Authors of Mediocrity: Predictability strikes back

This is a thread for those authors of fiction who are just... predictable, either predictably mediocre in everything they turn out (yet still have massive sales), or their body of work just has a fatal, annoying flaw that keeps it from being great, good, or fully entertaining. Maybe they've been around for a long time, and now they're just phoning it in, book after book. Or maybe they started out being blander than dishwater, and are still that way after years of being published.

The author I had in mind for this thread is Bentley Little, a horror novelist. His books (I've read The Walking, The Collection, and now I'm reading The Policy) usually start out very strongly, having you rapidly turning pages through the book. His characters are kinda bland, but he has a knack for describing horrible, horrible things happening to them, and The Walking has some geniunely freaky and disturbing scenes, as do many of his short stories in The Collection.

But the problem with Little's writing is that his endings never live up to the beginnings or the premises of his story. So far, both The Walking and The Policy (yeah, I skipped ahead) end with scenarios that involve the heros walking into the lairs of their respective enemies and blasting the shit outta them with deus ex machina crap that seems more like some sort of boss raid in a video game than the ending to a horror novel. They just suck.

Anyone else have any author(s) who are just disappointing and mediocre?

Terry Goodkind.

Maximilia wrote:

Terry Goodkind.

A thousand times yes.  Not only did his plots become recycled and predictable, but he became more and more preachy as the series went on.

Soylent Green wrote:

Maximilia wrote:

Terry Goodkind.

A thousand times yes.  Not only did his plots become recycled and predictable, but he became more and more preachy as the series went on.

It's kinda sad, because Wizard's First Rule wasn't too terrible. It was cliched and whatnot, but I was entertained by it. After that? Oh my lord.

Maximilia wrote:

Soylent Green wrote:

Maximilia wrote:

Terry Goodkind.

A thousand times yes.  Not only did his plots become recycled and predictable, but he became more and more preachy as the series went on.

It's kinda sad, because Wizard's First Rule wasn't too terrible. It was cliched and whatnot, but I was entertained by it. After that? Oh my lord.

They get worse almost exponentially with each book.  I'm ashamed to admit that I read right up until the last book because I read so much of the series, I might as well finish it, right?  I gave up half way through the last book because it was so bad.  I don't mind fantasy with a theme (I grew up on Golden Age sci-fi after all), but he was beating you over the head with his viewpoints.

Plus, you knew that you were in for 700 pages of Richard and/or Kahlan whining because they aren't with the other or if they are, they're whining because something bad might happen to the other.  I don't think I've seen so many straw men in one series either.  I always knew that the book would be resolved by either a Deus ex Machina or Richard telling everyone what to do and it would be Right.

The Iron Dragon's Daughter could have been incredibly awesome. But then the author got bogged down in sex and random bullshit that, while vaguely neat, advanced the plot not at all. By the end of the book, as soon as certain characters appeared, you could go, "Yeah. Gonna die."

Iain M. Banks. I read the first of his Culture novels because I'd heard so many people raving about them. The world was interesting, the Culture was nifty. But any character that was somewhat interesting, you knew would die a pointless death. Sure, part of the point was that senseless death happens in war, but the execution was lacking. Also, the only character I couldn't wait to see bite it was one of the only survivors. e_e

I collected every Redwall novel that came out during my early teens until I realized I was reading the exact same book over and over and over again. It wasn't a bad book, exactly, but it was the same song and dance every time--unskilled warrior grows in strength through the powers of friendship, conquers evil vermin hordes, a few riddles, a couple of very samey songs/poems, and 987 pages of people eating stuff. It doesn't help that Brian Jacques doesn't believe in sympathetic villains or antiheroes, either.

Looking back, I think I mainly enjoyed the over-the-top violence--one of the stronger points of the series was that Jacques didn't pull punches when it came to boiling people alive or having them eaten by piranhas. ...well, the vermin, anyway. The good guys died, but they pretty much never died horribly. BUT HEY, THAT'S HOW THE WORLD WORKS, RIGHT??

David Eddings.

Robert Jordan.

Does Laurell K. Hamilton count? She started okay, or at least not eyeball-stabbingly bad, but she's managed to devolve throughout every book while still being samey and dull. Even the bizarre pseudo-bestial sex scenes take a left turn at Albuquerque and wind up in Dullsville.

I hate to say this but...

Peter David, at least in Star Trek novels, has kinda hit the rut. Especially Before Dishonor, which managed to be both continuity-breaking from Keith R.A. DeCandido's Q & A and continuity-snarling at the same time (because if you hadn't read his previous works Vendetta or New Frontier, you'd be a little lost).

