So Bad It's Horrible/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}{{Darth Wiki}}

* ''[[Alfie's Home]]'' is an attack on homosexuals thinly disguised as a story about a boy who was molested by his uncle. There are holes in both the plot and the logic. The drawings look like drunken [[Schoolhouse Rock]] concept sketches, seem to defy all perspective, and could have been done in [[MS Paint]]. Even worse, it plugs therapy based on a [[Cure Your Gays|pseudoscientific theory]] that had been discredited ''decades earlierprior''. AndWhat's itworse, the book was aimed ''[[What Do You Mean It's for Kids?|at children]]''. But don't take our word for it: a member of [[That Guy With The Glasses]]' forum [https://web.archive.org/web/20140102085801/http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/blogs/latest/entry/the-worst-childrens-book-ever-alfies-home will fill you in, along withon the entire book's premise and contents.]

** The title of each book is always misleading. You'd expect a completebook lie.titled For"Giving Circles" to be all exampleabout, y'know, giving circles (volunteers who come together to financially support a cause). So why, then, does ''Givingthe Circles''book have a Wikipedia article on the United Kingdom in it? While the Wikipedia article on "Giving Circles" ''is'' in the book, it only takes up one page of the 108-page book.

** The covers [http://brianbusby.blogspot.com/2011/10/alpha-beta-dada.html are] [[Epic Fail|epic failures]], such as the book on the Fieseler Fi 167 showing a [[Critical Research Failure|C-130]], and another on the 1867 Canadian Election showing '''the United States flag'''.

** The editors don't check the articles to make sure they're accurate, which means that vandalism could've endended up in the books.

** The books are often only 40-50 pages long, 100 at the absolute most, yet cost up to $100100USD. For Wikipedia articles that you can getaccess and read on the internet '''for free''' ([[Banned in China|unless you live in China]]).

* On the subject of horribly written non-fiction books, as much as we [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|want to be neutral on this author's views]], ''America's Most Dangerous Nazi'', written by A.J. Weberman, is a blatant a hit piece on a controversial politician <ref>The one who's name rhymes with Pon Raul</ref>. It is one of the most biased, one-sided, slanderous "non-fiction" books one will ever find. The cover is a entirely Photoshopped image of saidthe aforementioned politician behindstanding in front of a Nazi flag. And the back cover? aWhy, ''another'' Photoshopped picture, this one of Hitler, replacingwith Hitlerthe politician's face withreplacing said politicianHitler's face. [[Godwin's Law|Sound familiar?]] The book itself is full of one-sided arguments that try to generalize all histhe politician's supporters into the ones who are considered a [[Vocal Minority]], and it is written in the style of an informal, biased, slanderous, profane, and vulgar hit piece that dosen't even try to be neutral or examine issues objectively (the book uses words like "crap", "filth", "bastard" and "scum" to describe the supporters of the politician that the book is attacking). thatWeberman dosen'tbelieves eventhat trythe topolitician, bein neutralorder orto examinehide issueshis objectively.alleged The author believes that said politicianantisemitism, changed his views on Israel whenthe hemoment Weberman sent him histhe book. inWeberman, orderof to hide antisemitismcourse, forgettingconveniently "forgets" the fact that [[Did Not Do the Research|said politician hashad once ''defended'' Israel's actions once at a time when most other American politicians in America condemned itIsrael in aby resolution whenfor it bombedbombing Iraq]]. In short, while saidthe politician may be one of theAmerica's most divisive figures inshort Americaof Donald Trump, this''America's bookMost Dangerous Nazi'' is [[Godwin's Law]] at it's veryabsolute ''worst''.

** The author's way of advertising this book is just as horrible. He spams every single article about said politician and whenever he finds positive comments, he links to this book as if in an attempt to "convert" the politician's supporters. Unsurprisingly, most of these comments were flagged for spam.

