Discussion Horrible / Literature

Do you think Billy Coull (Yes, the Willy's Chocolate Experience guy) and his AI generated novels (The Biohazard Protocol, for one) qualify? Nick Carlson Press did a review and live reading (and vandalizing) of The Biohazard Protocol on Youtube.

Would anyone object to the addition of "The Ink Black Heart" by "Robert Galbraith" here? Not only does it dedicate a lot of its 1,200+ pages on fake Tweets from Twitter (basically formatting Tweets into book format without having the proper means to do so) that demonstrate the author's failure on self-control and leaving things be, but it also tries to reflect a Creator Backlash or Artist Disillusionment that fails to showcase how it truly is that for the author, especially when many of her (former) fans would know that it's more her attempt to do another Creator Breakdown moment more than anything else.

Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff by Sean Penn.

Need I say more?

Is it okay if I add an entry for The Crystal Star of I elaborate on why the book is horrible?

I think this book belongs: https://www.amazon.com/Control-Christian-Marriages-Priesthood-Children/dp/1425992609

Honestly, the link itself says more than I ever could

Most of the reviews are negative (and those that seem to be positive are actually mocking it). Taking out the subject matter, it seems that the writing itself is enough to get this book mocked.

The only issue I can think is the fact that I suspect that most reviewers have not actually bought the book itself. But then, when you look at the description, at the preview, and then at the exorbiant price tag, it is obvious why.

Might Morrissey's List of the Lost belong here? It received universally negative reviews and managed to win a Bad Sex Award for one scene.

I'm not sure Rise of the Zombies should be on this page. It's undeniably stupid and badly written, but it comes off as more entertainingly bad.

Guys, you should take a look at this: https://creativityalliance.com/eBook-KennethMolyneaux-WhiteEmpire.pdf

Info: a "book" written by Kenneth Molyneaux, the White Supremacy priest who also made Racial Holy War tabletop game (which is on Tabletop Games page). This story is full of your typical racism bullshit with the addition of heroes praising Nazis for their efforts in WW 2; all non-white races are Always Chaotic Evil. The way they are called by the narrator ranges from racial slurs to uncomfortable cases of Dehumanization.

The world in this book is as it follows: White Empire has people living in harmony and happiness while all other races are both technologically and socially inferior to them. One of the supporting characters is killed by a Jew suicide bomber (yes, I'm serious). The amount of Author Tract is more than enough to colonize an entire planet. 1d4chan calls this book "a hilariously exagerrated to the point of vomit inducement white supremacy fapfic" and lambasts it further during the Racial Holy War tabletop game review.

So, should I add it here?

I don't know if this should be on the page or not, so I'm leaving it here to see what's your opinion.

• Philip Osbourne's Diary of a Nerd series^note While the author is Australian, as we are speaking the books are released only in Italian, Russian and Spanish is, as the title suggests, about a teen nerd called Phil. While the first book of the series is kinda harmless, as the series goes on the problems get bigger and bigger: while the first book was about Phil forming a team of friends to participate to a competition between teams of the smartest kids from multiple schools, it suddenly starts devolving to them fighting against "Nerd-hating" villains who try to erase the concept of being a nerd from the world by doing things like stealing famous movie props, kidnapping showwriters for every currently airing TV show to force networks to air only reruns of 80's shows or going back in time to erase videogames from history. The author also goes multiple times off the rails to insult the reader's intelligence (in the third book, at a certain point the main character lists a bunch if show he likes alongside fanart he made of them, each surrounded by notes explaining that these are only graphical representations of Homer and Bart Simpson, Sheldon Cooper, Finn the Human and Bojack Horseman and not the actual characters) and to throw heavy potshots at everything he doesn't like (such as when he compares someone's ridiculous attire to She-Hulk stating that she is "an useless character nobody ever liked" or how the "kidnapping showwriters" plot described above is nothing more than an excuse to hammer in our heads that he hates CHiPs)

Someone is deleting huge amount of the page for no apparent reason. I think it's a troll.

