Books You Had to Put Down

[Wander89]

I know this is probably blasphemy at this stage too but I picked up Eye of the World years ago and finished it. struggled with it completely. Moved on to Great Hunt but this was the start of my Sanderson journey and Oathbringer came out so I blasted through that and it seems like nothing brought me back to WoT. I'm nearly finished my Cosmere re-read and want to dedicate time to Wheel of Time but I'm scared I won't click the way anyone else does.

[Draginon]

4 hours ago, NottTheBrave said:

There’s two key problems with current Star Wars books.  Either they use the movie characters, but have fluff and useless stories, because they’re so afraid to tell a story that adds to the lore in fear of it going against a future movie.  Or they tell interesting stories with fan fiction tier original characters who are grating and irritating.

Well I’ve heard about this one fact from several different authors that have done the Disney Canon. They will come up with an interesting story for the film characters but the Star Wars Story Team will nix it or severally change it so it doesn’t resemble the original concept at all. When it comes to ones without the film characters as the focus the Story Team will always force  in some connection to the films even when it doesn’t make sense (one example is a book that came out prior to Solo and 8 where they had to mention a character or place from those films despite the story having nothing to do with them). Pretty much the Story Team are the ones making the books a mess since they have way less control over the comics since Marvel is in charge of that and allow fresh ideas involving the film characters.

[Wyndlerunner]

4 hours ago, NottTheBrave said:

There’s two key problems with current Star Wars books.  Either they use the movie characters, but have fluff and useless stories, because they’re so afraid to tell a story that adds to the lore in fear of it going against a future movie.  Or they tell interesting stories with fan fiction tier original characters who are grating and irritating.

Have you read 'Ashoka' by EK Johnston? That one deals with an established character, and goes over some pretty important bridging events in that character's journey. I've also been meaning to read Claudia Gray's 'Master and Apprentice', 'cuz I love me some Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.

[NottTheBrave]

14 minutes ago, Wyndlerunner said:

Have you read 'Ashoka' by EK Johnston? That one deals with an established character, and goes over some pretty important bridging events in that character's journey. I've also been meaning to read Claudia Gray's 'Master and Apprentice', 'cuz I love me some Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.

Nah, I'll just watch the new clone wars season instead.  It's adapting a lot of the material the book covered from what I've heard.  I've met EK Johnston and had a conversation with her though.  She's really nice.  I might give the Padme book a shot.  

 

36 minutes ago, Draginon said:

Well I’ve heard about this one fact from several different authors that have done the Disney Canon. They will come up with an interesting story for the film characters but the Star Wars Story Team will nix it or severally change it so it doesn’t resemble the original concept at all. When it comes to ones without the film characters as the focus the Story Team will always force  in some connection to the films even when it doesn’t make sense (one example is a book that came out prior to Solo and 8 where they had to mention a character or place from those films despite the story having nothing to do with them). Pretty much the Story Team are the ones making the books a mess since they have way less control over the comics since Marvel is in charge of that and allow fresh ideas involving the film characters.

That wouldn't surprise me.  The book "Last Shot" is an absolute mess.  The whole thing reeks of "put in as many references to the movie as you can without actually saying anything because the book comes out first."  Particularly the way it has Han deal with Qi'ra.  It's so vague, it's incredibly detrimental.  We get that Han is depressed about something, but it's not allowed to say why he's depressed, so it's just a vague nothingness that motivates Han during the flashbacks and it just does NOT work.  

It has nothing to do with the author being bad, but the clear limitations and guidelines in place to hit X amount of checkboxes, but reveal only Y amount of details.  Claudia Gray has seemingly got around it, and Delilah Dawson performed well on her Phasma book, despite the fact that it ended up being useless because they offed Phasma so unceremoniously.

[Wyndlerunner]

14 minutes ago, NottTheBrave said:

Nah, I'll just watch the new clone wars season instead.  It's adapting a lot of the material the book covered from what I've heard.  I've met EK Johnston and had a conversation with her though.  She's really nice.  I might give the Padme book a shot.  

The book takes place after season 7, with some minor flashbacks to those events. The story of the book is entirely original

[Draginon]

13 hours ago, NottTheBrave said:

That wouldn't surprise me.  The book "Last Shot" is an absolute mess.  The whole thing reeks of "put in as many references to the movie as you can without actually saying anything because the book comes out first."  Particularly the way it has Han deal with Qi'ra.  It's so vague, it's incredibly detrimental.  We get that Han is depressed about something, but it's not allowed to say why he's depressed, so it's just a vague nothingness that motivates Han during the flashbacks and it just does NOT work.  