* ''The Blah Story'' by Nigel Tomm is the second-longest novel at 11,300,000 words<ref>(theThe longest book is ''Marienbad My Love'', by Mark Leach, withat 17,000,000 words).</ref>, containing both the longest sentence and the longest coined word in English. This ''might'' have been [[So Bad It's Good]], except the book itself is boring as blah; it's written something like, "In a blah she was blah blah blah down a blah between blah roses blah blah blah her blah blah hair blah blah gently the blah blah trees..."

** A little tidbit ofthat's sure horrorto —frighten: Robert Jordan's ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' series has a total of 4,012,859 words, andspread that consists ofacross ''fifteen'' books, alleach qualifying for [[Doorstopper]] status. ''The Blah Story'' hasis nearly '''11,300,000'three times that length'' words!condensed into a single book.

* ''Blood: The Last Vampire: Night of the Beasts'' by [[Mamoru Oshii]] is a continuation of the anime film ''[[Blood: The Last Vampire]]'', which stars a vampire hunter named Saya fighting bat-like vampire monsters known as Chiropterans. Given that the film involved a lot of blood, monster-hunting, and gory action, you'd think ''Night of the bookBeast'' would be more of the same. Instead, the novel is less of a story about vampire-hunting and more of a clumsy collection of essays that fail to form any semblance of a coherent narrative. Rather than focus on Saya, the story focuses onstars a blandgeneric male student who goes fromtravels locationplace to locationplace, listening to people have philosophical discussions and debates on increasingly uninteresting topics such as body disposal, the hunter hypothesis, and religious conspiracies. Saya, meanwhile, briefly appears only three times in the entire book and barely interacts with the protagonist, if at all. The novel is such an ill-conceived mess that one can only feel sorry for the translator who had to translate Oshii's incoherent and incredibly dull ramblings.

* Books LLC's ''Wikipedia Source'' series might be an even worse example of published Wikipedia articles than the aforementioned Alphascript and Betascript Publishing. In addition to possesing all theirof Alphascript and Betascript's flaws, theBooks booksLLC's contenttitles seems to have been randomly selectedgenerated by an automated algorithm, leading to verbal diarrhea such as "[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gremlin-Interactive-Games-Allegiance-Harlequin/dp/1234596768 Gremlin Interactive Games: Loaded, Fragile Allegiance, Jungle Strike, Top Gear 3000, Harlequin, Body Harvest, Utopia: The Creation of a Nation]{{Dead link}}", andwith equally incoherent descriptions. The presentation also has the barest minimum effort put into it, with most of the covers looking like [http://www.biblio-moto-books.net/images/motorcycle_manufacturers_of_italy.jpg this.].

* Robert Newcomb's ''[[Chronicles of Blood and Stone]]'' series was billed as the next big epic fantasy series by its publisher, Del Rey, and given all sorts of heaping praise by reviewers who were clearly both bribed into giving a positive review and incapable of reading the books themselves. The first in the series, "The Fifth Sorceress", presents all women as either stupid and complacent or horrendously, disgustingly evil and corrupt; it's essentially a series of one [[Deus Ex Machina]] after another, and suggests that [[You Fail Biology Forever|pregnancies last for somewhere between 24 hours and six months]]. Oh, and any single item Newcomb created using "scientific" means in the series [[You Fail Physics Forever|defies the laws of physics]] — such as a sword with an extendable/retractable blade (perfectly balanced!) which extends or retracts with enough force to crush a person's skull withat the push of a button. Eat it, Conservation of Energy! Frighteningly, the sequel is several dozen times worse in every possible way.

** The ''Chronicles'' were tame compared to the second trilogy written by Newcomb, ''The [[Destinies of Blood and Stone]]''. The final book, "Rise of the Blood Royal", includesis a huge [[Cliché Storm]] that makes Hurricane Katrina look like a breezy Spring morning.

* ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series has ''Crossroads of Twilight,'' a doorstopper without content which generally takes place at the same time as the previous book, ''Winter's Heart'' (the previous book). Most of ''Crossroads'' consists of [[Purple Prose]] about food and clothing — the book has 822 pages, but you could condense it into 100 and not miss anythinga thing. The [[Big Bad]] in this book is '''''grain weevils'''''. The series has [[Loads and Loads of Characters]], but very few of them appear in what passes for the main plot; the book needs a 50-page prologue to explain what everybody's doing, and it doesn't help. Rand, the driving force of the series as a whole, only appears in the last few pages; he has the long-awaited confrontation with Loghain, but nothing comes of it. Every female character's identical, and they're all unlikable stuck-up bitches. [[Sequelitis|The series had been heading this way for a while]], but this is the nadir. ButDespite all this, ''Crossroads'' was a #1 ''New York Times'' bestseller for three months. Thankfully, the later books get better, and ''areCrossroads of Twilight'' betterwas already far removed from the main plot anyways, andso you don't have to read thisit to understand them''Knife of Dreams''.

* ''Das Reich Artam'', an [[Alternate History]] set in a victorious [[Nazi Germany]] which even exists more than a hundred years later. If you think this could become problematic, you're right — while not stating it outright, the author seems to have a bit too much sympathy for the Nazis and not too muchnone for their democratic successors who wreck the Reich, so the Germans in the settled East (formerly Russia) are the only upright ones left. Add some soft porn for "controversy" and a scene about developing [[Newspeak]] copied almost word-by-word from ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', and you've got a stinker for the ages.

* ''I Am Scrooge'', a short (just over 150 pages) 2010 novel that attempts to ride the "classic novel revamped with something totally inappropriate" bandwagon, with a story about Ebenezer Scrooge fighting an army of zombies. A description of Scrooge walking in a London fog defies belief: "As the air began to freeze and he was a right wheezer and he went by the name of Ebenezer Scrooge." This is just one of the novel's seemingly never-ending cavalcadecavalcades of horrible topical references, which actually take up more of the story than any actual plot.

* Clifford Bowyer's deservedly obscure ''[[Imperium Saga]]'' could rival ''The Eye of Argon'' for sheer bad writing. But [[It Got Worse|it gets worse]] by havingas the characters [[Idiot Plot|toss around the Idiot Ball every five seconds]]. "Legendary" Warlord Braksis sets an invading [[Multiple Head Case|three-headed]] "[[Rouge Angles of Satin|tragon]]" on fire and watches it demolish a town in its death throes, then afterward decides ''it was a bad idea''...butand yet '''[[Moral Dissonance|people praise him for the destruction of their city]]'''. Heroic groups of five fight off hordes of 50 or more without a single injury. Seriously. There are so many races that it's hard to believe that the planet's ecology is intact. There's a reference to a "non-human troll", as if a fantasy creature could be both human and troll. Throw in a sex scene that uses "raging inferno" five times in three pages. That's all from the ''first'' book in the series.

** ''Friday the 13th: Hell Lake'', aanother Black Flame book, gives Jason [[Character Derailment|derails Jason's character]]. The author usesrelies on stereotypes aboutof himJason and ignores earlier canon in the process. Jason now hates sex so much, he'll drop what he's doing to kill some rapists ''and'' their victim. He now can ''literally'' [[Offscreen Teleportation|teleport]]; [[Speak of the Devil|just thinking about him apparently summons him]]. At one point, he appears to materialize from a television, à la [[Ring|Sadako Yamamura]]. Through an unexplained mental bond, he befriends the secondary villain. He has henchmen following him around a few times. He flays a guy and wears his skin and clothing as a disguise. (Ed Gein taught him how tothat in Hell. Yes, that's canon.) He screams in pain and throws tantrums when he's hurt, and in one sequence he mows dozens down with a machine gun. Most of the characters, who are from the backwoods New Jersey town of Crystal Lake, talk like stereotypical upper-class twits (even the jocks!) and insult people by calling them "fool". And the author [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|keeps referring to Camp Crystal Lake as "Lake Blood" instead of using the correct nickname "Camp Blood"]]. Oh, and itthe book's a [[Doorstopper]] with pacing problems.

