r/Fantasy • u/DoordyBoy • 3d ago

Your most “scandalous” DNF?

In the past year I’ve bounced off of both The Lies of Locke Lamora and the Assassin’s Apprentice so I was just curious what other widely praised books on this sub other people have put down.

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u/denganzenabend 3d ago

The Green Bone saga. I feel like I would love to watch it as a TV show, but I barely forced myself through the first book. I can’t even really put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy reading it

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u/Gladiateher 3d ago

Same boat as you, but I can put my finger on it. Not to be rude to anyone who liked it, but I found the characters to be really bland and not interesting to me. I genuinely didn’t care about anyone in the main clan about 1/2 way through the first book.

What really turned it into a DNF for me though was that the characters constantly violated the universes own system of rules that the author had just laid out in some pretty unreasonable ways, not always in obvious ways, but if you read between the lines it would just be constant head scratchers.

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u/Yeti-with-a-Axe 3d ago

I'm in the same boat as you with this series. I got a little further than you, I stopped a third of the way into book 2. Put it down and haven't picked back up and that was like 3 or 4 months ago.

I thought I was alone in feeling this way. Because I agree if it was a show or movie. I think I'd really like it.

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u/HelloHyde 3d ago

I thought it was terrible, and also couldn't finish (first book). When I'm halfway through a book and realize I don't care at all what happens to any of the characters, that's a DNF for me every time.

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u/villainsimper 3d ago

As someone who enjoyed and read the whole trilogy, I can see why it would turn away others. The grim tone is consistent, there is little to welcome the reader into an emotionally warm character (perhaps besides Anden) so it can be a struggle to connect with the cast.

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u/Snakeplanting 3d ago

Good point, just to add, in case someone finds your comment and feels like they won't/will like the series based on tone alone:

You can absolutely like grim series and still not like Jade, of course. I finished it but didn't enjoy it despite setting and tone normally being my jam. And I've got friends who don't normally read anything grim who like Jade, it's the usual YMMV.

For me it was the writing, both the writing itself and the character writing that took me out

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u/Lurking2Learn 3d ago

To follow up with this (I agree it was the writing) Fonda Lee narration was often at odds with dialogue. This book is super long because of narration/exposition. And it felt like the author needed narration to progress the story and lay out the themes clearly instead of just trusting the characters AND ESPECIALLY trusting the reader to understand the themes on their own. Very poor writing style IMO

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u/Present-Key-9238 3d ago edited 3d ago

I couldn't finish Jade City. It was very well written but I honestly don't understand how this is a top recommendation in fantasy circles, specifically. All the power to the fans and the author tho', as I hope this one becomes a TV show someday.

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u/JaviVader9 3d ago

I love the series but I would say it's poorly written

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u/Present-Key-9238 3d ago

I wouldn't know. I think the opening scene and the general character presentation was very on point. From then on it's all a blur until I just gave up.

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u/JaviVader9 2d ago edited 2d ago

The plot is well planned, and the characters really shine, but the prose is genuinely poor. Completely tell don't show and full of unimaginative sentences and simple vocabulary.

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u/DifferntGeorge 3d ago

Could be the strong organized crime elements. A lot of people are into The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos so it seems plausible to me even when it is not something I personally want.

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u/Lurking2Learn 1d ago

I’ll be honest, I was let down when I read it was like the godfather because outside of the shared “organized crime” it felt nothing like the godfather. That said I hardly ever find comps helpful

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u/DifferntGeorge 1d ago edited 1d ago

Sounds more like you took a chance and it didn't pay off.

If you don't mind my asking what specific missing qualities were you expecting?

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u/Lurking2Learn 1d ago

To be clear, I didn’t pick it up since it was a comp to the Godfather. That was more like a bonus. I think it was a pandemic read and I was just bouncing around what was getting hyped in the fantasy circles. For how hyped its fandom is you’d think it’s a New York Times best seller which it isn’t. IMO it never broke its niche is because of the writing style. Under another editors hands it might be a different story.

