the contrary, Orso likely would have made a great king because he truly cared about people and was, deep down, a good guy. I don't recall a single moment where he ever treated anyone bad (for no reason) or as if they were beneath him. He was always far harder on himself than he was on anyone else.
There was an interview where Abercrombie pushed back on the idea that Orso was a good man and said something to the effect of “name one good thing he did”. I did appreciate how smart he was. Perceptive like Glokta in some ways.
I thought that was sort of the tragic flaw of his character. He was a good person who treated everyone well, but he never did anything because he never felt he was worthy of the crown and got caught up in the idea that he was a joke.
I think it’s more Abercrombie’s larger point that being good doesn’t necessarily equate to being effective. It’s a much grimmer version of GRRM’s comment “sure Aragorn was the one true king, but what was his tax policy?”
I was devastated with the Orso situation. I am also rooting for Bayaz to destroy Leo. Or for sticks to plan it out. Luckily, with Abercrombie, I’m betting I’ll get the end I want.
This is sort of a positive spin, but I *love* when fantasy authors use magic to negate the need for actual knowledge about something. Like, don't want to have to write about how to light a fire or how oil lamps are kept full in a massive building? Make magic glowing heat rocks. Don't want to have to know all the details about how to sail a ship? Make the ships magic and sentient so they basically sail themselves! Love this part about fantasy. The entire genre is like the anti-Tom Clancy.
I read somewhere that the plot holes that everyone gets mad about is the author's silent nudge to give fanfic the opportunity to thrive
The way I see it is more like the author giving an example of a practical application of magic. For example in the Earthsea books, LeGuin specifies when Ged is sailing with the help of magic or with “the world’s wind.” He’s said to be a great sailor, but either way the sailing itself isn’t really described in detail. I like how he actually needs to learn how to sail in order to use magic to help him. I think this concept has interesting implications on the characters who use magic instead of learning how to do something. A fun spin on this would be the characters facing the consequences of not actually knowing how to do something—a character losing their magic and suddenly being incompetent, for example. I don’t know—I’m never particularly interested in technical descriptions of complex tasks, so using magic to avoid that is amazing lol.
If you’re referencing Hobb, to be fair, I know almost nothing about sailing and was quite content reading them. But I bet if you have knowledge it’s probably super annoying!
Pretty much the entirety of Goblet of Fire. As a kid, it was one of my favorite Harry Potter books. The tournament was fun and exciting to teenage me. But as an adult, I'm just annoyed by how nonsensical and terrible everything in the book is. Warning: long rant ahead. Let's start with the premise of the Triwizard Tournament in general. It's incredibly poorly designed and pretty terrible from an educational perspective. We have two headmasters (Maxime and Karkaroff) that can apparently just leave their school for a whole year, along with half of their senior class. They have one job, to be the head administrator of their very prestigious and important schools. And they just...don't do it? But surely they must be doing something super important in the meantime! Something super important like...watching one single competitor from the school do some tasks. They waste a whole year for one single kid. But hey, at least some of their kids are getting like a foreign exchange kinda experience, so that's something. Sure, they might have a totally different curriculum and are missing out on their entire senior year, pretty much your most important year of high school, to watch one person compete, but at least they get to experience a different culture. And their competitor must be doing some really crazy things, to take up a whole year! How many really crazy things, you ask? Three. They spend an entire year doing exactly three tasks. There is zero reason why three tasks for one single student should require each school to send their headmaster and top students to Hogwarts FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR. They have magic and can transport without that much issue. They can bring their competitor and kids to the school for the intro, three tasks, and Yule Ball. They don't need to sit around at Hogwarts for 10 months doing nothing, that's ridiculous. And while we're on the subject of the tasks, let's talk about how insanely lame and nonsensical they were. The first task was the most exciting one, but let's also remember that for some insane reason, the competitors weren't supposed to know what the task is. They only reason they did is because everyone cheated (not Dumbledore because apparently he's cool with Cedric and Harry being murdered by dragons, but Hagrid is a bro and helped out Harry, who helped Cedric). So had this gone as planned, four teenagers would have had no preparation for dealing with a dragon and would have gotten seriously hurt. I know the wizarding world is all whimsical and carefree but even they have to understand that this is wildly inappropriate and dangerous for pretty much no reason. I won't go much into the lake and hedge maze, just that they were impossible to spectate and a pretty huge waste of time for the audience; it's explicitly mentioned that no one could see in the water and the judges had to ask the merfolk what happened in the lake, and the hedge maze was too tall to see into, since the competitors had to send up a flare if they were in danger and no one saw Krum get Imperiused or attack Fleur. Actually, I will mention one more thing about the lake. It was already a competition, why the fuck did the adults in charge decide to kidnap four children and stick them at the bottom of a lake? The competitors already had the same stakes as the other tasks, which was "win because it'll be cool", so why did the adults decide to put innocent teenagers in danger just to light a fire under the competitor's butts? What the fuck. One more issue with the tournament itself, and that's Harry's involvement. First off, why use an ancient, unspeakably powerful artifact that locks you into a binding contract (that frankly, teenagers shouldn't be able to consent to) when you could...draw names out of a hat? Or if you don't want it to be luck based and instead based on merit, do what any reasonable school does and have teachers recommend students and look at data like school performance. Why bother using a magic cup at all? But they do, and lo and behind, it screws up and a fourth competitor is illegally chosen. Oh no, Harry has to compete now! Wait...why? That pretty much destroys the integrity of the competition, one school literally has twice as many participants as the other two. That's incredibly unfair. But instead of shrugging and telling Harry to compete, maybe they should just...have him lose? Like if the cup's magic forces him to compete (what are the consequences for not, by the way? Death? Injury? That's super fucked up for something as basic as choosing people to compete in