I have not read all the annoying epic fantasy series.

[snarp]

I'm trying to educate myself culturally. What are the classic annoying fantasy series that I need to have read, as a nerd?

Notice that I'm talking about annoying fantasy series - like, stuff where every single book has the same plot, or the cast of characters grows by six or seven people every book and every book gets longer because they all need to have stuff to do, or the last eight books have pretty much just been about the author's hat bondage fetish, or whatever.

I have read Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books and Raymond Feist's Magician books.

Comments

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Damn, I was going to say Eddings!

There is so much that is wrong in the world of Eddings, in both politics and story, but he's skilled enough to make it pretty entertaining anyway. Even as a sophisticated, enlightened adult, I got swept up all over again when I went back to reread the Belgariad--I could see all the things that were wrong with it, but I enjoyed it anyway.

(Also, while I think he's wrong-headed about all kinds of things, it always seems superficial--the books are sexist, but in a smug, cutesy, parroting-the-received-wisdom-of-gender-politics way, not anything really thoughtfully misogynistic; the race tropes are exasperating and offensive, but not malicious; the politics are ridiculous, but in a way I find very typical of the fantasy genre, that kind of thing. YMMV on how much that might genuinely offend.)

Xanth, maybe? Dragonlance? Forbidden Realms? I know I read more drek than that, but I guess most of the drek I read wasn't that memorable.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Dragonlance isn't that annoying. It's just... not very good. Xanth definitly counts *shudders*

Really there are so many bad epic fantasy, it's hard to remember them all.

Oh, did someone mention Terry Goodkind? I managed to avoid him luckily, but from what I heard he's an exceptionnal good example of horrible epic fantasy.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

DAMN YOU GUYS. :( I wanted to say it too.

I think Dragonlance might be too niche-y...

Shannara was such a bad ripoff that once I started predicting the plot and finished the first book, I didn't read any more--and that was BEFORE I got burned out on fantasy and quit reading it. (That was about 15 years ago or so, and the only thing I regret about that move is that it meant it took me a while to be talked into reading both Harry Potter and the Locke Lamore books, because of the fantasy taint.)