* The last three books of the ''[[Legacy of the Force]]'' series -— most notoriously ''Revelation'' -— are filled to the brim with continuity errors (the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] is usually strong on continuity), as well as rampant [[Character Derailment]] — the Jedi jumpingjump right to assassinating Jacen instead of trying to redeem him, Jaina becoming a Mando Fangirl, — and among other grievances, more stupid character deaths...and finallyThe theyworst putpart is that the Jedi appoint ''Daala'', — one of the most incompetent people from the [[Jedi Academy Trilogy]], asnot wellto asmention a ''war criminal,'' — as '''Chief of State'''. The following series, ''[[Fate of the Jedi]]'', is just one huge [[Fix Fic]] on that entire stupid premise.

** The worst part of all of ''Revelation'' is the general message that Force-users are dangerous, disgusting, and incapable of doing ''anything'' right. In the end, the book's message concludes that all force-users should never be allowedable to develop their talents, or benor allowed anywhere near weaponry or government for the simple fact of them being forceForce-users, [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|who should be shunned for something they have no control over]].

* In 2000, Nancy Stouffer claimed that her 1984 or 1986 (she disagreed with herself there) book ''[[The Legend of Rah and the Muggles]]'' provided the inspiration for J.K. Rowling's ''[[Harry Potter]]''. SheStouffer saidclaimed, among other things, that the fact that there was ''wooden doors'' in both her and Rowling's books was evidence of this. The case was notable partly because of the [[Frivolous Lawsuit]] (which sheStouffer losthandedly comprehensivelyand deservedly lost) and partly because the book itself was unspeakably awful; a full list of its failings would at least double the size of this page, so [http://www.magespace.net/mugrev.html here's a handy plot breakdown] should you wish to subject yourself to them anyway. Once news fromof the lawsuit started spreading, a small-time publisher tried to cash in on [[No Such Thing as Bad Publicity]] and did a small printing run; said publisher quickly went ''bankrupt''.

* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20170517092800/http://www.asstr.org/~leslita/stories/ginger_winters001.html Lesbian Land 2250]'', a [[DoorstopperDoor Stopper|24-chapter]] [[Epic Fail|epic (fail)]] by "[[GIRL|Ginger Winters]]," apparently made solely for [[Author Appeal]]. It details life in a [[Mary Suetopia]] full of exhibitionist [[Lipstick Lesbian]]s of all ages who bonk [[Anything That Moves]]. Its "futuristic" setting serves only to [[Hand Wave]] the less realistic elements. The entire cast is [[Flat Character|flat]] — nobody has any personality beyond [[Everybody Has Lots ofOf Sex|craving sex]], and the only way to tell them apart is their appearance, which "Winters" often describes in detail. Every single [[kink]] is conveniently common, and many of them would be life-threatening in reality. No sapient being would speak in the manner of any of thethese characters. There's no character development, no interpersonal dynamics, and no overarching plot beyond poorly daisy-chained excuses for horribly-written, gut-wrenching sex scenes, such as the author's belief in [[Country Matters|"cunt"]] as a valid prefix and the hair-raising terms that result. The writing is akin to a Babelfish program, except with more implicit sexism. It reads like the rantings of a fourteen-year-old whose only knowledge of females comes from bad lesbian porn, which is especially sad, considering the interesting concept or two the book sometimes spends half a second on.

** The treatment of children deserves special mention —; they make the girls of ''[[Hogwarts Exposed]]'' look like devout nuns. The story's setting has barely any laws against child molestation, and when those are broken, ''[[Victim Blaming|it's the children, not the molesters, who are blamed]].''

** This work's [[Banned in China|banned in Australia]]. Sure, [[Guilt byBy Association Gag|the fault goes to]] [[Agony in Pink|a different work entirely]], but...

** It got worse: somebody made a sequel - "Gladys Stoatpamphlet" made ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20170518135745/http://www.asstr.org/~leslita/stories/gladys_stoatpamphlet001.html Lesbian Land - Future Days].'' It's shorter (only six chapters), has better spelling, and the author admits that the sex violates many modern standards, but many of the same flaws exist as in the original.