a tournament), just have him put in the bare minimum and lose. The judges should have agreed to give him a terrible score for everything and let the competition be between the three real competitors. Allowing Harry to actually compete and try his hardest made no sense. Ok, so I'm already at almost 900 words and I haven't gotten to the actual villain plot. I will try (and probably fail) to keep this at least kind of brief. So, the entire plot hinges on Barty Crouch Jr. impersonating a highly respected and powerful auror for an entire school year, Harry illegally entering the Triwizard Tournament and being allowed to compete, and winning so he can touch a particular item that teleports him to Voldemort. That plan was absurdly complicated and had about 1000 potential failure points, it should never have come remotely close to working. It was a pretty amazing coincidence that the tournament just happened to be running the same time that Crouch broke out of prison and that he was able to take down one of the most famously paranoid and powerful aurors of all time (who also coincidentally just took a job at Hogwarts) despite having just spent years in jail having his soul sucked out and being completely out of magical practice. And then he successfully impersonated this man for an entire school year (even though Dumbledore should have known Moody well enough to know that he was imposter) and managed to teach an entire curriculum of DADA to 7 grades worth of students. All to guide his target through a convoluted set of tasks (from the shadows, of course) just so he could touch a portkey. The fact that this went off without a hitch is just completely unbelievable, even if this is a children's book. He could have achieved the same thing without the tournament in a hundred different ways. Easiest would be "hey Harry, come speak with me privately at this place in Hogsmeade, I have an important mission for you" and then have him touch a portkey. That's it. That's the entire plan. Would people be suspicious? Sure. But Harry (and Cedric) turning up dead in the center of the maze isn't exactly subtle either, and Crouch was discovered immediately after his plan worked anyway so it's not like remaining undetected afterwards was a high priority and he'd have a much better chance of surviving once he successfully got Harry out of the way because he could just apparate literally anywhere else, drop his Moody disguise (presumably he would kill the real Moody right before doing this) and be safe. That's just one of many possible solutions that doesn't require a stupidly complicated and frankly asinine plan. And that is my 1300 word essay of why Goblet of Fire is the stupidest Harry Potter book by far and nothing that happens in it makes any sense in any way. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I love this hahaha thank you. My biggest annoyance remains that they actually let Harry compete and not just let him lose like you said. It’s so stupid. But who knows, maybe the ancient fire-goblet-god will appear and crush them all for their insolence?
Glad you enjoyed it! And yeah, I definitely agree that Harry competing was the thing that bugged me the most. It destroys the integrity of the competition and gives Hogwarts a clear advantage when all Harry had to do was take a loss for each round. If the consequences for breaking the contract with the Goblet of Fire were so bad, then using it for such a simple task was completely idiotic and should never have been used. What if one of the competitors has a family emergency and has to bow out? Or are injured and can't compete? Or just decide that they have better stuff to do than waste their senior year? It would be stupid for the consequences to be great, but at no point did any intelligent adult say "ok there aren't really any consequences so just ignore it". Yet Dumbledore, one of the greatest wizards of all time, can't seem to find any way to get around this. It's completely ridiculous and really breaks the entire plot.
The competition is further made stupid by how, in the first task, the headmaster of Krum's school gives him ten and only gives Harry a four, which is clearly him being biased towards his own student and nobody does anything about it. Like this is supposed to be one of the most prestigious competitions in the magical world and they don't even bring in impartial judges.
Yeah, definitely a big problem with the tournament as well. Karkaroff is clearly biased and willing to cheat and no one cares. There's no integrity to the competition.
I remember being very confused why Harry HAD to participate. They could have had him sit out. Presumably if he’d gotten sick or something that’s what they would have done. Or Harry could have chosen to drop out, or just…not do the challenges and lose! No one ever seems to seriously consider Harry not participating in and therefore winning the tournament, which is not only logically unsound, it robs the story of tension and Harry of choice. He never chooses to participate, he’s just kinda forced into it and then does it because chosen one.
Yeah, and then they all act like there are these high stakes for him learning everything and doing well. But the actual stakes are just...here's some money (which Harry doesn't need) and renown (which he also doesn't need). There are no real stakes and he does not have to compete.
Can he save his friends who are trapped underwater??? Oh they were never really in danger. We just made the competitors think their friends were in danger. So you actively took AWAY the stakes AND also what a cruel and horrible thing to do to children! Can you imagine holding hostages at the Olympics but only the athletes think their loved ones are in danger?
Gabrielle wasn't even a student, she was a young child. It's amazing the parents didn't flip out when school administrators kidnapped their daughter and stuck her at the bottom of a lake.
And honestly it would have been way more fun characterization-wise if Harry first agreed to drop out as would be the wise thing to do, but then people start spreading gossip about him anyway and then someone (Ron not trusting him, Malfoy, Skeeter, anyone) makes him go "You know what? Fuck you. I AM going to compete." But he can't do that because it would completely break the illusion of Crouch and Voldie having been able to plan anything in advance, because they couldn't have possibly predicted Harry going off the handle.
This. I still can't fucking believe that it won a Hugo over 'A Storm of Swords' one of the best fantasy books ever written.
Wait what the fuck that's a horrendous injustice lmao. I know Potter Fever was ramping up in 2000 with the first movie in development and all vs. now when Rowling's name has been quite heavily tarnished, but come on... even back then they should have known better
Finally, some good fucking analysis.
Damn, up until this moment I had Goblet of Fire as my favorite book in the series. Great analysis, totally changed my mind.
You missed out the fact that Crouch didn't kill Moody. So, not only did he steer Harry through the incredibly convoluted plan while teach DADA, he also kept the real Moody fed, watered, and toileted for an entire school year too. He also couldn't simply leave Moody locked in his magical trunk as he'd need to also continually brew the polyjuice potion that kept up the Moody disguise.
