MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits

I enjoyed the Dune series up to book 4. Book 5 got weird because Herbert took it in a different direction. But 1,2 and 3 were part of his vision for the series and 4 was a wrap-up of that initial vision. Just because his vision differed from our fanboy fantasy of how the books should have gone doesn’t automatically mean they suck. The Bene Gesserit were correct with their estimate; the Kwisatz Haderach *was* a generation after Paul – it was his son. Just because Paul Atreides was egotisticly confident doesn’t mean he is right. And when the book was published, incest amongst royalty was widely accepted as tolerable, so that shouldn’t be penalized against him. If Frank Herbert could predict trends in human culture he wouldn’t have needed novels to make his fame.

Reply

OH MY GOD! SO TRUE!

At least, from the set I’ve read. Especially Eddings. I mean, Jesus Christ, at certain points even the god damn characters are pointing out how repetitive all this shit is. And could that book have been any more Deus Ex Machinae? I want the four months of reading time I invested in that series back, and with interest (pun!)

Reply

Terry Goodkind, The Star Wars plot but with more sadism.

Reply

I know I read that Xanth book, but could someone refresh my memory? What was child porny about it? I liked Xanth for while, until he decided the whole series would be about how many bad puns he could fit into a page, but I think I stopped after the one where a mermaid spent the entire book walking around in a bra and underwear.

Reply

The Xanth novels were typically fairly clean for Anthony’s work, which is to say that creepy undertones still slipped in. Firefly is the famous child-porny one which I never read. Oh, and Bio of a Space Tyrant I suppose. Plenty of the others are gang-rapetastic. Formulaic writing and flat characters round out an otherwise unimpressive resume.

It’s like in junior high you get Pern or you get Anthony as an embarrassing reading choice for the future. One can guess which I got.

Reply

Maybe it’s because it’s almost 2am where I am, but I stared at the “Land of Bad Names” one for the longest time wondering if you forgot to Photoshop it.

Reply

Even though I treasure some memories of Pern from the Harper Hall Trilogy, I will gladly admit to her main series’ true nature and release them willingly into the Fairy Bubble Butterfly Lands of the Mary Sue.

Strangely enough I was also obsessed back in Junior High with the stack of cheapo paperbacks of Xanth, maybe because of the pull of the puns. Not because they were ever, ever, EVER funny but…there is something simply mesmerizing in the sheer, unrelenting BULK of them. I mean, wow. And now I guess that undercurrent of bizarreness I always felt in them was justified.

O BUT I WILL DEFEND PHILLIP PULLMAN UNTIL MY HEART IS RIPPED FROM MY CHEST AND THROWN TO THE SNOW BENEATH THE LIGHT OF THE AURORA BOREALIS.

Reply

*cackles*

Bwah-ha-ha-ha.

Reply

There is no one who has even played D+D ever in their lives that hasn’t at least thought of doing the Feist book.

Reply

Oh god, David Eddings and Anne McCaffrey. So much terrible fantasy, so much time spent reading it. Gah. David Eddings wrote the same fucking five book series three times. (Wacky Group with the blue McGuffin of Power saves the world in an incredibly telegraphed ending!)

Lo, but I do like Phillip Pullman, even if the rest of his books are crap on a crap cracker.

Reply

I thought the Terry Brooks one said “Land of Band Names” at first, which was kind of hilarious on its own despite the fact that I’ve never read any of his stuff.

I do have to puff up my chest a bit over the Pullman joke, because that’s more about a common perception of the books than what the books are actually, you know, about.

Reply

Hahahahaha when I reread Goodkind’s stuff removed from my highschool years, I realized how fucking preachy he is. “OH HEY COMMUNISM SUCKS GUYS”. “OH HEY, BELIEVE IN MAGIC INSTEAD OF GOD, DUDE. THESE GOD FOLLOWERS RAPE PEOPLE N SHIT”. Greaaaat.