It has nothing to do with the author being bad, but the clear limitations and guidelines in place to hit X amount of checkboxes, but reveal only Y amount of details.  Claudia Gray has seemingly got around it, and Delilah Dawson performed well on her Phasma book, despite the fact that it ended up being useless because they offed Phasma so unceremoniously.

Yeah it’s one thing when it’s a tie in novel, Last Shot is a tie in for Solo, but it’s another when it’s just a random book, like Leia Princess of Alderaan forcing in her first meeting with Holdo just to tie it into Last Jedi. With the trilogy ending there should be no more silly tie ins allowed from now on but the Story Team will still try to meddle though because of upcoming movies like the GOT writers trilogy. At least the EU weren’t restricted, just making small adjustments when the Lucasfilms continuity people noticed a contradiction with either the original 6 films or with another book (like if someone wrote Chewy in but set the book after Chewy was killed off)

I’m hoping that with 9 coming that means we'll finally get books that focus on Finn and Rey (Poe be damned since I don’t get his appeal)

[Elend Venture]

     Hiroshima by John Heresy. This book was a very good set of first hand accounts from the bombing of Hiroshima, but I put it down half way through because just how dark some of the accounts were. I picked it back up and finished it a day later though.

     The second book that I put down is Typhoon Fury by Clive Cussler. This book, in my opinion, is poorly written and I did not enjoy the story much. Good news, was that this one was a library loan, so I didn't lose any money, being that I never picked it back up.  I tried to read one other Cussler book after that, (the Jungle) and it was somewhat better. 

Edited June 16, 2019 by ElendVenture

[Orlion Blight]

11 hours ago, Draginon said:

(Poe be damned since I don’t get his appeal)

He's a terrible character. From a mechanic perspective and a story one (his stupid actions directly caused a lot of the problems faced by the Resistance in The Last Jedi. If there was a modicum of realism in that movie, he would have been executed by firing squad at the beginning of the movie).

[Draginon]

On 6/16/2019 at 11:49 PM, Orlion the Platypus said:

He's a terrible character. From a mechanic perspective and a story one (his stupid actions directly caused a lot of the problems faced by the Resistance in The Last Jedi. If there was a modicum of realism in that movie, he would have been executed by firing squad at the beginning of the movie).

Funnily that was the original plan but everyone liked him too much to kill him so they let him live. I just don’t see how they can make him better in 9 at all.

Yeah, if he had just listened and followed Leia and Holdo’s plan things would’ve gone much better for them but no he just had to be a rebelling teen against an authority figure because if they don’t reveal one tiny detail then they’re obviously up to no good instead of being a leader.

[NottTheBrave]

I really feel like people only love Poe because he's played by Oscar Isaac, one of the most charismatic men in Hollywood.  Otherwise, his character... he's the reason the whole trilogy happened.  If he'd done something sensible at the start of TFA, there'd have been no plot thread for Kylo.  Like seriously, imagine he just left with Bb-8, instead of charging a battalion by himself?  He wouldn't have been captured, and Kylo wouldn't have know to look for BB-8.  Movie over, lol.  He killed Lor San Tekka before he could have interrogated him, so he had no idea, lol.  They'd have had to let every villager live to be interrogated before they even knew it was Poe who was there, and by that point he'd have been long gone.  Not to mention the stuff from TLJ, lol.

[Draginon]

@NottTheBrave I’m not even sure what other films Oscar has been in so I can only judge his performance off of Poe. It’s like he’s trying way too hard to be the Sequel Trilogy Han and not giving a quarter of the swagger. The plot of the trilogy could still happen without him in the rest of the films after his opening scenes since Poe was supposed to die in that crash on Jakku but Oscar was hesitant to take another role where his character dies so Abrams changed the script so that Oscar would accept.

I think another reason people like him is so that people can ship him with Finn. I’m all for LGBT relationships but those two don’t have good chemistry to me, heck Finn and Rey had better chemistry and they’re just friends.

[NottTheBrave]

55 minutes ago, Draginon said:

@NottTheBrave I’m not even sure what other films Oscar has been in so I can only judge his performance off of Poe. It’s like he’s trying way too hard to be the Sequel Trilogy Han and not giving a quarter of the swagger. The plot of the trilogy could still happen without him in the rest of the films after his opening scenes since Poe was supposed to die in that crash on Jakku but Oscar was hesitant to take another role where his character dies so Abrams changed the script so that Oscar would accept.