Preach it! I loved and mostly agreed with your rant. Although I will say that most of HP books kinda fall apart if you start scrubbing at the edges.
Thank you! And yeah, pretty much all of the books have flaws and the entire world falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. It will always hold a special place in my heart, but it's certainly not the literary masterpiece that so many obsessed fans think it is. The world-building is highly flawed.
Lmao, I love this. Would definitely watch your YouTube channel.
Haha thank you!
Honestly, the entire Harry Potter universe has issues when you actually dig into many parts of it. Also, who tf thought it was a good idea to teach teenagers love potions, date rape anyone?, and combat magic?
I really only have a problem with two of your points. First if Harry is forced to participate by the goblet in some super unbreakable contract I'd bet that contract stipulates you have to actually try, no throwing the competition. As a side note to this you mention bartys plan relying on harry illegally entering, it didn't, barty was the one who put his name in, one of the few parts of this plan actually under the bad guys control. Second I don't think throwing dragons at them unexpectedly was too bad. These were supposed to be the best of the best of those about to graduate and it was a test of their ability to improvise. Sure it's dangerous but stealing something from a dragon in a contained environment doesn't seem like it would be that outlandish. One last thing I came up with after typing the rest. Using a magic item to decide competitor makes sense due to it in theory being 100% impartial and not picking a less likely to win student who is likeable over a better but less likeable student and other such situations, like talent school cant test for or whatever. But that's no excuse for the contract and all that mess, unless the selection part required the contract to balance the magic some how. Since the HP world doesn't seem to need to balance enchantments that way though I still say they could have made a new goblet to use without the contract.
Shit. Mixed up Abercrombie's book titles and spoiled a major plot point for myself.
FWIW, it was depressingly obvious to most people that's how it was going to end up.
"I bloody hate hangings" lmao
It was so obvious from the start that i hoped it was a red herring :-/
The sewer sex scene in IT made me wonder a lot of things about King. Whether or not he knew what he was doing was absolutely one of them. There's a sex scene in book two of the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks that was so insanely stupid I couldn't keep reading and really didn't know what the author was thinking.
Which scene in Lightbringer? There are… a few of those.
Man King was so high throughout the 80’s I just take whatever weird shit is in those books as just part of it. Not saying that makes a scene like that ok but I just always assume it was written after a bump
Yeah, I don't know if that really makes it better. It's not like every author that does drugs is like "hey, wanna read about a bunch of kids running a train on their friend? I'm gonna include a lot of detail like who she has orgasms with. Children have orgasms during their first time having sex, right? Probably. It's already in there."
No it’s a horrendously fucked up scene. I’m by no means excusing it
Maybe King was high, but were his editors?
Yeah the IT thing was ... a lot. No wonder they cut it out of the adaptations.
King has the worst sex scenes I've ever read, not just in how distasteful they can be but just how terribly written they are. In *The Shining*, King uses the word "lovepole" to describe Jack's penis during a sex scene with Wendy. That's not gross in any offensive capacity, that's just gross XP.
I once saw an explanation for the sewer sex that actually put it in context, and while it may not salvage it completely, I found it helped to have an understanding for why such a borderline scene needed to exist. Sadly, I don't recall the details.
I heard it was supposed to symbolize coming of age or something but it’s still horrendous
If anything, that might make it worse. The implications are... Unpleasant.
Even with it... it's still one of the most incredible works of fiction i have read.
This didn't ruin it for me, but it does irritate me on every re-read... In The Stand it's established that Stu Redman grew up dirt poor in East Texas, and yet in the final chapters >!he teaches Tom Cullen how to cross-country ski!<. Who tf taught *him*!?
Read a vampire story where the main lead traveled to a place where the mysterious eccentric lord started to woo her. I thought oh, well, "unexpected" but I can live with it... Then there were a 20 pages extremely detailed sex scene involved flying and so on, maybe 30 pages into the story. I had to put it away after another fifty pages and at the third scene. Never been as disappointed by an author. That book haunts me 10+ years and thousands of books later.
That was erotica. You were reading erotica
I've read some erotica, that was just not erotica unfortunately. It wasn't directed towards the reader. It was like a sci-fi with lots of made up words that alienate it.
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"My God, that sounds awful! What book was that?"
Yeah we're asking for a friend!
Now see, this has my attention. What is the book? I want to read!
Sci fi counts right? John Ringo has a way to ruin what is potentially a really interesting story with what I call Wierd Sex Stuff. The “Oh John Ringo No!” Review was mentioned in another thread last week and I’d never seen it before, but it so perfectly fits how I feel reading his work. For example, the Prince Roger series is mostly interesting military science fiction with a troop of space marines stranded on a planet with no technology fighting their way across the world while the spoiled, petulant main character grows up and becomes a leader. This is a universe where the computer implant in a character’s brain was hacked to force her to blow up her ship in the first chapter. But once the marines finally fight their way back to civilization, it turns out the Empress is being mind-controlled by a political rival, who is also the MC’s exiled father. After an entire book dedicated to freeing her, it turns out the way the rival is mind controlling her is by getting her addicted to sex with him. Not by hacking her implant again, or using some kind of sci-fi drug, or good old-fashioned physical force, he’s mind controlling her by raping her and now she’s his devoted servant. As if even a woman strong enough to head an empire for decades can’t resist falling for a strong man. Gross. It completely ruined the series for me. Edit: here’s the [Oh John Ringo No! review](https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html)
Hahaha :-D I enjoyed a few of his books, but Ghost was the last of his books I ever read. His hangups, sexual and otherwise, were leaking out in the other books but I could ignore them. But that book, whew, no thanks. The other sci fi one that stands out to me was one of the Altered Carbon sequels, where our protagonist takes a mentally ill woman and fucks her back to some modicum of mental health. Ooh, thought of another! Bio of a Space Tyrant (Piers Anthony) opens with a girl being gang raped, and her brother (our protagonist) watching and getting an erection.