Tungsten Monk wrote:

Does Laurell K. Hamilton count? She started okay, or at least not eyeball-stabbingly bad, but she's managed to devolve throughout every book while still being samey and dull. Even the bizarre pseudo-bestial sex scenes take a left turn at Albuquerque and wind up in Dullsville.

Yes. Even before her novels took a turn for the crap, they tended to get formulaic. Which is fine, but it only got worse as the series went on. (Full disclosure: I've only read up through Blue Moon, and that's as far as I'm willing to go). The romance crap has gotten annoying, as Anita started out rather insecure about her looks, described as built like a short Sarah Connor circa T2 with curly black hair, had scars all over her arms, and was also pretty heavily sexually repressed. Then she fucks Jean-Claude (who earlier talked about beauty being subjective and how the concept of beauty has changed over the centuries), and all of a sudden everyone wants to get in her pants, everyone keeps telling her how pretty she is, and she has to fend off suitors and jealous girls with a stick. The scars are rarely mentioned, if at all.

The books have arrived at a point where I wanted to start a drinking game. E.g.,

Take a shot when:
Anita points her gun at someone and they say, "You'd really do it. You'd really kill me."
Anita gets into a pissing contest with cops over whether or not she counts as a "civvie."
Anita talks about "cop eyes."
Anita takes down muscular men far larger than her in a fight after pointing out that as a very short woman, she's at an extreme physical disadvantage against virtually everyone only a few pages back.
Anita fireman carries someone twice her size despite bad knees.
Anita erroneously advertises Glaser Safety Slugs as "Glaser Safety Rounds" and exaggerates their capabilities, turning her 9mm Browning Hi-Power into Alucard's Jackal, only better because it holds more bullets and won't go through walls.
Richard whines about Anita's pragmatic stance on killing.
Richard whines about being a werewolf.
Richard whines about having to kill things like Anita because he's a werewolf.
Hell, just drink the fucking bottle whenever Richard shows up. Least. Tolerable. Love interest. Ever.
A new man appears on the scene with glorious, shoulder-length hair. In Missouri. Bonus shot if he's also muscular.

And so on.

Penguin wrote:

Anita Blake stuff.

Kippurbird on LJ did a very good chapter-by-chapter review of one of these good awful things. It's only when books are broken down do you realize how truly horrifying they are.

Hmm. Looks like there's only a sporking of Danse Macabre, and that's farther than I've read. I'll have to give it a look.

Penguin wrote:

Hmm. Looks like there's only a sporking of Danse Macabre, and that's farther than I've read. I'll have to give it a look.

It's loltastic. There's this part were Anita gets kissed by a were mermaid. It shines a light on Hamilton's homophobia.

Also there is a drinking game.

I want to nominate S.M. Sterling. Now, to be fair, I've only read one of his books (Dies the Fire,) so maybe I found I just found the one turd in an otherwise stellar body of work. That said, the book was just. . . dull. The characters were just too goddamn capable when faced with a modern-world-ending tweak to the laws of physics, so it really deflated the challenges they faced. You never got the feeling that they were ever in any actual danger. Also, they were insanely lucky, made worse by the fact that the author kept lampshading it, as if that somehow excused it.

I was just. . . bored. The premise was interesting, but it was accomplished in such a contrived, unexplained way (though I hear later books rectify this) and the characters dealt with it so well you never really bought it.

Tungsten Monk wrote:

Does Laurell K. Hamilton count? She started okay, or at least not eyeball-stabbingly bad, but she's managed to devolve throughout every book while still being samey and dull. Even the bizarre pseudo-bestial sex scenes take a left turn at Albuquerque and wind up in Dullsville.

Actually, I started to get pissed off at the second book already, when Hamilton keeps hammering on Jean-Claude's 'voice like a silk teddy'. What the hell am I supposed to make of that anyway?

And then there are those insane scenes in which either Jean-Claude or someone else asks her to come by because he has something REALLY IMPORTANT to tell her, and then another powerful vampire or wererat or whatever comes by, beats her up, rapes her, or locks her up, and JC can't do anything about it. Then Anita breaks free, and NO ONE EVER mentions why JC called her over in the first place. That happens all the time: Anita goes somewhere to do something, is interrupted, and manages to only just escape with her life, and you don't have a clue what she wanted to do in the first place, why, and why she hasn't tried to do so when she was there anyway.

That, and the scene in book three (or is it four, I forgot) in which Anita and Richard passionately kiss just after Richard has thrown up after seeing a snuff movie. Sorry. That's just disgusting.

