Two of the Worst Novels I've Ever Read

All right, it's time for me to roll up my sleeves and show off the big guns!  Here's a post I've been looking forward to making for a while now: It's about two of the worst novels I've ever read!

My selections kind of surprised me, especially since one of them is something I read back when I was a teen (could have been in '96 or '97).  I could have easily forgotten it since it was just one book I read out of dozens in my high school years (what, you think I actually studied in Study Hall?).

Now, I could just write about the worst novel I've ever read, but when I thought what the worst was, these two titles came to mind, and I just can't agree on which one should be awarded the prestigious title of "worst."  So what the hell, I'll go over both of them ... especially since both books have one thing in common (which I'll get to later).

However, before I get to the two actual books, let me mention two other books.  These were from a print-on-demand publisher who sold them on Amazon.com, written by small-time authors.  I bought the books to help support the authors, plus I was curious about the quality of their work.  Did they have the chops to deliver a great story, or did they actually produce drivel and were lucky enough to get it printed?  The answer is a little of both.  I have no doubt the writers were capable of producing good work ... it's just that the books I bought weren't it.

The first one is something called "Defiance" or "Desperation."  I have no idea since I don't have the copy anymore.  It was about a group of warriors who return from one of the Crusades and learn that dark supernatural forces have taken over their homeland.  It's kind of a hokey story, and the ending was just plain stupid.  But the book's biggest failing was that it was boring.  Somehow, the narrative tone made the book feel like a chore to read.  Add the fact that the characters weren't interesting in the least, and you had yourself a real snorefest.

The second one was called "Calliope's Return."  It's about a young woman whose village gets wiped off the map by evildoers, so she has to travel with a wise elf and some other guy to not only survive but eventually get vengeance.  Not that Calliope is like Red Sonja, mind you; she's a bright and bubbly character in spite of her troubles.  This book was more entertaining than the other one; its biggest problem is that there are several bouts of an intense lack of editing.  Several times I came across pages with hordes of misspelled words and broken sentences, and it was on such a level that it would have been embarrassing if I had been responsible for this book.  Didn't the author know how to use spell check?  Or do simple proofreading?  The editors surely didn't, and this book convinced me that the editors (such as they are) don't give too much of a damn about the quality of the books they publish.

So, those books were pretty bad ... but again, they are not the two worst I've ever read.  Those were made by high-end publishers and written by professional authors who should have known better than to include such gaping flaws in their storylines.

The first one I'll talk about is "Cold Lake."  At least, I think it's called that.  I could be wrong since I don't have it anymore.  It was written by a Tom Clancy wannabe, so you know it's about secret agents and government cover-ups.  Indeed, the main character is a man who was trained by the feds to go on black operations, usually alone.  In the beginning he is an unassuming man--a stranger in a small town--but after shoving a pen into the throat of an overzealous soccer dad, he reveals his dark past to his new landlord, a single mother of one.  I think he gets shot or injured by police after doing his pen trick, so his landlord visits him in the hospital.  And wouldn't you know it, the man feels so bad about what he did.  He said he didn't mean to use that pen in such vicious fashion; it was just that he felt threatened by the overweight man, so his training took over his body and made him do it before he even realized what he was doing.

Oh, it gets better.  Much of the book is spent in flashbacks concerning the man's years as a black ops agent.  In that time, he was under the command of one general; he received his missions from the general and carried them out to a T.  Then one day, he gets a mission that is unlike any previous one: Instead of targeting a foreign power, the agent is to break into the home of another American general and torture him for information.  (Torture?  Before the Bush Years?  Yes, it's true!)  And so he does, and in such hideous fashion, as the agent's idea of torture is to strap the general into a chair and cut him to make him bleed whenever the general resists giving info.  As you do.