* ''[[Mass Effect: Deception]]'', a tie-in book released in the months leading up to ''[[Mass Effect 3]]''. Notably, it was also the first novel not written by the series' head writer, Drew Karpyshyn. It was supposed to be a sidestory featuring the continuing adventures of Gillian Grayson; it wound up gaining the hatred of fans for its tactless treatment of [[Hide Your Lesbians|homo]][[Bury Your Gays|sexuality]] and [[Throwing Off the Disability|autism]], a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XBpMF3ONlI308D9IGG8KICBHfWKU0sXh0ntukv-_cmo/edit?pli=1 list of research errors] longer than IMDBiMDB's "Goofs" page for ''[[Battlefield Earth (film)|Battlefield Earth]]'', and its overall tendency to tear continuity a new one. Not that it fared any better among non-fans—longfans — long, drawn out chapters (often [[Show, Don't Tell|expository]] and [[Department of Redundancy Department|redundant]]) were a common occurrence. To say that no proofreading was made would be a severegross understatement. Del Rey wound up publicly apologizing for it, and plans havehad been stated to rewrite large portions of the book.

* ''Mein Kampf''... as translated by James Murphy. ItMurphy took what was something already derided as being (among ''[[Author Tract|other things]]'') [[Doorstopper|overly long]] and [[Purple Prose|hideously thick]] in its original form and somehow made it worse. [[Adaptation Decay|The writing style was changed drastically]], [[Cut and Paste Translation|alterations and expansions were blatant and hackneyed]], and [[Obvious Beta|spelling and grammar were all over the place]]. The book resembles a bad fanfic of the original; its clunky, dull, flowery prose results at least partially from the author's habit of [[Blind Idiot Translation|looking up the words he didn't know in a German-English dictionary and picking the first definition he saw]]. Worse, it was submitted incomplete when Murphy changed his mind about the Nazis and fled Germany, meaning the press had to finish translation. Perhaps fortunately, the few copies that the Nazi press produced were lost until 2008, effectively destroying any chance for this abomination to become anything more than a bizarre curiosity.

* ''Mission Earth'', a decalogy <ref>(novelNovel in ten volumes).</ref> by [[L. Ron Hubbard]]. Weighing in at nearly 4,000 pages, this was Hubbard's idea of clever [[Sci Fi]] satire. The story moves at an incredibly-slow pace and showcases every sexual perversion you could think of and then some. Rampant misogyny abounds. The story's nothing more than a thinly-veiled pamphlet for Scientology and keeps hitting you over the head with its messages against psychology and psychiatry. [http://www.modemac.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/Mission_Earth Here's a highly-detailed overview.]

* As ''Crossroads of Twilight'' is to ''[[Wheel of Time]]'', ''Naked Empire'' represents the bottom-of-the-barrel for Terry Goodkind's ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series. This book, even moremoreso than the others before it, is mostly a [[Author Tract|one gigantic sermon against communism and pacifism]], containing the infamous "[[Strawman Political|evil-pacifist]]" plot of Bandakar. Even outside the conflict, Richard's dialogue is constantly saturated with Goodkind's views when he's talking to his friends. (At one point, he and his half-sister discuss the "right" of hair to live on a person's head. ''It's that bad.'') The main plot of the series is advanced barely an inch by the end of this book, there are [[Character Filibuster|speeches]] that go on for pages or even ''whole chapters'', the plot's resolved in one of the most blatant [[Deus Ex Machina]]s in literature, and...ah, screw it — go look at the reviews on [http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Empire-Sword-Truth-Book/product-reviews/0765344300/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 Amazon.com] if you want more proof.