Reply

What, no Mercedes Lackey?

Reply

I think Dune should be read up to Children. God Emperor isn’t bad, but you’re better off just finding some of Herbert’s essays. I literally feel asleep five pages into Heretics.

David Eddings is good, but yeah, repetitive. Of course, I just ignore all of his other series and collected the supplimental materials for the Belgariad. (Or however you spell it.) The Riven Codex actually wouldn’t make for a bad D&D campaign sourcebook.

I stopped reading Wheel of Time when I realized Perrin and Mat were the only two characters in the entire series with a shred of common sense and decency and existed to be routinely mistreated by everyone else.

Piers Anthony…. I read the first Xanth novel and that was it. He had a female character who transformed into a brainless sexpot at the height of her period. That was enough.

Reply

“– I stopped reading Wheel of Time when I realized Perrin and Mat were the only two characters in the entire series with a shred of common sense and decency and existed to be routinely mistreated by everyone else. –”

Yeah. Mistreated. IN THE PANTS!
After making it through book 10 of the WoT, I really do have to ask what Robert Jordan porn would read like.

Reply

The Golden Compass was actually pretty good. I read it, then someone told me the series was banned by a lot of churches for its anti-religious message, and I was very confused. There was a little bit of that in the first book, but nothing to really get up in arms about. Then I read the rest of the series. Whoa boy, they weren’t kidding. The last book in the trilogy is basically his way of saying, “Hey Catholics… FUCK YOU AND YOUR GAY, RETARD GOD.” If the first book didn’t end on such a cliffhanger, that would be another one where I’d say you should just stop after the first one.

Reply

“After making it through book 10 of the WoT, I really do have to ask what Robert Jordan porn would read like.”

The main character would surrounded by a circle of cold, aloof women, all of them naked and glowering at him disapprovingly.

Then, in synch with some horrible soundless symphony, they would all begin pulling their braids.

It would be some kind of horrible braid bukkake.

Reply

You spelled “rapist” as “hero.” How did that happen?

Reply

[…] MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits (tags: humor writing books) […]

Piers Anthony let me articulate what I always found creepy about love potion plots. So, yeah.

Reply

karellan said:

The last book in the [His Dark Materials] trilogy is basically his way of saying, “Hey Catholics… FUCK YOU AND YOUR GAY, RETARD GOD.”

Wow.  You have to have one heck of a persecution complex to read that sentiment into The Amber Spyglass.  I mean, it’s a great sentiment, but it’s not actually present in the trilogy that Pullman wrote.

Reply

Very much an epic win, here. It’s one of those things where even the books I’d read and enjoyed as a teen, I had to look at the photoshopped versions and say, “Yeah, it’s a fair cop.” The satire works because it’s so knowing, I think. You can tell MGK read all this stuff…and probably, deep in his shameful heart, he’d have to admit that he enjoyed it at the time. 🙂

Reply

My college gaming group all read the Covenant series at the same time. We were all relieved to find that we had the same reaction: we had all violently thrown our books at the walls in deep frustrated furies; pissed that we couldn’t reach into the book and bitch-slap the “hero” into Getting A Clue.

Reply

It just kept getting better and better. Could not stop laughing.

“Asshole Leper Hero”? COMEDY GOLD.

Reply

Hilariously, I read (everything ever written by) Feist and somewhere in the midst of it, I thought, “hey, this is like a really lame-o video game”. And then I read the back of the book.
And it was the NOVELISATION OF THE CRAPTACULAR VIDEO GAME.
Craptacular book redux:
Oh! Go kill Vampires!
“Uh, ok. The ones over there?”
Yes! Go!
“Oh no. We can’t get in without the random item!”
Oh, I had that all along, I was just waiting for you to ask about it.
“Die Vampire! Die!!”
Die Vampire! Die!! Hey, let’s make out.

