If your story is featured in this post, you suck.

Faerie Tale by Raymond Feist

F-list, I want to murder this book.

It's just so bad that there I can't just say "da da da." I have to go into the depths of what it does wrong, because it's pioneering new and exciting fields of bad.

To start off with, nothing happens for 200 pages. I'm serious. There's no drama, there's no conflict, there's no suspense. It's just family togetherness and teen nuptials and shit like that. It's like Jon & Kate Plus Three. Now, look at the cover art.



Look at that! There's a winged monkey, there's a naked kid, there's glowing people... it looks exciting, right? I'll tell you what, that shit is all in the last fifty pages.

Hell, just listen to the backcover. "Life was wonderful, full of magic--and about to be altered irrevocably by a Magic more real than any he dared imagine. For with the Magic came the Bad Thing, and the Faerie, and then the Fool... and the resurrection of a primordial war with a forgotten People (does that really need to be capitalized?)--a war that not only the Hastings but the whole human race could lose."

That sounds pretty neat, right? Well, not to Raymond Feist. He spends so much more time with the "life was wonderful, full of magic" than the Bad Thing or the Faerie, and trust me, no war. All the "primordial war" amounts to is the humans and elves shuffle their shoes and go "you know, war... not that great. Let's just go check for news on the Watchmen Ultimate Cut."

Okay, so you're thinking, why is seriousfic being such a bitch? Feist is obviously building tension and letting us care about the characters? Well, first off, screw you! And second, no tension. All that happens is that every chapter ends with this tall guy and his dwarf going "soon, soon" and "they won't be able to stop us this time!" That might be ominous the first few times, but Feist goes to that well, like, twenty times. By the end I was like "well, it's been ten pages, guess we're due for this tall guy and his evil monkey to stand around and be menacing." Not. Scary.

So, the plot. The Hastings, father Phil, wife Gloria, daughter Gabbie, teens Sean and Patrick, have moved into a house that's been abandoned for years (da na!). Soon after, they meet noirishly-named hunk o' beef Jack Cole, who romances Gabbie; Phil's old writing teacher Aggie; and Barney, the old Irish drunk, who I guess is the story's token ethnic character. Oh, and there are also these two researchers interested in their house (protip: if paranormal researchers of any stripe are interested in your prospective house, don't move in. You'll just end up going to them for exposition on how screwed you are), Gary and Mark. Good luck telling them apart. See, this is why you should include minorities in your work. Sean and Phil and Rashid are a lot easier to tell apart than Sean and Phil and Bob.

And all these people are exactly alike. There's nothing that sets any of their voices apart. There's one page where Gabbie, the teenage daughter, talks about how the land in California is sarcasian or whatever, and it's all desert even when there are plants, and I'm like "Yes, that is exactly how a teenage girl talks." No reason she can't talk like that, of course, it's just that you could've put that information in any of the characters' mouths and it would've come out the same. It's like Planet of the Mormons. Everyone gets along, there's no character flaws or distinctive patter to the dialogue, nope of these people are interesting. There's a page where Gary (or Mark) is shocked and so he "does something without his customary wry quip" and all I could think was "Hey, book, I'll decide if these quips are wry. PS, you have to make quips for them to be wry."

So, okay, the premise is that all these elven fairy tales are true and they're living in the woods outside the Hastings house, so you'd think there'd be some menacing done. Unless you count the aforementioned standing around and rubbing their hands together, nope! Gabbie meets Wayland Smith and he reshoes her horse while she thinks about how hot he is (seriously, that chapter is pretty much entirely "she's just about to cream her shorts, folks!" Spine-tingling).

Oh, and just to keep with that trend, there's a long chapter where Puck tries to rape Gabbie. Now, this is where the book goes out of its way to piss me off, because on the backcover there's this blurb from the Washington Post about how the book is replete with "more than a little stylish eroticism" and I'm guessing this is what they were talking about, and what the book is drawing attention to by using that blurb, because it kinda wants to have its cake and eat it too. It's a rape, it's a seduction, it's a rape, it's a seduction. Thin, thin ice.

It's very much written in this skeevy "his fingers caressed her sensitive love buds and his tongue darted out to greet her lips... oh, by the way, she's totally not into it" way. Then afterward, she's just "meh, whatever" about the whole thing. Which is a plot point and which could be scary, the notion than an elf has the power to rape you and then even rob you of your horror and outrage at the violation, but it isn't played like that at all. And whenever they refer to the rape again, the elves go "Ah, your daughter invited him with her passion" because she was thinking of her boyfriend (JACK COLE: PRIVATE EYE) at the time. Yes, ladies, thinking about sex means you're asking for it. So don't dress slutty and remember to only think about Jesus.

And it doesn't even go anywhere. The real Puck shows up and goes "no, it was this other fairy trying to frame me," so you think "hey, maybe Gabbie's gonna have a chance to get back at this guy" or something. Nope. Last five pages, they go "by the way, the King of the Unseelie Court (who is already dead) raped Gabbie while looking like Puck to get back at him for something. I'm not even going to get into what." Yeah, thanks for the ten pages of SEXY TIEM rape. That was so vital to the plot.

Then, two hundred plus pages in, Standing Around Guy and his sidekick Standing Around Lad go "the Compact is broken! Let's wreck shit!" And I'm like, FINALLY! Because remember the cover?



The Wild Hunt? Fairies? Elves? That could be pretty scary! We've got a dozen characters, let's put them in some trouble. It's been two hundred pages, if we don't care about them by now, we're never going to. Get it done.

( And here's where the story completely sucks its own cock into its mouth. )

Just terrible, terrible, terrible writing, and the author has rape fantasies. Avoid.

Lesson learned: Before making your main character an author stand-in, make sure you yourself are interesting.


Shrooms

I didn't remember why I put Shrooms on my Netflix queue and, having watched it, I still don't. It's a slasher movie with no gore or nudity, so two strikes right there. It has an okay premise - an Irish slasher movie with the characters fucked up on shrooms so they actually have an excuse for acting like idjits - but... well, I just said there was no nudity or gore. How interesting can it be?

Lesson learned: If you're going to make a movie with a twist ending, make sure the movie is worthwhile UP UNTIL the twist endings. Also, make sure the twist ending isn't ass-tarded.


Weaveworld by Clive Barker

This book repeats itself three times. I'm serious, it needs more pruning than Donald Trump's hairpiece (funny AND topical!). The villain tries to get control of Weaveworld three times, and each time he's foiled he reinvents himself and comes back for more. And the plot doesn't really advance for all of that. The characters and their relationships stay pretty much the same, right through to the end. This should've either been three books or one PLOT.

( Spoilers. It's either find out from me or read through seven hundred pages, your call. )