Not only is this some really effed up way to get information, but this starts a series of events that is just impossible to believe.  You see, after some hours have passed and the general is made into a bloody mess, the general's daughter steps in.  And wouldn't you know it, it's the woman whom the agent had been dating!  She screams upon seeing her boyfriend stand over her father who's been reduced to a slab of red meat, and the loverboy agent flees the scene.  The agent later figures out that his commander had set him up.  I don't remember the reason for the setup; maybe it was because the agent had outlived his usefulness, or because the general he tortured had become a liability to his commander.  Maybe it was both.  At any rate, if my memory serves me well, the general the agent tortured had actually died from blood loss.  Pretty sure of it, so yeah, the torture was that bad.

Oh, but it gets better.  Years later, after the incident with the pen, the agent escapes from the hospital and is found by none other than his old flame, the girl whose father had been tortured.  She's now a tabloid writer who wishes to go into real journalism instead of writing about "Bat Boy."  Upon reading the story of some nutcase who jabbed a pen into a guy's neck, she recognizes the nutcase and figures she must get to him before the authorities do.  Not because she wants revenge, but because she knows who the real culprits were behind her father's death.

Let me rephrase that: She doesn't blame her old flame for her father's death; she blames the commanding general who ordered her old flame to carry out the torture.

She somehow finds the former agent while he's on the run from police.  She gets him into her car and drives him to safety.  They then go into another town and check into a motel.  There they talk for a bit, and then they have sex.

That last bit of plot development was so deliciously absurd, I simply must write it again: The tabloid writer not only rescues the former black ops agent who's on the run, she ends up having sex with him.  Him, the man who had killed her father by making him bleed to death.

Yes, I know she did it because, as I just wrote earlier, she understands that her old flame had just been following orders, plus she must still love him.  But come on, he killed her father for shit's sake!  He was responsible for making her walk into a room and witness her dad as a bloody mess.  He may have been following orders in the interest of "national security" or something, but he also proved--right in front of her--that he was capable of performing such a gross and heinous act of violence.  He may as well have stapled a sign on his forehead saying, "Psychopath For Hire."

This woman, you see, is the ultimate male fantasy: The most understanding girlfriend of all time.  It doesn't matter if you bleed her father out, shoot her dog, and defecate on her carpet; as long as you had special military training and were deceived by your commander, all will be forgiven.  And if you give her time, she'll be perfectly willing to do the twisty tango with you, no strings attached.

Okay, it's not a big stretch of the imagination to buy the fact that she has a boundless ocean of understanding.  But what I find very hard to believe is that she would still want to pursue a romantic relationship with this man.  As they were making sweet, sweet whoopie, was she ever turned off by the fact that he was the one who killed her father?  He may have been just following orders and been deceived, but it was through his own two hands that her father was murdered.  (Of course, this could all be excused if the woman was clearly a psychopath herself, but that wasn't the case here.)

The author may be a romantic, but his theory that an American black ops agent can have his cake and eat it too is just plain insulting.  Not even James Bond is that surreal.

The rest of the book is pretty insulting, too.  It involves the former agent turning himself in and bringing his former commander in to court, and the author tries to wrap everything up with some sloppy plot convenience.  And yes, this means that I actually finished the book without giving up on it in a huff.  I usually do finish the books that I start, expect for maybe two.

Before I start on the second book, I must confess that I'm a bit of a chicken.  I know of the title and author of this book, yet I don't think it would be a good idea to reveal them here.  For, you know ... reasons.

The two main characters of this book are the Big Hunky Hero and his super-model wife.  They are also a king and queen who are up against an evil empire that strives to cover the world with satanic imagery (I think the emperor was Alice Cooper or something).  The Hunky Hero and his wife get separated by a devious villain, and so it's up to the wife to take command of the military of several allied nations.  (I'll just call her "commander" from now on.)

