Epic Fantasy is awful, the entire genre. In general, the books in the series follow the same plot, which involves a pauper who is actually king, his mysterious mentor, a magical artifact or two, a poorly constructed love interest, and a rising evil who imperils civilization.
I will never understand why anybody considers the works of Terrys Goodkind or Brooks to be readable, let alone well written. Darkover and CJ Cherryh also baffle me. Maybe they get better later, but I still cannot understand how so many people I've met include them in the canons of fantasy literature.
I still cannot believe that I paid for any of the above books. Unfortunately, having purchased such, and other like books, I then made several unfortunate attempts to read most of them. I have long since concluded that there is very little well written fantasy not intended for children. Which is why I still read children's books on occasion.
It seems like the authors in this genre generally had a fantasy world they wanted to write about, but, were unable to come up with a plot. In fact, I'm fairly certain that that's the case, because I made that mistake myself. I, fortunately, realized I had no plot and prevented a literary travesty, as I suspect most such teenagers do.
The absolute worst offender, is /The Iron Tower/, by Dennis McKiernan. This book makes Robert Jordan look like an outright literary genius. It is as if a mentally-challenged twelve year old decided to write an indelibly racist version of Lord of the Rings. I simply could not believe that any book could be written so horribly, could not believe that a book so awful could ever be published, and, like watching a train wreck, I could not look away. If the writing had been better, it would have made a decent parody of the genre, but the writing itself was awful.
There are a few other books I've purchased which I've also sorely regretted, for the most part, I learned to put them down since /Iron Tower/. Most of these books were bad erotica disguised as fantasy or science fiction.
The very worst book I've ever read was vanity published, so that was my fault for not suspecting anything odd in a 22 dollar paperback published by "Writers Club Press."
As far as classic literature goes, /War and Peace/ is boring, but I'll put off judging it until I learn Russian. Maybe it's just a bad translation.
I greatly disliked /Of Mice and Men/. Part of it may have been that I came to really dislike that English teacher though, and anything associated with her class.