Reply

I just finished The Sword of Truth series since I started it in high school, and holy shit you’re not kidding. The ending basically has the liberty and life loving hero, Richard, banishing the evil “collectivist” empire to another world, where their souls do not pass to an afterlife, magic will die, and all the stupid collectivists start building churches. Essentially, our world. I find it interesting that there’s a world with an afterlife and then you’re essentially killing the immortal soul of those who disagree with you, but you’re the good guy. Damn. All the Sword of Truth books went to the used bookstore.

Reply

As much as I always have been and still remain a big fan of David Eddings … yeah, that’s pretty decidedly true. I could talk about the real draw for me was in his characterization, and his ability to tell the story, rather than any uniqueness of the overall story itself, or how the turning the whole Campbellian omnimyth structure into itself being a plot point was pretty neat, but … yeah. Still absolutely true.

Reply

Great stuff!

What about Dennis L. McKiernan’s epic trilogy “LOTR Lite”?

Reply

Ah, hey, awesome!

I was mad for both Piers Anthony and Anne McCaffrey some years back, but as I got older all kinds of things just looked incredibly creepy and terrible about both of them. And they’re both just so quietly misogynistic – Anthony’s women are practically always hot and often-naked and hooked up with older men who are unattractive, McCaffrey’s women are all inferior to her men.

Reply

Terry Brooks needed a bigger burn! Christopher Paolini needs one, too. Hmm, must think of something.

Reply

I was actually glad(in a way) when I realized Robert Jordan was dead. I thought, “atleast he can’t write anymore of the tired super-she-bitch-character.”
Every one of his characters are retards. Rand, Mat and Perrin share way too much resemblance(which may actually be realistic considering the tiny village they grew up in) with Mat being the most different one-yet still very aggravating.
His repetition of the braid pulling act and *folds arms under breasts*(repeated CONSTANTLY) really, REALLY annoyed me.
I cannot aptly explain how aggravating it was.
Yet I’ve been reading the books anyway, and I’ve enjoyed them somewhat. I may say mean things but I am not the type to give up or totally hate whatever it is I read.
Terry Brooks did piss me off to the point that I quit reading his Magic Kingdom series.
I used to read Feist, and I admit he bores me most the time, but Betrayal Of Krondor, the video game will stand out to me as a special figment of my past.
I’m currently reading a Barbara Hambly novel, “The Witches Of Wenshar” which is a bit of a mixed-bag of good and bad. Oh and to remark on the Piers Anthony book, well- its true, child porn is acceptable in different cultures. Sexuality itself changes between cultures. What is damaging for one culture may not be for the other. With that said, I remember being pissed off when Kitiara had sex at 14 or maybe younger, in one of the DnD books.

Reply

In fairness, Feist was going through a divorce when he wrote the game novelizations and – he freely admitted – phoning it in. And while “Betrayal at Krondor” was a classic among computer RPGs, the only thing “Return To Krondor” had going for it was Jimmy the Hand being voiced as Spider-Man with a British accent by the guy who played him in the 90s animated series.

Speaking of which – from one who got into Feist long before he got into D&D – anyone who tells you that they play a rogue without thinking about what Jimmy The Hand/Squire James of Krondor/Duke James would do in a tough spot has either never read Feist or is lying.

And no one can deny that Jimmy got the greatest heroic death of all time – destroying half an army AND his home town while not feeling any of it as his hot telepathic wife overwhelmed his pleasure centers with memories of every happy moment they had together. 🙂

Reply

i’m so glad that i read these books before i was a teenager. it meant that i could enjoy them without seeing how bad some parts where. well, that is except for terry goodkind and terry brooks. they both have the honour of being the only authors whose works i was unable to finish. i managed to slog my way through the amtrak wars by patrick tilley and hubbard’s mission earth (both of whom rival jordan for lengthy sagas that don’t go anywhere), but i just couldn’t carry on with the work of the two terrys. hmm, how pythonesque

Reply

[…] http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2008/10/20/mgk-versus-his-adolescent-reading-habits […]

You can sub out any Mercedes Lackey cover for the Anne McCaffrey one, except of course it’d be “Mary Sue Gets a Horsie”.