I'm not so sure "Hamlet's Father " belongs here. The main reason it's "torn to shreds" is because of the controversial stuff that came to light after a couple of reviewers interpreted the story as Card making a link between pedophilia and homosexuality (which Card himself has denied, although I can't say whether he's being truthful or not).

(Also, I'm not sure how I feel about linking to a site where you've recently left a review yourself as evidence.)

For the record, I haven't read this and never will, but I wonder if the controversy surrounding this makes it a bit difficult to judge if it really belongs here. Several reviews have suggested that the book would have been, at worst, mediocre if not for the controversial elements.

Can we add works that were plagiarized from other authors on this section? They seem like they'd automatically be SBIH on some scale, especially when this comes to mind. Most of the reviews are even about how it was plagiarized from other works online.

should I put the Kamen Rider Decade novel in here? (subtitle The World of Tsukasa Kadoya -The Garden in the Lens-)

despite being a retelling of the series, characterization is completely disregarded, the book gets details about Rider powers completely wrong and while it does give Narutaki an identity, it's a letdown

So, it turns out that Touched By Venom actually has some legitimate defenders. Granted, nobody here is arguing that it is without its glaring flaws, but it seems like there are a fair number of people who would argue that, as extreme as it is, the book is actually pretty decent. It's a bit like Delany's Hogg in that way, I suppose: Not necessarily bad, but alienating enough that very few people are actually going to enjoy what it's doing.

So, we can't put up vile, racist crap on the page, like Caliphate or The Turner Diaries?

Cut this and putting it here. Needs a bit more context about what makes this "extremely bad" as opposed to run-of-the-mill bad:

• While Vanity Publishing has long been known to be a haven for the worst attempts at semi-literate Purple Prose, Night Travels of the Elven Vampire by LaVerne Ross is painfully bad even by that standard. It's a convoluted mess of a plot involving werewolves, vampires, pirates, elves, and gargoyles, all revolving around a treasure-hunter-turned-paranormal-investigator heroine. Fortunately, it does provide excellent fodder for a truly hilarious review.

Does At First Glance by Breeanna Mae Alessandra count? I can't find any evidence of a fan base. It has a 1.8 star average on Amazon. The 5-star review and the 3-star review are lenient because the author is a beginner. Most reviews on Goodreads give 1 star, and the one 5-star review says that it "was weird and not my usual type of read, but not as terrible as everyone has made it seem". Here's a sporking of it. As far as I know, there aren't any professional reviews.

Does an book belong here of the rest of the series was good? (Like the Wheel of Time example, for instance.)

I looked up Min Kamp and found that it has actually sold half a million copies and been published in 22 languages. Also, it seems to have some admirers among the literary community.

I can understand the invasion of privacy thing but it probably shouldn't be in the SBIH category.

Should the Gamer Girl novel be on? The entry outright states that there are people who gave it good reviews (people who don't read manga or play video games). Granted, there are plenty of reviews to support it being a bad book, but to qualify it's not supposed to appeal to any group (and people who don't know enough about manga or video games is a group).

Taking off the following:

• The Beast That Was Max by Gerard Houarner is a good example of what not to do when writing a novel. Max, the Marty Stu protagonist, is a super-manly assassin / Serial Killer that works for the government and kills whores on his off-time but that's okay because he had a really sad childhood. But unlike say, Dexter, he's pretty much a total monster and he fails to be the least bit sympathetic yet the audience is still expected to root for him when he's haunted by the ghosts of his past victims and is later impregnated by an avenging angel...with ribbons. His m-preg angel spawn is supposed to kill him but he's got a magic buddy who fixes that. Then Max coerces a lot of people who owe him favors to fight his enemies for him and most of them die. Max gives his m-preg angel spawn an Overly Long Name to honor all who died in the final battle. Yeah. There are better fanfics out there with the same premise.

I've never even heard of the book before, but it has mostly positive reviews on Amazon (there are only 7 reviews, but a couple are from Hall of Famers) and an average rating on Goodreads with a 65% "liked it" score (again, admittedly, it's a small number of people (23 ratings)), and the first couple of review sites that show up on Google have a positive assessment of it.