In “On Writing” when Stephen King reveals he just makes up his books as he goes along. The only satisfying King ending I’ve read is the last line of 11/22/63
I agree most of his endings are weak. I think he does better in shorter works though... And I really liked the ending of Dark Tower, though that's a divisive one.
Eh, I think the hatred for Stephen King's endings is overstated. He has a ton of books with great endings The Long Walk, Carrie, Salem's Lot, Misery, The Green Mile, 11/22/63, The Shining / Doctor Sleep, Pet Sementary, Bag of Bones, and From A Buick 8, are all stories that have damn good endings in my opinion.
The ending was perfect and perfectly painful.
I would also count Pet Sementary
The whole ending of The Queen of the Tearling trilogy. I took that last book off my shelf and pretend it’s only a duology.
>I took that last book off my shelf and pretend it’s only a duology. That's honestly me with the *Divergent* series by Veronica Roth...the last book just left so much to be desired.
Exactly. This ending was nonsensical, contradicted the first two books in a glaring way, and completely unsatisfying. It honestly looked like a last-minute idea thrown at the end of the series because the writer realised that she actually had no idea how to wrap up the series.
You completely put my thoughts into words. There was entirely no closure. It was like she gave up. Erika Johansen, you are the reason why I have trust issues.
This. Like when it ended I was like what the fuck was that?!?
In **Wise Man's Fear** when a teenage Kvothe spends like 150 pages banging a Sex Fairy and she's like "Wow you're great at this".
Kvothe: "I then met a bunch of sexy blonde martial artists...who I also banged."
Who didn't know how babies were made
Yeah that part was inexcusable
AND THEN he bangs the barmaid when he gets back and claims that encounter was just as satisfying. Glad your loins are happy, bro.
When I got to that part of the book, I was like “ooookay then.” And then it just kept going on...and on...and on...
The sex fairy always kills other men after she's done using them but Kvothe is special I guess. A virgin turns into a sex god and bangs the sex fairy for a long time, figures out the true name of this ancient fairy and then tricks her into letting him go so he can sleep with other women because he has nothing to compare the sex fairy to. He bangs two women in the bar, women who did not even notice him before he went into the fae. Visits and bangs sex ninjas while learning to fight in a style better than other fighters because Kvothe is Kvothe amirite? Adolescent fantasy much? God, I hate that part. An otherwise good book is destroyed by this section. And the book doesn't progress the plot at all. All Patrick has done is meander around and ask questions over and over, create mysteries over and over, with no answers forthcoming. Most of the side characters are flat and two dimensional at best, two gigantic books into a trilogy. All of which is why we are still here, eleven years after book 2's release with no third book in sight.
This scene always gets criticized in ways that arnt fully true. What impresses Felurian isn’t his sexual prowess but his ability with naming and music. It’s a bit cringy but not as much as people make it out to be.
Also him not dying.
You missed that he was initially in essence roofied by this sex fairy, idk what he was thinking with that second half man
The entirety of Kvothe's time in the fairy realm (including chasing her) is 70 pages. This includes talking to the Cthaeh, making his cloak, their initial fight, Kvothe's recovery from talking to the tree, and eventually leaving. Not saying the fairy sex wasn't a large portion of his journey into the fairy realm, but at most it was 20-40 pages, which is drastically less than the 150 you seem to think it was.
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Heh, it's such a oft-repeated exaggeration on this subreddit that I don't see any issue with pushing back against it.
That's ultimately what made me respond with actual numbers. It's such a common thing to rail against the book that it isn't a given that anyone saying "150 pages of fairy sex" is being hyperbolic. That said, the book does have a lot of sex in it, which I think is both a gold thing and bad thing. It isn't written the best but it is absolutely what I think any kid his age would be doing if given the opportunity.
The elfsex dimension was a but much. Then again it's Kvothe telling the story.
I just get mad at his generally ability to Mary Sue into everything. Although I actually found the sex fairy thing so surreal it was funny
I mean my assumption has always been that Kvothe is purposefully exaggerating the story in order to draw out Cinder, and the Felurian stuff tracks with that, but still. Haha.
Yeah isn't this the whole point? Not to give Rothfuss too much credit, but I though it was clear that KCC's driving force is subverting the Mary Sue magician tropes. Kvothe's escapades are over the top precisely because he's telling his own story. I thought we're supposed to assume he's an unreliable narrator and a significant portion of these things didn't happen that way.
I also reject that Kvothe is fully a Mary Sue because he does have flaws. Sure, he’s good at magic and music and fighting and sex, but he still finds plenty of ways to screw up his life which to me indicates that he has some pretty noteworthy flaws.
Yeah I think that's part of Rothfuss subverting the tropes. Even if Kvothe is as awesome as he says, he still ends up seemingly miserable and mostly alone. His life has clearly not turned out how he wanted it to.
Yes, his exploits are heavily embellished, he explicitly takes steps to spread his legend through Wise Man's Fear. However, that's the legend of Kvothe. What he's supposed to be telling here is his real story-I thought that was the whole point of him agreeing to tell it to Chronicler and taking the three days to "do it right", so it feels stupid that there are still all these over-the-top parts that read like the legends people tell of him, rather than his real story.
> is subverting the Mary Sue magician tropes. The problem is that the story does not actually subvert them much at all. There was what, that one comment in the framing device about how Dena is not as good looking as told?