* ''Noir'' by K.W. Jeter is a [[Doorstopper]] [[Cliché Storm|set in a]] [[Dystopia]]n [[Cyberpunk]] [[Crapsack World]]. As the title implies, Jeter attempts to write the whole novel in the style of the narration of a [[Film Noir]] (justified [[In-Universe]] because the main character has had ocular implants that redraw the world as a black-and-white noir film for him). Unfortunately, it reads like a novel-length [[It Was a Dark and Stormy Night|Bulwer-Lytton contest entry]]. Once you've gotten about 200 pages in and already committed too much of your time, you discover that the main character's nothing more than a [[Marty Stu]] "Copyright Cop" who spends the rest of the book [[Author Filibuster|discussing how people who infringe copyrights]] should be ''[[Disproportionate Retribution|dismembered and tortured]]'' because, in the Information Age setting of the book, [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|copyright theft is worse]] than virtually ''all'' other crimes. The book's nothing more than a '''very long''' [[Author Tract]] — Jeter's website indicates that he believes in his message. Adding insult to injury, there's a few interesting concepts [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|that are almost entirely discarded]] [[Plot Tumor|in favor of copyright ranting]].

* ''No Touching'' by Aileen Deng. Let's put it this way — the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, [[Old Shame|who were responsible for its very commissioning, would kindly like you to forget it ever existed]]. Allegedly commissioned to dispel the most common myths about [[Asexuality|asexual]] people, the main character instead reads as [[Stop Being Stereotypical|a compilation of the worst of them,these myths]], and the plot doesn't even help matters. The only way to express its badness would be Elizabeth the Gray's review [http://www.amazon.com/No-Touching-Aileen-Deng/dp/1449900313 here.]

** Note that the book has a 2-star average on Amazon. For a long time it hashad a 3.5 one: Elizabeth and two other people gave it one star each, and two people who ''haven't reviewed ''anything else on the site'' gave it four and five stars, and the review left by the 4-star one passive-aggressively addressed the points in Elizabeth's review. Suspicious...

* Pacione, Nickolaus. He is a horror writer known for self-publishing unreadable, barely literate, mistake-riddled prose, but even better known for picking fights with everyone on the Internet that dislikes his work, (up to and including threatening [[Disproportionate Retribution|murder, the rape of their children, and the like)]]. Even if one doesn't account for his litigious nature, his writing is genuinely atrocious. We can't link any of his writings because he has ana habit of self-googling (and the original TV Tropes had to erase hisall mention of them in their version of this page because of it), but you can easily find his works online. Read any ''sentence'' of his writings, if you dare.

* After the runaway success of ''[[The Hunger Games]]'', one Victoria Foyt decided to release her own take on dystopic YA fiction,: ''Save the Pearls: Revealing Eden''. Too bad that her book, whowhich portrayed a case of [[Persecution Flip]], was in truth both horribly racist and atrociously written. One important part of the plot is that the heroine must disguise her whiteness with hair dye and makeup and is forced to get a "mate", which is translated in the promotional video as the hired actress essentially asking for a boyfriend while in [[Blackface]]. Along the most notorious setting fails: the allegedly oppressed people had a prettiestprettier group name than the oppressors, the black people are depicted as either animalistic or bad Afro-American clichés, and one of the heroine's love interests is apparently a were-feline of some sort. The writing itself was atrociously bad even when not accounting for the racism. [http://das-sporking.livejournal.com/tag/fic%3A%20save%20the%20pearls This ongoing sporking] says everything you need to know.

* ''The Sacred Seven'' by Amy Stout is a deservedly obscure fantasy "epic" which is nevertheless only novella-length. The plot's a [[Cliché Storm]] in which a [[Big Bad]] [[Evil Sorcerer]] is trying to take over the world and playing [[MacGuffin]] [[Gotta Catch Them All]]. The attempts at "originality" are things like forest dwarves and the [[Big Bad]] being a female elf leading a troll army instead of the traditional orc army. But what makes this book special is that it has over two dozen point-of-view characters over its meager pagecount in a large font. Most ''pages'' have at least one POV switch, which can be to a character in a completely different geographic location having completely different adventures. As you might expect, none of the [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] have [[Flat Character|much of a detectable personality]]. The whole thing reads like an internet round robin written by a bunch of teenagers. Oh, and there's a sequel called ''The Royal Four''.

