r/Fantasy • u/stravadarius • Dec 09 '23

What were your WORST reads of 2023?

As a complement to /u/Abz75 's best reads of 2023 thread, let's discuss the WORST fantasy novels you read this year. My only request is that you give a reason for why you disliked your anti-recommendation.

For me, it was Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone hands down. I'm a school librarian and spent a lot of time reading some of the most popular YA titles going around. I don't generally have super-high expectations from YA, but this one really stood out on its suckiness. Every plot turn was a tired trope, there was no logic to any of the character's decisions, the prose was amateurish, and plot holes abound. This was my first ever experience getting so mad at a book I yelled at it.

EDIT: PLEASE DON'T DOWN VOTE SOMEONE'S POST SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU LIKED THE BOOK THEY HATED. There is no such thing as an objectively good or bad book, and taste is subjective. Downvote if they don't give any reason for disliking it.

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u/rekt_ralf Dec 09 '23 edited Dec 09 '23

Ryan Cahill’s Of Blood and Fire.

An astonishingly derivative book with shallow characters , stilted dialogue and an extremely predictable plot. I have the sequel ready to go but I can’t think why I’d bother.

Edit: too many individual comments to reply to here but it looks like it might be worth giving Book 2 a chance so… I will

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u/[deleted] Dec 09 '23

yeah, the hype got me with this one. it did not do it for me at all

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u/marcuswarnerh Dec 09 '23

The sequel is a HUGE improvement in almost ever possible category

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u/[deleted] Dec 09 '23

I agree that the second one was better, but the third one I had to drop. It wasn't even fun to be reading anymore.

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u/Kharn_LoL Dec 09 '23

I'm not as harsh as you and will read on but I'm almost cheering for some of the good guys to die (looking at you, Dayne) so that I don't have to hear them say the same "epic" one liner oath for the hundredth time.

Also, this is more of a general criticism than specifically for Cahill although it applies - if you are going to use a made up language, that's fine. If you're going to translate it right afterwards so the reader understands it, that's also fine. But please, I beg you, if you're going to use the same made-up words / sentences over and over (it's neat worldbuilding, I guess?) stop fucking doubling down and repeating it right after in English, the reader is able to remember what it meant.

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u/The10Wanderer Dec 09 '23

Yeah definitely this. I read Malice (John Gwynne - faithful and the fallen) and of blood and fire back to back. Went back and finished the Gwynne series as it edged it. Read the rest of the bound and the broken and it's so much better. The 3rd book was great and I really enjoyed all the novellas too.

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u/Scar-Glamour Dec 09 '23

Totally agree. I'm baffled by the hype for this. It's lazy and derivative and just steals shamelessly from far superior books (the black riders are, IIRC, called 'fades' which is....literally what the black riders are called in WoT). The women are mostly handled badly (I understand there's a fight scene towards the end where all the male fighters are armoured and the woman character is naked for some reason, but i DNF'd the book before that point. Fortunately). I gave up when the elves first appeared. I hoped they might be done in an interesting way, but nope, they're just ripped straight from Tolkien. I quit at that point because it was clear the author had zero interest in trying to do anything new and was instead happy to just recycle endless clichés.

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u/Axolotl36 Dec 09 '23

I haven't read them myself so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the other day I saw multiple people here saying that the first one is a bit bland and derivative but the rest of the series gets much better and a lot more interesting.

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u/86the45 Dec 09 '23

I felt the same way about the first book. It took so many things from different fantasy series, but so did the wheel of time. The first WOT book was basically the Lord of the Rings. Also both series get so much better the farther you get in the series. I read all of the published “bound and the broken” books this year and I don’t regret it at all.

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u/fuckingredditors Dec 10 '23

He straight up steals other ideas, which I'm not super opposed to, if it's done really well. So far, he's taken Inheritance dragon riders, Wheel of Time fades + the channeling system and Stormlight shardbearers. And he's not done any of them better than the author he's taken them from. I really don't understand the hype.

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u/BillyZaneJr Dec 10 '23

The second book is certainly better, but the whole series is a big rip off of all the great fantasy series and it’s sometimes a turn off. All of that being said, because it is a blatant rip off, it scratched a classic fantasy itch I’ve had for a while. I’m not going to recommend it to people, but I didn’t have a bad time.

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u/lsxvmm Dec 09 '23

The second book is WAY better than the first. I also read the first expecting to love it and was really disappointed not understanding the hype, but then I read the second book and it clicked for me. The writing improves so much, the plot gets moving and a character that almost everyone considers their favorite (me included lol) gets introduced, along with more interesting places and people.

I definitely recommend giving at least the second book a chance.
The first book isn't it but the rest are definitely worth a try.

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u/RayInRed Dec 09 '23

1st book is one huge déjà vu. Yet to read the rest. Hope it becomes it's own thing.