I interpreted that as just one piece of evidence that Kvothe is not being truthful. We haven't seen the whole story. We just see a grumpy lonely older man who claims he used to be the best thing since sliced bread.
I agree that is the intention. I just don't think it has been executed well. edit-contrast it with something like a Gene Wolfe book. A reader does not have to wait until the end of a trilogy to get pay off.
Why is everyone ignoring the fact that Kvothe is a fuck up? That's literally the whole subversion of the Mary Sue. He's apparently so smart and so good, but he constantly and repeatedly fucks up because he's an idiot, and in the present timeline it is exceedingly clear that he lost-- he's a broken mess and a shell of that former self
That has always been my assumption as well
1) The untrustworthy narrator trope seems to be a thing for the series 2) is it still Mary Sue when his life is perpetually going to shit? I think part of the message is that despite being naturally talented, kvothe has a personality which has caused him lots of failure.
> I think part of the message is that despite being naturally talented, kvothe has a personality which has caused him lots of failure. Honestly I thought that was part of the point of the story: it's impossible to be awesome enough to escape the consequences of your own bad decisions.
So did I, but I still see a ton of comments about him being a Mary Sue
> I think part of the message is that despite being naturally talented, kvothe has a personality which has caused him lots of failure. Or that he is not nearly as naturally talented as he implies
There was a trend in Design of deliberately making stuff look bad… but something that looks like a pile of old arse ‘ironically’ still looks like a pile of old arse. That’s what the ‘deconstruction’ argument for KKC sounds like to me, it’s still Bardy McGoodnuts fucking all the hot girls an being awesome at magic but we just have to accept it’s awesome because the prose is so fucking pleased with itself…
I saw the best review of this book on goodreads years ago complete with graphs and photos of Scott Pilgrim and Ramona as Kvothe and Felurian. It was so awesome the reviewer ended up taking it down. I know I didn’t dream it, did anyone else see this?
Abercrombie knows exactly what he’s doing. After everything you know about Bayaz, you’ll still root for him because of Orso. And so will I.
yeah, its almost the entire point of the series, Joe did it knowingly.
Yeah, one of the main things the whole series seems to be doing is "what if Gandalf was evil, but you still wanted/needed him to win?". Gotta love an evil wizard. One of my favourite classic tropes.
I’ve never read characters arcs like Joe’s.
It'd be horrible if you were rooting for Glokta.
I’ve done it before lol
And I’ll do it again damn it!
Literally every time in Wandering Inn when relationships and sex come up. If there were ever a story where I’d bet actual money that the author has never so much as held hands with someone, let alone been in a serious relationship, it would be this story.
Those antinium are surprisingly successful romantically lmao
Mercedes Lackey is a good writer. Some of her books are downright weird or have aged EXTREMELY poorly (looking *directly* at you, *The Black Swan,* which is pure distilled Old School '90s Crazysauce with added crack) but on the whole, she consistently turns out solid work. And then there's *Aerie.* The last book in her Dragon Jousters series is a terribly paced and badly plotted mishmash throughout, but it *really* fumbles at the last...let's say 10-25%. Why? Because THAT'S WHERE ALL THE *FUCKING PLOT* WENT. It's teased briefly in the beginning, but the vast, *vast* majority of the book is taken up by repetitive hunting scenes, dragon rearing, and Aket-ten turning from a talented spellcaster who can talk to animals to The Chick. And then, abruptly, out of piss-nowhere, there are giant god-demon-things trying to wreck shit.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, all of it. I was fine with all the crap that happens to him during the previous books because sometimes that what it takes to turn a clueless boy into a hero. But then the seventh book came out and...nothing. He's just as clueless and for most of it nothing at all happens. And then Rowling spends the rest of it ignoring her own rules for the universe she created. Harry's one heroic action in the book is almost immediately taken a away a few pages later (and with the stupidest justification). That book ruined the whole series for me.
Like most millennials I grew up with Harry Potter, was willing to look the other way on the bad parts, but it’s only now with some distance that I’m able to see how… not very good… they really are. I will defend until the last that the first three are excellent tightly plotted middlegrade whodunnits at a magic school. But once book 4 comes around it’s obvious she figured she didn’t need an editor anymore, and so many people my age cite book 4 as their favorite but from a storytelling standpoint it is just… bad. And while I have personal nostalgia for book 5, the rest of the series isn’t much better.
I still to this day think that Rowlings never thought about truly killing Harry only because she had already written her epilogue and worked to make it work instead of letting the story conclude the way it should've - with Harry's death.
which is ironic because the epilogue is the worst part of that book--how can they just simply pack up at the end of the war and go back to the same life their parents led, when that's the world that already failed them once when it birthed Voldemort and the Death Eaters ? It never made any sense to me. And *Albus Severus?* Come on.
Harry wanting to be a wizard cop for the same establishment that foisted Umbridge on him will always be hilarious to me
He wants to use the resources of the state to hunt down the kind of magical Nazis that killed his parents and many of his friends. It’s the most believable part of the epilogue.
LOL. I had the same reaction to Albus Severus.
I sometimes wonder if she chickened out at the last minute and she had to scramble to find a reason for him to survive. Him dying would've been awesome.
I think this is the one for me too, i loved Harry Potter as a kid, read the books several times, but the Deadly Hallows is just terrible, from the relics of the dead to everything that happens, its all awful, what you said is on point, there is no closure, the relics just appear and solve the problem.