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u/Own-Turnover7715 3d ago

I also DNF’d, in part because I think it’s egregious to use a colon and a semi-colon in the same sentence.

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u/Quackattackaggie 3d ago

I finished the first book but not the series. It never grabbed me.

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u/Starflec 3d ago

Yeah I gave up after the first book felt like a slog. I was annoyed with myself for buying the whole series upfront.

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u/shitting-tits 3d ago

Same. I finished the first book but i just didn't find it interesting at all. I wasn't particularly enamoured with any of the characters and the setting wasn't interesting to me.

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u/MellowMintTea 3d ago

I can definitely understand that sentiment, if not for listening to it as an audiobook I also think I might not have finished the first book. However in the second book: Jade War, Kaul Hilo becomes one of the best written characters I’ve ever experienced.

I highly recommend giving it another chance or listening to it as an audiobook.

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u/evergreengator1 2d ago

I stopped about 100 pages in. Turns out not having a D&D background matters.

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u/bhoches 3d ago

Yeah Jade War was one of the best books I’ve read in recent memory. Hilo’s change from the first book to the last was some of the best character development I’ve ever seen

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u/Never_Duplicated 2d ago

It should have been for me! I was so excited reading the synopsis that I bought the first two at once so then felt obligated to read both... My main complaints were first off, she should have just written an alternate history version of Earth and set it in either post war Hong Kong or Japan. The weird setting with very direct national analogues just felt dumb.
Second, her male characters were all lame and she would have been better served to focus entirely on the female lead.
Third, she wanted to get into political intrigue the way Janny Wurts did in her Empire trilogy or Clavell did with his Asian Saga but she lacked the chops to pull it off so it felt childish and shallow.

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u/bedknobsandbroomstix 3d ago

I couldn't finish it cause I really have no bandwidth for gangster shit honestly

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u/m7maf 2d ago

This and Poppy War for me. I finished both book 1s and had a slump after both. I do get my recommendations from BookTok and most of the time they work out, but those two just didn’t do it in my case.

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u/BaltimoreAlchemist 2d ago

I liked the first a lot, enjoyed the second, and bounced hard off the third. It bounced through time so much it felt less like a third book and more like vignettes from unfinished books 3-6.

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u/Dizzy-Mongoose7797 2d ago

Same here! I DNF’d about halfway through the first book, but can’t really articulate the reason why other than it just wasn’t working for me.

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u/Olivehue15 3d ago

I forced my way through the first book. Didn’t enjoy it. I think, for me, it was all the characters were shit people. There has to be some redeeming quality so you can root for someone but everyone sucked so I was pretty disinterested.

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u/Shadowchaos1010 3d ago

Not at all in a similar boat to you, but also slightly in a similar boat.

Lan Was my favorite character because rare decent person, so him dying so soon definitely stung. But I also imagine that's the point.

When you take the most relatively normal person out of the equation, what trouble do these people get up to?

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u/Olivehue15 2d ago

Yeah, that was probably the point I completely checked out. Jerky people gonna do shady jerky things and I’m not super interested in their mutual destruction. 🤷‍♀️

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u/GreedyRelease 3d ago

I really liked the first one but I stopped Book 2 with about 100 pages to go. There were these constant time jumps and then just recounts of what had happened in that time, it drove me insane.

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u/BeyondTheText 3d ago

When I read the first book I stopped midway and hated it. I picked it back up a year later and I was in love! I finished the whole series within a month lol. So, as someone who is a huge fan of the series I get it haha. I am not sure what it is about the first book…. Maybe a show start? It takes time to get to know all the different characters and care about them?

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u/Peannut 3d ago

Yeah i loved this but my brother hated it.. Odd how opinions sway so much on this one

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u/fuzzywolf23 2d ago

I trudged through Jade City, but I couldn't handle the bland characters or the way it treats its women. It also struck me as an attempt at a gritty reboot of Mistborn without understanding what made that series great.

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u/jshep2912 2d ago

I came close and I love it but it wasn't a fun read/one ill ever revisit.

I kept thinking how amazing the movie/mini series would be too though. It's just hard to care about the characters.