One day an officer from a nation to the north arrives in the military camp, carrying a message from his queen.  He and the commander are apparently good friends who go way back, as they share a hug and the commander asks the officer about the queen.  The lovely moment quickly turns sour, as the officer has some bad news: The queen has decided not to aid the alliance.  She will send no soldiers to add to the alliance military, and the officer fully supports this, even if it means victory against the empire is less assured.

The commander is livid.  She calls the queen and her messenger cowards--an opinion shared by several others in the grand meeting tent that this scene is taking place in.  Those are pretty bold words, especially given the supposed friendship between the commander and the officer, and if the situation had stopped there, I might not be writing about this book here.  But the commander takes things one step further, accusing the officer and his queen of treason.  The queen (if my memory serves me well) had signed the treaty that made the alliance possible, so she is technically obliged to send troops to the encampment.  Going against that duty and breaking the treaty is of course a serious offense.

And according to the commander, the penalty of this offense ... is death.

The officer can't believe what he's hearing, but instead of giving himself up he stands his ground.  And then, all of a sudden ... he drops dead right in the middle of the tent.  In this fantasy world, you see, wizards and sorcerers exist, and there are a few present in the commander's tent.  One of them had decided that the officer's fate was pretty much sealed, so he/she may as well carry out the sentence right then and there.

The commander's reaction?  She looks around at her advisers and says, "I don't want to know who it was."  She then storms out, and neither she nor the reader ever discover who it was that cast the spell.

That, my friend, is just terrible.  Hell, it wasn't just terrible, it was stupid.  The queen was surely expecting her messenger to return.  If word of his swift execution were to reach her, then the alliance would gain another enemy.  They would then have foes to the north as well as the south--a situation that certainly didn't have to be.

And of course, the officer did not having it coming.  Call him a coward if you must, but did he truly have to die?  He was just the messenger, and he and his queen didn't mean the alliance any harm.  The worst thing they did was to agree not to help the alliance--it's not like the queen decided to attack the alliance for some crazy reason.

Is it just me, or was this swift execution (and the quick decision to do it) a disproportionate response?  A better response would be for the commander to express her disappointment (or hell, call him a coward if she must, I don't care).  She could then accuse the officer and his queen of secretly allying with the evil empire (or at least suspect as much), and then let him go ... with scouts tracking his movements and reporting back anything suspicious.  These scouts could even reach the queendom and report anything strange going on there.  That way, if the accusations/suspicions were untrue, then no harm would be done.  Plus, on the off chance that the queen really was forging a secret alliance with the empire, then the alliance military wouldn't be caught off guard once battle with imperial forces began.  As for the accusation of treason--the least the commander could do was promise the officer that repercussions would be inevitable once the war with the empire was over.

But no, the commander decided to kill the officer, who had been a longtime friend of hers.  Cold, man, cold!

Something that these two books have in common is that their authors tried their best to justify their protagonists committing cold-blooded murder.  The characters are supposed to be "heroes," yet they came across as homicidal psychopaths.  In "Cold Lake," the murderer was a black ops agent working for the American military, and he had tortured and killed an innocent general who didn't know anything because his commander had set him up.  And in ... that "other" book ... an officer who was only delivering a message was sentenced to death for the crime of perceived treason.  Oh, and let's not forget cowardice, which seemed to be an equally grave offense.  Overall, these books gave me an insight into the mindsets of their respective authors ... and I don't know about you, but that runs a chill up my spine.

In my books, I've had characters kill others, but in each instance the reason was self-defense.  You can never go wrong with self-defense, for it is well on the side of "justified" on the line of morality.  Of course, to make things interesting, you can try to tip-toe on that line, give your story and characters an edge to them.  But if you do, tread carefully ... or Santa will leave you coal for Christmas.

As a final note, let me mention George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series (which HBO's "Game of Thrones" is based on).  In this story, there are many main characters who toe the line, and some of them believe they can make mistakes with impunity.  But remember: Many of these characters have been killed off because their mistakes ended up biting them right in the ass.

And that, my friend, is why George R.R. Martin is a boss!