Also:

• Tom Kratman has gained a notorious reputation over the years, with A Desert Called Peace being one of the most notorious works that is being mocked by the website Space Battles. The fact that Kratman goes and rabidly defends his work does not help his reputation.

Maybe it has its critics and maybe the author is an asshole, but it also seems to have genuinely average-to-positive reviews.

Guys, if you're going to get something removed, please post the original parts here. I understand how important it is to get bad entries off, but the history can be cleaned off. I'll put them here for now and we can see whether they belong in closer detail later:

I've never read the Sword Of Truth series, so I'm not one to argue over it's quality, but the use of Weasel Words makes me doubt this entry's trustworthiness.

• For many readers, the Sword Of Truth series from start to finish is among the worst dreck ever to climb its way out of the cesspool of bad fantasy and become a hit. For these readers, Naked Empire is more the straw that broke the camel's back than it is an example of the series getting worse. Imagine the most bargain-basement writing skills; stilted dialogue, clunky prose, large chunks of exposition, aesops so obvious you'd think the book was written for children, constant reminders of how awesome the lead character is, Expies so thin they might as well just be the person he's writing about, ham-fisted speeches that go on for pages and pages so that the author can sermonize his readers, and even a tinge of racism (Richard, the lead character, teaches a poor backward tribe how to make roofs that don't leak. The tribe's name? Mud People. All topped off by a writer with clear Narcissistic Personality Disorder and a hard-on for Ayn Rand, who has never heard of subtlety.

Granted, I've never read it myself, but I was surprised to see the MZB novel on this. Not only is it part of a pretty well known, and apparently important, series by a highly well known author, but I've found mostly positive reviews for it (including on sites lie tor.com). I've taken it off, since I can't seem to find any reason for it to be here other than that one "sporking" that was linked.

The Willow novel is iffy since it does have a lot of negative reviews, but it also seem to have some degree of popularity (at least enough to spawn two sequels, and not through vanity/self/POD publishing) and supporters, even on this site's YMMV page for Willow. Plus it seems to have been added more than 3 years ago when this site wasn't as strict on the guidelines. It's not something I've personally read, so I apologize if it should really be here.

Wait, doesn't NATO stand for "North Atlantic Treaty Organization"?

I liked that Dragon Ball Z guidebook.

I'm guessing "ozone radiation" is a typo. I'm pretty sure oxygen isn't part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Is it supposed to be UV radiation?

Here's an interesting one...

Appatently a few years ago there was a French 9-11 novel that was very poorly written. You know, the one with the deleted sex scene in the burning twin towers? It also had cliched dialogue and terrible characterization to boot.

For the life of me I can't remember the title. I remember the handful of critics that read it LOATHED it. All google gives me when I search the scene mentioned above is an essay included in an anthology about sex and pornography. Any assistance?

Is it especially important to get more information on the Lesbian Land 2250 sequel thing? Because the info on it is a little wanting, but I'm sure as hell not reading another one of those.

I wish to add a "plot hole" to this yarble. It's in the JLA issue #5, "When Gravity went wild". Most of the story involves the JLA vs. 6 super-villains who defeat them . Then on p. 20, Green Arrow says he captured them ,and then reveals that one of the JLA is - an imposter ! How he captured 6 able & ready guys with formidable weapons at their fingertips -is never explained or depicted. Sometimes the late Gardner Fox just glossed over something he either couldn't choreograph or didn't want to make the story a 2-issue one.

I'm not sure about The Bear and the Dragon. One quick look on Google would show some three to four-star averages (at least, for me), which suggests it doesn't belong here, but I'm not so sure...

So I was reading a snark review of a bad romance novel (Womb for Rent, see the snark here: http://bookbitching.wordpress.com/category/amanda-brian/ ) and I can barely get through the review because it seems like each chapter has more badly-used tropes than the previous one. Is that enough to get the book added here, or do I have to actually go read it?

Does the Maradonia Saga count?

Seriously... removing Mein Kampf because Nazis like it?

Just edited the Friday the 13th: Hell Lake entry. That had better be worse than it sounds, because it sounds like it could squeak by on Rule of Cool.

I'm pretty sure the main page was cut by mistake.