I am another who’s gratified to know that other people find Piers Anthony intolerable and creepy.

Reply

In fairness, Feist was going through a divorce when he wrote the game novelizations and – he freely admitted – phoning it in.

Uh, I think you’re missing the point. Remember in the first book (by which I mean Magician, when one of the guys picks “Warrior” as his character class while his buddy picks “Wizard”?

Reply

[…] Click the pic for more over at Mighty God King. […]

“Hilariously, I read (everything ever written by) Feist and somewhere in the midst of it, I thought, “hey, this is like a really lame-o video game”. And then I read the back of the book.
And it was the NOVELISATION OF THE CRAPTACULAR VIDEO GAME.”

DUDE. I totally did that with a Holly Lisle novel. *facepalms* Do you have room in that Clubhouse Of Geekitude for another person?

Reply

Heh.. God isn’t real… well he DOES show up in the 2nd book…only to be killed off! *rotflmao* I love the His Dark Materials trillogy!

Reply

Oh, geez. It’s funny ’cause it’s true!

I’m mostly familiar with George R. R. Martin from his SFcybergothhorror stuff like the shorts in Sandkings, which I liked, and which kept me away from his fantasy. Kind of like David Drake’s SF is good but doesn’t make me want to read his Wizards And Dragons Demonstrate The Dehumanizing Barbarity Of War stuff.

Reply

Dead on.

Feist’s campaign was really awesome though. Up to the point where one of the characters says, after getting slightly wounded in a swordfight, “Now, I’m REALLY angry!”. This is a line that even the best charisma roll will have a hard time selling 🙂

Reply

[…] this is what happened. When Boingboing linked to that first post of Photoshopped sci-fi novels, I got a major traffic spike. Such a major traffic spike, frankly, that it overloaded my former […]

I don’t remember laughing as much as on the “Mary Sue Gets a Dragon” cover. So spot on, and it was a pretty good book in spite of this.

I also liked the fourth Dune book. Sadly I haven’t read most of the other parodies books, I’ve been more into scifi than fantasy back in those days.

Reply

[…] one here. Part two here. This was originally supposed to be a three-day block of posts, but, well, we all […]

[…] More fun: Photoshopped fantasy […]

[…] MightyGodKing Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits (part 1) […]

“Conan the Libertarian” more than makes up for your undeserved maligning of Martin and Herbert. The ending to that series was so disappointing, too.

Reply

And ‘braid bukkake’ is my new favourite phrase.

Reply

Wow. Simply wow. How someone could show thier ignorance so blatantly is beyond me. Most of these books were on the #1 New York Times Best Seller List, if not all. All of your criticism shows a lack of imagination, and an inability to immerse ones self into fantasy. Don’t play any video games, your brain may melt. Jordan’s work is about to become another series of movies like Tolkien’s, and will make much much more money. But everyone is entitled to thier opinion, regardless of how rediculous it makes them seem.

Don’t procreate. We don’t need to make humanity any dumber.

Reply

Meiliken – You have absolutely no sense of humor. I absolutely adore Eddings, but I have no illusions that everything he’s written to date (excepting The Losers, which is not fantasy at all) is anything other than complete and utter brain candy, and it’s the same for Pern.

For the love of all the gods that may or may not exist, you couldn’t PAY me to read one more Jordan book, let alone watch a movie based on something that’s not only repetitious, but isn’t even close to witty or entertaining. Those were just awful. And by “awful” I mean “almost as bad as Anne Rice” based on sheer writing style alone.

Get a grip, get a life, and for frack’s sake get a sense of humor.

Reply

I’ve read quite a few of these books and enjoyed most of them, but these covers are hilarious!

And don’t take them seriously, really. The covers don’t do any harm, and frankly, I’m going to read more of the authors just because I want to see if the books are really that bad.