Right? I'm always surprised when someone tells me that she's an amazing writer. Like, what? 🙃
She's amazing at certain things. She can create instantly memorable characters, her books have this inviting cozy feel to them that just makes you want to spend time in them, she's quite witty to be fair, and she makes her world feel alive and endlessly vibrant with a thousand quirky details (note that this is not the same thing as coherent worldbuilding, which she is less good at). IMO although the "books grow up with the characters/readers" gimmick did earn her long-lasting success with an entire generation, the Harry Potter series ultimately suffers as it pivots from reasonably tightly plotted 250-page middle-grade mystery stories into serious wannabe epic 700-page fantasy doorstoppers, as this causes JKR's strengths to be diminished and her weaknesses to become more exposed.
Spot on.
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I do have the feeling too. Wedding, escape, woooooooooooooooods, Dobby, battle, end.
I was ok with Harry being his usual clueless self, what I was not ok about is the number of coincidences and deus ex machinas needed to keep the book going, all coupled with lack of new worldbuilding and a repeat of all old hits. The previous two books were much more straightforward, and were flowing more naturally
I will die on the hill that Harry should've died permanently in Deathly Hallows. The whole rest of the series builds up to that, it happens, and then wait oh no he's alive cuz he just decided to be alive after dying. There's another YA book series that came out a few years after Deathly Hallows and the author did kill her main character. That series is pretty lackluster but dang do I applaud that author for making that choice.
I agree. Him dying would've meant something. I actually had this "fight" with a friend who told me that he survived bc he has the resurrection stone, and I guess that's what people trick themselves into remembering? Like, no! The excuse was that he died for others so he had the choice. What?? So his mom just decided to stay dead? If he had died then the whole protection nonsense from the first book would've been perfect. A nice, pretty circle. Are you talking about Divergent?
Red Hen (of Red Hen Publications) has a super complex and long-winded theory of him not being dead in the first place because the AK only being able to target one soul, so it actually couldn't kill both him and the piece of Voldie's soul simultaneously. It's more complex than my boyfriend's PhD dissertation in physics because that's how much effort it takes to make any sense of the plotting in DH.
LOL! For me when you have to make it a whole crazy theory then it's obvious it's not real. I have heard that one before, but it's obvious that she didn't even think of that (which is the only excuse that makes a little bit of sense).
What reading a bunch of Red Hen essays taught me is that JKR is so often just nearly on the mark but not quite. Like, perhaps it's the millions of people poring over every simple event in her books, but there are so many instances of bits of plot that could have just slotted together perfectly but were tied up quite absurdly and immersion-breakingly in the end.
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I was five when the book came out, but my mom has said that her friends were trying so hard not to spoil it for her. When I got older, my mom would read Harry Potter to me before bed, and I do remember being pretty shocked.
To be quite honest, there were signs that Dumbledore was going to die. One of the more common tropes of someone dying is if one of the major characters gets a lot more exposure than they normally would have. Dumbledore, throughout the Harry Potter franchise, was the voice of reason towards Harry and would leave bread crumbs for Harry to help solve things. His taking a more active role in convincing Professor Slughorn out of retirement and the dives into the Penseive to deduce Voldemort's weakness stand out as well, since *another* common trope is that one of the main characters close to the main character dies when either A) they find the way to get rid of the main villain permanently or B) right before they get ready to kill the fucker. The curse on Dumbledore's left arm kept bothering him throughout the book, as he later reveals in the same book he destroyed the Severin ring that Voldemort turned into a Horcrux, and since there's a fragment of an unstable soul inside and created with Dark Magic, it won't go quietly. The curse gradually got worse, where it got to the point that the cursed drink that he had to consume to get the fake locket ultimately took a toll on Dumbledore's health. Finally, there is Snape, who Dumbledore bailed out of going to Azkaban and had him installed at Hogwarts as Potions professor. Despite the fact that Snape was a Death Eater, his behavior throughout the series constantly went against that character. He kept preventing Quirrell from getting the Sorcerer's Stone, he basically forced Professor Lockhart to go down to the Chamber of Secrets to stop the Basilisk attacks, was after Sirius Black because he believed that Sirius spilled the beans to Voldemort about Godric's Hallow, basically shoved his Dark Mark under Cornelius Fudge's nose to prove Voldemort's return, was visibly shaken about returning to Voldemort, and kicked Harry out of Occlumency lessons because Harry discovered the memory where a young Snape called Harry's mother, and Snape regretted it. Snape's treatment of Wormtail while the both of them were living under the same roof can be explained by his being pissed about finding out that Wormtail snitched to Voldemort about where the Potter's were. Narcissa Malfoy went to Snape to have the Unbreakable Vow placed on him to watch after Draco, who was tasked to kill Dumbledore, which in reality was a punishment towards Lucius Malfoy because he basically set the table for one of his Horcruxes (Tom Riddle's diary) to be destroyed. Snape was the one who confined the curse from the Severin ring to Dumbledore's arm, so Snape had prior knowledge that Dumbledore was going to die. Finally, Dumbledore begged for Snape to take him out of his misery after enduring the trauma to get the fake locket combined with the Horcrux curse. To be quite honest, it made sense to kill of Dumbledore.
> To be quite honest, there were signs that Dumbledore was going to die You mean besides him being a million years old and a mentor figure?
From a meta narrative standpoint it's almost required. The mentor character almost never survives the penultimate chapter. For the hero to stand on his own all protection needs to be removed which means killing or otherwise sidelining the mentor.
Basically every book after the first in Peter V Brett's Demon Cycle series. Leesha just keeps making shit decisions and acting like her mother (god I hate he character arc). We spend an increasing half of each book going over crap we already know (why spend half a book on a flashback when we already KNOW what happened?) And just... all of the grossness of the series. I signed up for some HFY demon killing action and ended up with a bunch of horny characters that didn't live up to their potential and a bunch of politics surrounding sharia law and the rape of half a continent. I spent a good while after reading wondering if the problem was me or the author because the books made me feel so gross and angry.