Isn't I Am Scrooge a humor novel? Then it should be removed under Poe's Law. If it isn't, it should stay here.

Cut this because it is on the So Bad, It's Good list. Put it here just in case; it has details that aren't in its entry there anyway....

• ANTIGUA: The Land of Fairies Wizards and Heroes (Part 1), published by notorious Vanity Publisher Authorhouse. How bad is this book? The sample says it all:
  "Suddenly, there were black clouds in the sky. Everyone heard a loud noise coming from the sky and they all knew that Voltar the Dragon was coming. King Artor yelled out, "Daughters, Voltar comes! Get ready your weapons! The time has come for you to fulfill the prophecy!" Princess Sasha, Princess Trina, Princess Alexandra and Rebecca walked up ahead of the army and lined up together in a row. They looked like warriors! Rebecca was not afraid! She took a deep breath and got her weapon ready for the task that lay ahead. She understood the prophecy now and had faith in herself and the Princesses. They each pulled out their bows and prepared to kill the dragon. Fire came out of his nostrils and his mouth. Princess Alexandra handed each of the other girls one of the special arrows that they had gotten from the Queen of the Unicorns. All four of the girls pointed their bows up into the air and waited for Voltar to come nearer. Voltar let out such a loud noise that the ground shook! Then fire came right out of his nostrils. The Wizard Thandor held his mighty wand up toward the sky and yelled, "Mighty clouds of the sky, I call upon you to bring forth lightening to destroy the Dragon Voltar!" Large lightening bolts came out of the clouds toward Voltar. One lightening bolt struck Voltar and wounded him, but it didn't kill him!"
  • The misspelling of "lightning" is from the original. The worst part is that the author, one Denise Brown Ellis, wrote a five-star review for her own book! She also spammed advertisements for the book across the Amazon.com message boards in ALL CAPS! and reacted venomously towards critics, accusing them of being "sick" for reading literature intended for children.
  • The first few pages are So Bad, It's Good. But that amusement doesn't last.

Removed this entry:

• The Crystal Star, from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. NOTHING. EVER. HAPPENS. IN. THIS. BOOK. The only things that break up the long, boring expanses are a host of annoying sequences featuring Han and Leia's children. There's also some Mind Screws with extradimensional aliens that would fit better in a particularly bad Star Trek Voyager episode. The only good thing was introducing Lusa to the Star Wars Universe.

It's been long enough since I read it that I can't make compelling arguments that it's good, but I remember enough to say that it at least had some good aspects. I liked how the children acted like real children, while at the same time displaying enough maturity to avoid being annoying. I liked the aliens that spoke a tonal language, and how humans couldn't hear the word they used for the name of their species. And I really liked the bit where Jacen controls the army of insects. Horrible? I don't think so.

Removed reference to Revelation by Karen Traviss. The original poster seemed to be of the 'I didn't like it, so its So Bad Its Horrible' school of thought. From my experience with the Star Wars fandom, it's very much a YMMV book, with its fans and detractors. In other words, it doesn't belong in this article.

Cut this and put it here. The fella in question is named Nigel Torres. Think these would qualify for the film section?

• The same person has caused controversy with his In Name Only adaptations of works such as The Catcher In The Rye and Hamlet. The plots? Nothing but 60-75 minutes of a blank screen.

Removed the following:

• The actual longest novel, Marienbad My Love, is also horrible. See that title over there? That's an abbreviation. The real title of this work is sixty pages long. This 17-million word book contains the longest sentence and coined word in English, and not a word of the book makes any sense. You know why? The whole novel was randomly generated with a Markov chain.

Although I've only read parts the book, the book DOES indeed make sense.

Why was The Overton Window cut? I mean, not only is it a hack novel, it's a plagiarized hack novel! (Self-Plagiarism, but still...) And the "original" was vanity published, which suggests that Glenn Beck's name is the only thing that got The Overton Window published via more conventional channels.

I'll accept any and all reasonable justifications for cutting the thing, but I do want to know why.

Okay. So the official Tiberium Wars novelization does not have a page. It is, however, listed under Novelization, and according to its entry, it has "surprisingly good parts." Even if it's more Wall Banger than not, it might not belong here...