Reply

My ASOIF alternate title would be:

“Don’t get attached to anyone!”

Reply

[…] Obama President? Chipmunk Books […]

“Most of these books were on the #1 New York Times Best Seller List, if not all.”

That says nothing about the quality of the work, just the number of people suckered by it (see “Twilight” and the various “bestsellers” by L.Ron). Making such weak arguments only sets you up for ridicule, that’s Internets 101. If you are this touchy, for pete’s sake don’t go see the Jordan film(s) you boast of as something in those inevitable changes made in translating a book to cinema is going to really piss you off.

This is a great “collection” posted here, even if I still read the books (am reading “Mary Sue Gets a Dragon” now, coincidentally). Even tho I have the same nitpicky grouse about Pullman, I still get and appreciate the joke.

Reply

[…] omgjorda omslag till fantasy- och sf-böcker, som jag har suttit och fnissat åt en stund: del 1, del 2, del 3. […]

where are Weis and Hickman?
“You roll the dice and I’ll make sure the mage always wins.”

Reply

I started on page 3, and I have to say this is the BEST! Eddings is some of my favorite brain fluff, Garion and Sparhawk both. Elder/Younger gods is hideous (too similar), and there was some other book that was SO Flute in Another Universe it was horrible.

The only McCaffrey I liked were the books where they found the spaceport, and even then I had issues with it.

Anthony: yeah, definitely creepy.

Can’t stand Terry Brooks. “Don’t shame his death!” grrrr.

Love Goodkind, but he does get preachy.

Jordan: ROFL!!! There are so many characters who appear *once*, or maybe one time in book 3 and then once in book 5, with the assumption that you remember exactly who this is and why the creepy violin music is playing… and braid pulling, sniffing, smoothing skirts, and crossing arms beneath breasts… GAAAAHHH!!!

I love all of these, thank you!

Reply

[…] Covers For anyone who reads Fantasy, the link below should be fairly amusing. Mightygodking.com Post Topic MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits __________________ Originally Posted by Blind […]

As much as I can take a joke on a favorite author, I have to say… I have read the george rr martin series, the wheel of time series, a couple xanth books, and the phillip pullman series, and to be quite honest I didn’t get any of the jokes. Knights who say fuck? Is there swearing in a song of ice and fire? I mean, maybe there is, but if I can’t remember having read the books less than a year ago, I’d say it wasn’t so awful as to be striking. Characters show up? Seems logical for a book, no? (I agree the series DOES drag on after the 5th book, and if I wasn’t one of those people who love dragging on because it means more time with the characters, I’d hate it. mock away! but, not in a non-funyn way o.O) I did catch a good bit of “macho” stuff in xanth (women exist for nothing but feeding and cooking! or such) but no child porn whatsoever. And the phillip pullman books are anti-religious? Seriously? I swear they were my favorite books ever for a while an I never caught it. And I reread the first and second not long ago, so yeah o.O Is it all in the third?

Like I said. Make jokes about good authors that are well founded, why not. But these were completely nonsensical. Maybe the books I didn’t read had funnier, more related titles.

Reply

Ha! I’ve read and enjoyed most of these books and their sequels. But God, aren’t these spot on?

I can’t think of a better spoof title than “The Black Bleak Company,” but it deserves one. Being one of my favorite series, you’d think I could help there.

Larry Niven: Geeks in Space

Once, long ago, I tried reading a Xanth novel, and with every page I got a stronger and stronger sense of deja vu until it developed into a raging sense of doom. It went away when I put the novel down. I don’t know if it means anything, but I never picked another one up, as much as people recommended them.

Reply

I loved Piers Anthony’s Tarot-series. I didn’t really read much from him after that.

Anne McCaffrey’s Mary-Sue was the only one I ever liked. She was never really likable, she only got the “best” man. And, I always loved McCaffrey
‘s dragons.

Frank Herbert is okay, but a little bit cryptic.

