I Am Completely Serious

It was a sign of my gradually developing maturity as a reader and a person when I first began to suspect that, though occasionally fun, Mercedes Lackey is an awful, awful writer. A really awful, self-indulgent writer who only approaches readability when she's co-writing with someone more talented than she is, but even those books are really not winners, because, as with so many Anne McCaffrey books, poor characterization, unsubtle social/political agendas and ridiculous plots torpedo whatever premises bad prose doesn't.

I wish I'd read the magic horse books when I was a teen, and would have been able to appreciate them. Instead, I only read the elf books, and the ones about the sexy witch detective, which for some reason, filled me with deep loathing at the time, I can't even remember why. I'd like to say it was that slowly developing maturity, which eventually became the reflexive rage I now feel whenever I encounter really bad art, but I actually still remember Piers Anthony fondly (!), so probably not.