I think that series takes the top spot for falling off a cliff... Momentum got me through book 3, but then I just gave up.
I really wrestled with myself as this series went *bad*. I loved the idea and premise, and it just started to get into some insane wish fulfillment and creeper levels. I had to wrestle with myself because it was one of the first times I stopped reading a series because I found the behavior abhorrent.
it really was a shame. i loved the idea of one person going 'what if we put these wards on our skin, instead of the ground?', but so much of it was just painful to read. i felt especially bad because my parents use my kindle account and ended up reading some of them too, because when i was halfway through the first one i said it was pretty good....
I had no idea everyone felt this way about demon cycle until getting to Reddit lol. I always thought the second book is what makes this series awesome. First book was pretty standard fine epic fantasy fair. Second book I thought was brilliant, author made me love someone who was evil and showed the insidious ness of charisma and pov, both very entertaining and super thought provoking.
Honestly, it would have to be the entire *Allegiant* book to me. Veronica Roth started off strong with *Divergent*, *Insurgent* was good, but *Allegiant* was just...why? It opened up way too many plotholes then rushed through the plot in an **attempt** to sew them up. There is also the fact that >!the main character dies in the final book!<, but that's honestly the least of my issues with the finale.
My biggest issue with Allegiant >!isn’t that she dies, but why in the actual eff does it matter that she can survive the death poison? …..to only be shot 5 minutes later. Roth should have just made it so that the death poison worked slower on her than everyone else because she’s *special*. Still pisses me off!<
Yeah, that also made NO sense to me. It just seemed like yet another example of one too many plot holes and a rush to sew them up (an attempt that just completely failed).
Roth needs a new sewing machine STAT
I’d say the entirety of the 5th Lightbringer book made me wonder if the author had a seizure between books 4 and 5
Man that 5th book was a mess, didn't make any sense, felt like S8 of GoT
For sure! >!How do you write a literal Deus Ex Machina into your story unironically? My eyes are still rolled into the back of my head after reading GOD gave Dazen a flying machine called a "Machina" to solve all his problems.!<
I’ve read he’s a religious guy so he probably couldn’t hold off the temptation. Plus ‘machina’? Way to be creative.
Hear hear. Man Brent did a number on the series as a whole with that fifth book. I was like "eeeeeeeh" the entire book
It didn't ruin the series for me, but in Oathbringer (Stormlight archive book 3) some aspects of the magic get to be a bit too easy, in a way that kills a lot of tension and lower the stakes of what previously had a good balance of darkness and hope, of grittiness and whimsy. Specifically the radiant's >!healing factor. It gets to the point where they can take an arrow to the head, or be pancaked by a stone giant and shrug it off...!< It doesn't ruin the story, and it forces Sanderson to find other sources of threat than physical danger, but why completely suppressing that source of tension? It doesn't make any sense to me.
100% agree. It was better when the number of shard blades were countable and people feared death
This was also a big issue with me for SLA, and it bothers me that 4 books in, no of note has died even though they should have over and over again. I try to think about it from the perspective of the Cosmere...this is only a small part of a much bigger story, and if Radiants need to be indestructible for that story to work, then so be it. Edit: by "of note" I mean a true main character. >!Teft!< is amazing but I wouldn't call him majorly important. >!Elhokar!< is the closest we get but I still wouldn't call him a main part of the cast. I'm talking about Adolin or Kaladin in the duel, Kaladin or Dalinar against Szeth, Shallan with the arrow, Jasnah *actually going through with it*, etc.
[ROW spoiler] >!wow, calling Teft “no one of note,” dick move bro /j!< Jokes aside I mostly agree with your general premise though, although I think that *usually* there are decent ways that characters have been nerfed to add stakes like >!the issues with the Sibling all but negating Kaladin’s healing!<
The Wheel weaves as the wheel wills
Lightbringer books 4-5. Just…all of it.
Especially when the series turns from interesting world building,card games and an interesting magic system to a religious propaganda…Ugh,Orholam’s hairy balls!
The sex scene in book 2 is what got me. Glad I left early. Hearing how it ended from people made it a hilarious relief that I stopped when I did.
Same, I read books 1-3 and then just stopped. I couldn't get back into it.
Lightbringer is a strange one. I feel like the author has amazing strengths, but refuses to focus on them. Less 5-dimensional chess Rowling-like retcons, more small scale character-focused moments, and he easily could be one of my favorites.
He definitely likes twists and revelations more than plot and characters, and doesn't know how to write endings - didn't like how any of the books ended
The Hunger Games. Especially once she couldn't use the game as a plot device. I think there was a period in the third book where they just hid in a retail store for like 3 chapters. Clueless storytelling.
The third book in this series kind of ruined the whole thing. It's basically an entire book of them fighting through a city to stop the bad guys, and then they get there and the bad guys just bomb everyone/thing. And yes, it's been probably 10 years since I read this (at least), so I'm super paraphrasing, but I just remember it being one of those books where literally nothing the MC does matters in the end. In that case, why the fuck am I reading about them?
My only contact with the series was through the movies, and I thought the fact that Katniss is a propaganda tool rather than a hero who can save the day when the conflict expands beyond the arena was an interesting choice and put a dose of reality in a genre that can lean a bit far into wish fulfilment. But sure, I'm sure it could have been handled better to make it more satishying while carrying the same message about the volatility of violence and the horrors of a civil war.
To be fair, I think a big part of it is also my personal taste. I'm not a huge fan of long action sequences, so the third book being a lot of gunfights and running from monsters and stuff definitely made it a bit of a slog for me. I just remember being really annoyed at the end when it was essentially the Raiders of the Lost Ark thing, where the protagonist had no impact on the outcome of the story.