What about Robert A. Heinlein? He liked his “old men” to (how do I say this “american correct”?) do their young daughters. Read about his “Howard-Family” an Lazarus Long. I read it all, but I never really liked it.

Fenlika

Reply

[…] Mightygodking.com: MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits […]

The joke about people ranting on about David Eddings and his repetitive plots is that he intended to write them that way. The whole point of the Malloreon being like the Belgariad all over again *was* that the universe was stuck in a cycle which had to be broken. Don’t you just love people who like to bash stories they haven’t actually bothered to read? The icing on the cake is when they say: “I haven’t read these books, and I don’t ever want to, but I will make nasty comments about them regardless.”

Reply

Dear SHAWN,
You are incorrect but you wouldn’t know until you read all 34 books.

Reply

[…] Mightygodking, a truly rewarding set of funny, fake book covers to satisfy anyone who has at least a passing […]

[…] I posted about truthful book covers discovered from mightygodking.  Now, (via Smart Bitches through a post that only seems to exist in my RSS feed), Holy Taco […]

Umm, for those with web filtering at work, I suspect naming one of the images “childporn.jpg” could lead to some interesting visits from HR.

Reply

I laughed. So many of these are so very true. Things of note:

George R.R. Martin: Yes, many of the characters are foul-mouthed, but the world he’s writing about isn’t your typical fantasy setting. It’s still by far the best writing I’ve seen in the genre; I get the impression you’re only mocking it because it’s popular.

David Eddings: I regretfully have to admit I’ve read most of his stuff. And I have to agree. If you want the full David Eddings experience in one easy novel, read The Redemption of Athalus. It’s like he put the whole 5-book series, cutting out several books worth of unimportant dialogue and exposition.

Robert Jordan & Terry Goodkind: I’ve read the first book of both series. Jordan, I stopped reading because I just hated the writing styles, the characters, and the plot. Goodkind’s first book I enjoyed, so I stopped reading so I could continue enjoying it.

Reply

Brilliant! This reflects many of my own attitudes, although I have enjoyed many hours of reading these books just to “hear” a tale well told.

Reply

[…] SciFi and Fantasy book covers via Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. Check out the three posts (post 1, post 2, and post 3) to see the complete collection. Here are a couple of my […]

But where, oh where, is Marion Zimmer Bradley in this mess? Surely you can’t leave her out? Or is it, The Wimmen of Camelot are 200 Times Better Than Any Knight or King and So Am I”.

Reply

You really stick it to what Auntie Ursula calls Ye Olde Baloney Factory. Got to hand it to you especially on Twilight and Dune.

Speaking of not knowing to quit when she was ahead, I read the first two Pern novellas, Weyr Search and Dragonflight, when they ran in Analog magazine in ’66 and ’67 and I still think they were brilliant.

John Campbell did not run trivial garbage in his magazine. You had to be one hell of a writer even to attract his attention. Analog had a very wide-range readership demographic, so these early Pern stories’ popularity can’t be put down to just a lot of teenagers who didn’t know any better.

Lessa was a unique and powerful female figure in a stark, brutal but fascinating setting. If I were to compare it to anything, it would be Cinderella, but with the heroine having full agency and power, not needing any old fairy godmother. I still crack up laughing when everything starts going wrong in the castle and Lessa just bends over the sink and scrubs her plates.

We didn’t have the concept of “Mary Sue” and I am suspicious of it today because I think it puts down women. If Mary Sue means too perfect, look at Menolly. Never could stand that series, which is too bad, because it’s vividly written with a great concept.

I’m not saying McCaffery is anywhere near the writer that let’s say Leigh Brackett or MacDonald Wallis were, and along about ’98 when Masterharper of Pern came out my precise reaction was “Good LORD! Don’t that woman EVER STOP?!?!” I hope you do your computer “magic” with some of the later Pern books where she really did get unrealistic, childish, and, worst offense, boring.