And I got really bored with Anita's constant whining about how short she is, that she collects penguins, and her insistence to keep telling me what kind of clothes and shoes she's wearing. She suffers of the Bella syndrome: everybody keeps telling her how lovely she is, but I can only see a tiny bitch with an attitude.

And...Second Robert Jordan!
First book was nice, second book was awesome, third book showed promise of more awesomeness, and then the whole thing collapsed like a puddle of puke. Such a shame.

Another author, which I have just discovered and am going to discard as soon as I've finished the last book, is Cornelia Funke. I antidoted the movie Inkheart, because its love for books made me fuzzily warm and happy. The first book is quite ok, bit boring, just like parts in the movie, but nice. The second book and the third even more, however, make me believe that mrs Funke is actually not all that grand as she's made out to be.

Seldom have I seen characters walk from one place and then back again so.bloody.often. Rarely have I been so unexcited about a main character lying feverish with a shot wound in a damp cave with White Ladies surrounding him and whispering for his soul. Hell, I love hurt and angst and fever-ridden characters...but he gets shot in chapter 4 and by page 488 he's still recovering, and I just couldn't give a damn about whether he lived or died. People are so toe-crampingly stupid and annoying in especially the third book I've been resorting to playing video games deep into the night just so I won't have time to read before I go to sleep.

kleine_kat wrote:

Another author, which I have just discovered and am going to discard as soon as I've finished the last book, is Cornelia Funke. I antidoted the movie Inkheart, because its love for books made me fuzzily warm and happy. The first book is quite ok, bit boring, just like parts in the movie, but nice. The second book and the third even more, however, make me believe that mrs Funke is actually not all that grand as she's made out to be.

Thanks for letting me know the story doesn't get more interesting. I bought the first and second books because of the cries of AWESOME!!!, and was a bit underwhelmed by the first. It was, y'know, okay, but nothing that some people claim rivals "The Neverending Story."

However, I don't know about Funke being mediocre in general, I did enjoy her "Thief Lord" and "Dragon Rider" a lot, it's just that her most hyped series happens to be not quite as good as her other works in my opinion.

kleine_kat wrote:

And I got really bored with Anita's constant whining about how short she is, that she collects penguins, and her insistence to keep telling me what kind of clothes and shoes she's wearing. She suffers of the Bella syndrome: everybody keeps telling her how lovely she is, but I can only see a tiny bitch with an attitude.

Plus, she makes all of us with plush penguin collections and Browning Hi-Powers look bad. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

ETA:

kleine_kat wrote:

That, and the scene in book three (or is it four, I forgot) in which Anita and Richard passionately kiss just after Richard has thrown up after seeing a snuff movie. Sorry. That's just disgusting.

I blame Richard. Once he was more than "lol this guy I met when he was naked," the death knell of the series was rung.

Dan Brown. He doesn't look mediocre if you read only one of his books, but when you read more and discover he just writes the same book over and over with the characters and places switched up...

David Weber and his Honor Harrington military sci-fi series. The later Honor Harrington books are nothing but Honor being endlessly described as being exotically beautiful in a non-conventional sort of way to everyone but herself, the relative goodness/badness of every single character in the series being determined by how they personally react to Honor (hint: if they hate her guts for whatever reason, they're a BAD GUY, if they love her with all their heart, they're GOOD), and pointless and annoying digressions/infodumps (I swear, one time in one book, when a character was sneaking through an enemy brig on an enemy starship and happens to kill some enemy guys, Weber digresses for, IIRC, TWO PAGES about the enemy nation's form of educational system. I shit you not).

Yeah, I definitely got that vibe from the Honor book I attempted to read. I didn't get a feel for Honor's character at all, but I certainly got a vivid description of her exotic pet lizard thing that I could have cared less about.

Chaltab wrote:

I didn't get a feel for Honor's character at all, but I certainly got a vivid description of her exotic pet lizard thing that I could have cared less about.

I may not be the biggest Weber fan in the universe, but calling Nimitz a lizard? Although I do think the treecat has more personality than his owner.

Maybe I'm misremembering the description, but I got the impression that the treecat was some kind of reptilian thing.

Chaltab wrote:

Maybe I'm misremembering the description, but I got the impression that the treecat was some kind of reptilian thing.

No, it's a six-limbed sentient psychic cat that loves Honor so much it does everything for her but give her orgasms.

Honor is such a blatant fucking canon Mary Sue, it's painful.

Wow... I must have blocked that from my head, because that sounds 'completely awful' when I just remembered it as 'pointless'. I guess that's why I gave up on the book after a couple chapters.