I think another reason people like him is so that people can ship him with Finn. I’m all for LGBT relationships but those two don’t have good chemistry to me, heck Finn and Rey had better chemistry and they’re just friends.

I was (and I guess am) really behind a Finn/Poe ship.  The thing is, it ain't happening.  They won't go there, and I have a hard time being too invested in something that so clearly won't happen.  FinnRey makes me vomit cause holy crap do those two annoy the hell out of me.  Finn, especially in TLJ, wore on my nerves.  It's like he had nothing to his personality except to care about Rey.  

Oscar has been in a lot of great stuff!  Some stinkers too, but at this point, what actor hasn't been in a bad movie?

[Wander89]

Speaking of Oscar Isaac, if you haven't seen Ex Machina then I highly recommend his acting along with Alicia Vikander

[Dunkum]

On 6/15/2019 at 8:52 PM, Wander89 said:

I know this is probably blasphemy at this stage too but I picked up Eye of the World years ago and finished it. struggled with it completely. Moved on to Great Hunt but this was the start of my Sanderson journey and Oathbringer came out so I blasted through that and it seems like nothing brought me back to WoT. I'm nearly finished my Cosmere re-read and want to dedicate time to Wheel of Time but I'm scared I won't click the way anyone else does.

for availability reasons, Dragon Reborn was the first WOT book that I read, and I got pretty far into the series (probably through book 9, which was the most recent one at the time) before I doubled back and read the first 2 books.  And I could barely manage them.  to this day they are my least favorite.  In particular, there is a part, and i can only half remember it right now because it's been a while since I read the series, but I think it was Rand and Mat's journey to Caemlyn.  For some reason I remember it as being told in some weird format, and I just had a ton of trouble getting through it.

[Wander89]

7 hours ago, Dunkum said:

for availability reasons, Dragon Reborn was the first WOT book that I read, and I got pretty far into the series (probably through book 9, which was the most recent one at the time) before I doubled back and read the first 2 books.  And I could barely manage them.  to this day they are my least favorite.  In particular, there is a part, and i can only half remember it right now because it's been a while since I read the series, but I think it was Rand and Mat's journey to Caemlyn.  For some reason I remember it as being told in some weird format, and I just had a ton of trouble getting through it.

I think it's one of those series that you really need to be in the mindset to read. I'm looking forward to starting them after Stormlight but I'm gonna need to really want to read them before I commit to such a long series.

[Dunkum]

5 hours ago, Wander89 said:

I think it's one of those series that you really need to be in the mindset to read. I'm looking forward to starting them after Stormlight but I'm gonna need to really want to read them before I commit to such a long series.

I like it for the most part, but something about those first 2 books just doesn't work for me.  I think a big part of it is that Mat doesn't become a PoV character until book 3, and that is essential.  Mat's PoV chapters are pretty much always the best.

[Wander89]

4 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

I like it for the most part, but something about those first 2 books just doesn't work for me.  I think a big part of it is that Mat doesn't become a PoV character until book 3, and that is essential.  Mat's PoV chapters are pretty much always the best.

I've heard good things about Mat as a character. I hope I'm not bigging this up so that I end up not enjoying it as much.

[Toaster Retribution]

On 2019-06-17 at 6:49 AM, Orlion the Platypus said:

He's a terrible character. From a mechanic perspective and a story one (his stupid actions directly caused a lot of the problems faced by the Resistance in The Last Jedi. If there was a modicum of realism in that movie, he would have been executed by firing squad at the beginning of the movie).

I disagree. Poe is actually a pretty good character. He is a hothead who can’t sit back while other people do important things, and then he learns the value of doing so during the course of the movie. He learns to trust other people than himself, and learns that he doesn’t need to know everything. 

Also, executing your best pilot, when you have very little manpower is not very smart. Especially when you consider that said pilot is popular amongst the remaining crew, who needs to have their morale up in an already tough situation. 

Furthermore, if people want good Star Wars books, I recommend Timothy Zahns new Thrawn books. Thrawn could watch paint dry and it would be interesting, because he is that great of a character.

[Aon Ati]

Book 3 of The Ranger's Apprentice, The Icebound Land. The main character Will is tricked into eating a drug that places him in a zombie like state that will do whatever his slave masters order and only wants more of the drug. I read this in my early teens and had to wait a day before continuing because of how it disturbed me. I still get shivers thinking about that part of the story.