Reply

[…] ago, but always provides awesome laughs for me. The third one down is appropriate for this post. Photoshopped Spec Fic Book Covers, part the first. The links to the second and third pages are on the bottom, and not to be missed. […]

[…] lots more here and here and here. I hope they bring you some warmth and […]

[…] bloggen mightygodking.com döpte om A game of thrones till ”Knights who say fuck” så var det ganska nära […]

I actually liked a lot of the Goodkind books and still do.

He indeed is preachy, and I think everything goes downhill after his Faith of the Fallen.

The books after FotF were really disappointing, and I think he was tired of writing them at that point. His series ending was rushed and unsatisfying.

He also can be repetative, but I have a tendency to skim over the repetative parts (of any book).

I think it’s ultimately his characters that make me love the books (except for a few minor irrations like when Kalahn–a trained, feared, competent leader of many lands–becomes an airhead whenever Richard is around or is weak and not fearsome when it’s convenient to plot).

Goodkind made me care about even his secondary characters, so I was emotional when he killed them off.

He was also fairly inventive with some of the magic in his world (if not with plot), which is more than I can say for a lot of other books.

————-

Robert Jordan books I have also enjoyed. Although his female characters didn’t become complete airheads, he sure made them all bitchy and controlling (as if men NEVER are that way and women ALWAYS are).

I always hate how, even though the female and male power was suppose to be balanced, a male writer just can’t seem to help himself in making his male characters stronger in some way. Something I’ve noticed.

Brandon Sanderson has become the balance to some of the more aggravating aspects of Jordan, and likewise the other way around. I think they actually would have made great co-authors of other books, had Jordan not passed away.

———————

I don’t really care for GRRM books. I read a few of his, but his characters didn’t mean anything to me, so he could kill them off and I could care less.

“A Song of Rape and Whores” was someone’s take on ASoIaF. What is it with male fantasy/sci-fi writers and women, anyway?

—–

Covenant I read so long ago I can barely remember anything about it except I found it irritating and unenjoyable. I CERTAINLY didn’t care about the main character. Obviously, the book wasn’t even memorable.

——–

Dune never interested me, so I never read it. SO tried to get me to watch the movies/series of it, but those didn’t keep my attention either.

——–

Pern never interested me either, but my aunt loved them. I thought of them as boring.

——–

I think ultimately, it’s the characters that decide whether I like a book/series or not. Plots are so recycled (pretty much most plot ideas were used up a LONG time ago), that’s become secondary to me. Writing style is a third, unless is so clunky or over-elaborate that it gets in the way of the characters/story.

I like different kinds of heros. I like the Kushiel series because the main character was not what the typical hero is, and that right there drew me in.

I liked Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. LOVE her characters and her sense of humor. THAT series is mostly historical fiction with a dash of sci-fi/paranormal (not a whole lot) and a main romance (which is why it is often found in the romance section, even though I consider it more historical than anything). She has her aggravating habits, too, but mostly she is an awesome writer.

There’s actually not many series that I like. I’ll often buy the first book, but then abandon the rest of the series because it couldn’t hook me.

Reply

I just read Lord Foul’s Bane. And then I saw this cover and laughed my ass off because in my 1st web search upon completion of this awful piece of crap I see exactly what the title should have been (add rapist in there too). Wow, this book is so bad on so many levels that its actually pretty fun to read. So blatantly ripping off everything Tolkien that calling it generic doesn’t begin to describe…Its like Donaldson went to college, smoked his 1st joint, got his 01st (and maybe last) piece of ass and she turned hom onto LOTR and he excreted this nonsense.

Reply

[…] more hilarious fantasy book cover parodies, click here: Mighty God King.) Tagged: books, fantasy, raymond e […]

YOu forgot John Norman’s Gor series aka “I have serious issues with women.”