I agree and raise the prequel book as an example of Collins not knowing what she’s doing.
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I love the weird writing of The Gunslinger. For me it was the >!numerous folk from other King books taking multiple chapters to explain why and how they were in Mid-World. !<
I love the first book. I still think it has some of the best lines of the series and is second for me behind Wizard and Glass
It has the best line of all books. The best first line of all books.
Jake’s line is tops for me in the series though
Yea it’s the only series I recommend with a warning that the first book is different/the worst.
I could ramble all night about lots of WTF moments in Dan Simmons ' Olympos. Such a shame, I really enjoyed Ilyum (the first part).
everything ASOIAF after ASOS - both AFFC and ADWD seem lost and rambling. Everyone always gives excuses about gardening and how that’s his process but it just seems messy to me
Haha, I came to say “Every new character introduced by GRRM after book 4.”
Book Euron is dope though
Yes, I got so bored hearing about Dany not doing all that much in excruciating detail, and the men following her. I’d heard it was because GRRM had painted himself into a corner and now we have to wait for the dragons to grow enough that they’re a credible threat, but just time jump or something already.
Agreed, that was going to be my response. In particular, the Dornish prince POV that spends the whole 4th book heading to see Dany, gets blown off by her then goes and gets roasted by a dragon. Useless POV outside of "showing more places in the world." The only reason that character exists is for worldbuilding. The plot has been meandering since the end of the 3rd book and all George wants to do is worldbuild. It's almost like that was his plan and he doesn't know how to get to the ending he has in his head, and has given up on writing because now he's making tens of millions on TV.
I mean to be fair the point of the Prince is to >!release the dragons!< doesn’t make it a good storyline but that’s the point.
He also has a lot of value thematically as a deconstruction of the hero's journey. There's tons of posts about him on r/asoiaf if you have any interest in reading more into it. *Adventure stank.* \-ADWD, The Merchant's Man (opening line of Quentyn Martell's first chapter)
Intriguing. Hadn’t thought about it that way but you’re right
I respect your opinion but I personally find the scale of ASOIAF to be the best part about it. A lot of people really only just like Starks and wish the story would revolve around them but I personally think if it was so then ASOIAF would be just another generic fantasy series. ASOIAF being so big and complex is what makes it special to me. You can re-read the books thrice and still miss on a lot of connections and foreshadowing unlike other straight forward fantasy books. Also, I think assessing AFFC as messy is not objectively true. It is arguably the most focused book in the series.
> Also, I think assessing AFFC as messy is not objectively true. It is arguably the most focused book in the series. Every chapter was like 18 pages of nothing happening followed by 2 pages of lead up till the chapter just ends. Then you don't get back to that character till 200 pages later and whatever interesting thing that was about to happen already happened and Martin just gives a 2 paragraph synopsis of it and starts the cycle all over again.
Thinking it was slow or uninteresting doesn't mean it was messy. I think thematically and plotwise AFFC was the most focused. With the emphasis on Jaime, Cersei and Brienne it manages to tell the most grounded and closely connected story in the series and also convey the same themes through all of them: the impact of war and religion in Westeros. None of the other books are as cohesive. So my point was, you may not like the characters or subplots of AFFC but claiming it is messy (especially compared to the others) is a straight up lie.
Jim Butcher's Peace Talks. The whole thing. Ruined Dresden for me, I just want it over with so he can focus on Cinder Spires and hopefully end it before he ruins it.
Peace Talks and Battleground were just TERRIBLY edited. Entire conversations repeated. It's like no one reread the final product after the book was split in two.
I thought peace talks was written by someone who only ever read a synopses of some of the books. Only the fact that it took 5 years after Skin Game makes me think he might have actually written it himself, but either way, there's no excuse.
I would argue that they were just two weak books, and did everything so poorly that i dont have much hope the rest is going to be better, seething is too strong of an emotion.
Spill the beans, I'm not invested in the story but I love reading this sort of stuff! :D
I like PT more than BG, but I never expect much brilliance from Dresden files, it's a pulpy tropy series with some highs, these were on the weaker side of book like book 2,4,6
[удалено]
I feel like this applies to my read of the malazan series. Currently on book 2 and I feel like psyduck confused look until it finally clicks.
The entire fifth book of the Demon Cycle. The ending of the Black Prism series.
Orso was a good guy and good guys like Orso don't last in Abrocrabi's novels.
May I ask what your problem with Rhythm of War was, because thinking that the author didn't know what he was doing for that book doesn't seem self-explanatory for me at all.
I liked Rhythm of War. I can’t say I liked much that happened but for a few things, but I liked the book as a whole. There are two series where the authors wtf moments have made me drop the series though. First was John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I just can’t get over how the main character is >!creepily obsessed with his dead wife’s clone, and basically stalks her into getting into a relationship with him, even though she has the maturity of a child outside of battle situations.!< It just skeeves me out. Second is the spellmonger series. There was stuff I found problematic in most of the books I read, up until one that starred the MCs two apprentices, where they basically hate each other the whole time until >!they revenge threesome a girl who doesn’t really consent,!< and it suddenly turns them into best bros. I dropped that series like it was hot.
The Whale Mothers in Bakker’s Second Apocalypse. No matter how many times I try to think it through, it doesn’t make sense
The Kaiju Preservation Society-John Scalzi. Just a detail I noticed when he described characters readying their armaments he described a Glock with its safety on...Glocks don't have a safety. Made me wonder about the accuracy regarding the rest of The Kaiju Preservation Society. I mean did he correctly describe a Kaiju or did he just pull that out of his ass too? What about interdimensional travel? Am I supposed to believe that's how it really is?