[NottTheBrave]

On 7/2/2019 at 8:09 AM, Wander89 said:

I've heard good things about Mat as a character. I hope I'm not bigging this up so that I end up not enjoying it as much.

As someone about halfway through the third book, it's true.  Mat is a blast.  The third book in general dwarfs EotW and TGH.  I say that as someone who loved those two books too.  This really does feel like where the series gets super good.  

[Karger]

On 6/15/2019 at 10:44 PM, Wyndlerunner said:

Have you read 'Ashoka' by EK Johnston? That one deals with an established character, and goes over some pretty important bridging events in that character's journey. I've also been meaning to read Claudia Gray's 'Master and Apprentice', 'cuz I love me some Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.

Ahsoka is amazing one of the best Star Wars books to date.  Master and Apprentice kind of annoy me because they don't realy get at any of the stuff I want them to and more importantly does not fit in well with my understanding of the characters.  Thrawn is better(the new ones).

 

On 6/17/2019 at 0:49 AM, Orlion the Platypus said:

He's a terrible character. From a mechanic perspective and a story one (his stupid actions directly caused a lot of the problems faced by the Resistance in The Last Jedi. If there was a modicum of realism in that movie, he would have been executed by firing squad at the beginning of the movie).

To be fair.  It is not like anything anyone did in the movie made any sense.

[Ghanderflaffle]

This is more the fact that I couldn’t get into the book, but Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch I didn’t finish. I liked The Lies of Locke Lamora but just not book 2.

The first book I cried about was in 3rd grade and it was, don’t laugh at me, I was 8, an American Girl doll book ( the Native American ones).

[Kualo]

I am a huge fan of Anne Rice and her Vampire Chronicles but had to stop reading Blood Canticle in the middle because that book had no sense. It was a pulp of nonsense. I regret even that I picked it up. The only book I didn't finish.

[Hood]

I tried starting Prince of Thorns... couldn't get past a couple of pages. I...just couldn't tolerate Jorg. I read the reviews (maybe that was a mistake), and one stood out in particular. That one said that Jorg was the perfect villain-protagonist.

That said, maybe I'll read it again in future. It has happened before. I once tried 'The Lies of Locke Lamora' in 2012 and gave up after a chapter. After 4 years I tried again, (and finished the whole series in a month) and it has since become one of my favourite books. I cannot fathom how I couldn't read it the first time.

Malazan had an interesting thing. I tried it 7 times before giving up. On the 8th time, I started and finished the series in... 2 years. I remember purchasing last 4 books using an Amazon gift card that my sister won.

[+ILuvHats]

On ‎6‎/‎15‎/‎2019 at 7:52 PM, Wander89 said:

I know this is probably blasphemy at this stage too but I picked up Eye of the World years ago and finished it. struggled with it completely. Moved on to Great Hunt but this was the start of my Sanderson journey and Oathbringer came out so I blasted through that and it seems like nothing brought me back to WoT. I'm nearly finished my Cosmere re-read and want to dedicate time to Wheel of Time but I'm scared I won't click the way anyone else does.

 

On ‎7‎/‎1‎/‎2019 at 6:07 PM, Dunkum said:

for availability reasons, Dragon Reborn was the first WOT book that I read, and I got pretty far into the series (probably through book 9, which was the most recent one at the time) before I doubled back and read the first 2 books.  And I could barely manage them.  to this day they are my least favorite.  In particular, there is a part, and i can only half remember it right now because it's been a while since I read the series, but I think it was Rand and Mat's journey to Caemlyn.  For some reason I remember it as being told in some weird format, and I just had a ton of trouble getting through it.

Yeah. It took me a 3 attempts over the course of 2 years to get into WoT. I actually enjoyed the second book, though I didn't think it was amazing, but Eye of the World was soooo Tolkienesque and slow paced that it was a pain to get through.

On ‎8‎/‎13‎/‎2019 at 7:17 PM, Handerfle said:

This is more the fact that I couldn’t get into the book, but Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch I didn’t finish. I liked The Lies of Locke Lamora but just not book 2.

Same here. I put down Red Seas a hundred pages from the end. Probably should have just finished it, but (shrug). I'll probably give the series another try, but it'll be a year or two because I have so many books on my docket, not the least of which is finishing WoT, and I'm only on book 7.