Reply

for ASOIAF:

“Winter Is Probably Not Coming”

Reply

i’m more amused by the ‘philip pullman didn’t write an atheist series!’ comments than the original photoshops 😛

from snopes.com:
“…Pullman has left little doubt about his books’ intended thrust in discussions of his works, such as noting in a 2003 interview that “My books are about killing God” and in a 2001 interview that he was “trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”

dune is awesome, and how young are you that you got to read asoiaf in your adolescence? dang.

10 pts to gryffindor for ‘asshole leper hero’

Reply

Let’s see… I enjoyed Eddings and Pullman, but I’ll freely admit that Eddings could get very repetitive (I think it really hit home the second time they got to the desert place with the ghosts). I still like Silk, though. And Pullman did get a little… heavy-handed as he went along, though not so much in the first one – I honestly missed that the Magisterium was working for the church in Golden Compass (yes, I’m American :P).

Only ever read the first few McCafferey books, never really got into them, especially since it was in middle school and the dragon mating stuff *still* made me uncomfortable. Likewise only read the first three Dune books because the third confused the hell out of me. Somehow avoided Anthony until I was old enough to know better.

Reply

The Golden Compass and other books NEVER say that god doesn’t exsist, they just say that the person controlling heaven was not him. So it’s completely unreasonalbe that people don’t let their children read them, and by making such photoshop crap, you’re just adding to the contoversy.

Reply

[…] and now Hollywood, by storm. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I love me some Knights Who Say “Fuck”, and I was reading stuff that was at least nearly as messed up as THE HUNGER GAMES by seventh grade […]

[…] Jostain peleistä kirjoitetaan jopa kirjoja. Se ei tosin tainnut olla tämän blogikirjoituksen pointti. mightygodkin.com […]

[…] Mightygodking dot com » Post Topic » MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits. […]

I feel like the Stainless Steel Rat series is just begging for this. I love them but damn the dialogue is stilted, and Jim is one of the biggest Marty Stus in existence, and his whole family takes after him that way.

Reply

Oooooh! What a dweebish way to classify the Anne McCaffrey book! Honestly, I’m getting REALLY fed up with EVERY book that features a female protagonist being automatically slotted as “romantic fantasy” or “a Mary Sue story”. Talk about being sexist! Ask yourself this: Has there ever been a story about a guy who befriends a dragon, finds a beautiful woman, gets laid and saves the world? Is HE instantly labeled a “Gary Stu”??? No. How about “Tarnsman of Gor”? I read that one in high school too. As a female, it messed me up. Or how about ANY Conan the Barbarian book? Just because the male reading the book is incapable of putting himself in a female’s head for the length of the book does not make the story a “Mary Sue”. A true “Mary Sue” requires that the female lead meet an already established hero (Mr. Spock was the first recipient of that honor) entice him to choose her despite all obstacles, and then father the obligatory children with her. And how do I know about the “Mary Sue” trope? I’m old enough to have attended Star Trek cons in the early 70’s, and the person who originated the appellation “Mary Sue”, Paula Smith, is someone I’ve been on panels with at cons.

Instead of showing a distinct tendency to be out of touch with your “female side”, it is recommended that you have a better understanding of the labels you’re using. And to shove you into my shoes, remember this: women and girls are expected, as readers, to put themselves in both male and female lead roles in order to enjoy almost any book or movie. There is no reason at all that men can’t do it too. True men man up and try to see it from our point of view sometimes.

Reply

[…] killing fans’ interest in the series. (Crossroads, in particular, is referred to jokingly as “Characters Show Up.”) Fortunately it picked up again with New Spring, a flashback novel focusing on a character who had […]

Brilliant… Hysterical… I can’t wait for the next in the series 😉

Reply

[…] There are tons of authors who let their characters swear, but my favorite offender here is the obvious one: George R.R. Martin. (In Jo Walton’s Tor essay she mentions a fan artist who made new covers for popular books. A Game of Thrones‘ new title was Knights Who Say Fuck.) […]

[…] via mightygodking.com […]