* ''La Séptima M'' (''The Seventh M''), a mystery YA book written by Chilean author Francisca Solar, is known as being legendarily bad among the hispanic readers that got to read it. It has everything to fail: a poorly paced plot that ripped off better [[filler]] episodes of [[The X-Files]], characters who switched between boring and unlikeable, a [[Mary Sue|Mary-Suesque heroine]] with an [[Ambiguous Disorder]], several [[:Category:Did Not Do the Research|investigation failures]] (the most notorious one [[Artistic License Pharmacology|was aboutbeing a psychiatric medicine thatwhich the author couldn't decide what effects it really had]]), and very pretentious and [[Purple Prose|purple]] writing who gotsuffers a badnasty case of [[Separated by a Common Language]]. Intended to be the first of a series, the book somehow managed to get a sequel published... about five years later, on digital format only, in a region where the purchasing of digital content lags way behind the rest of the world.

* A book that would've barelyhardly been a blip if not for the internet —: Janine Cross' ''[[Touched By Venom]]'' (aka ''The "Venom Cock" Book''). "''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'', ''[[Gor]]'', and ''[[Clan of the Cave Bear]]'' get thrown into a blender and topped off with extra helpings of pain and, suffering, (and bestiality)" is the closest one can come up with as a thumbnail sketch for the plot. To the author's credit, she creates a [[Crapsack World]] and never tries to pretend it's anything but. No [[Writer on Board]] here. And the two sequels are markedly improved (not ''good'', mind you, but not Horrible) and explain many of the baffling plot points in ''Venom'' (like why a society that worships dragons as divine would use them as pack animals, routinely amputate their wings, and eat their eggs as a staple food). The problem here, aside from this book not standing alone, is that Cross takes [[It Got Worse]] to [[Diabolus Ex Machina|ludicrous degrees]] —: the Dragon Temple screws Zarq's serf enclave out of all their worldly possessions on a technicality? Sell Zarq's sister into [[A Fate Worse Than Death|sex slavery]] to buy food and supplies. Mom schemes to get her back? Scheme backfires, resulting in Dad's execution and Mom and Zarq's banishment. (Did we mention Mom's pregnant, and they're kicked out immediately after she gives birth to a son she's not even allowed to hold?) They find refuge in a convent that houses old dragons? Just in time for Mom to drop dead! Then Zarq has to undergo [[Gorn|"circumcision"]] to be considered "clean and holy". The nuns hold bestiality rites with the old dragons. And allAll that occurs in the ''first half of the book''. (And yes, [[It Got Worse|it ''does'' get worse]] —; the damage finally spreads to those around Zarq.)

** Double bonus — the dragon venom that's getting everyone off like rockets? It's described as being an ''[[Artistic License: Biology|anesthetic]]'', when the correct term would be "aphrodisiac".

* Believe it or not, the late Jacqueline Susann (of ''Valley of the Dolls'' fame) wrote a science fiction novel —: the proto-[[Paranormal Romance]] ''Yargo''. It concerns a young woman who's [[Alien Abduction|pulled up into a UFO]] and taken to planet Yargo, [[Egopolis|which is named after its Yul-Brynner-lookalike emperor]]. Emperor Yargo doesn't want an inferior Earthling on his nice shiny planet, but for some reason won'trefuses to send her back where she came from. After many tedious arguments, [[Strangled by the Red String|they fall in love]] and Yargo admits that the human customs of romance, marriage, religion, and shopping are superior to the Yargonian way of life, which seems to consist mostly of emperor-worship. The heroine is whiny, self-righteous, and grating; Emperor Yargo is so massively conceited [[Narm|that the reader can only laugh at him]]. There's also a few dull sub-plots concerning the [[The Reptilians|Lizard-Men]] of Mars and the [[Bee People|Bee-Men]] of Venus, both of which Miss Earthling finds [[Beauty Equals Goodness|revoltingly ugly]]; she never once stops to thinkconsider that they mightprobably feel the same way about ''her''. But what really makes this book a pain to read is its hidebound 1950s provincialism. In Susann's universe, [[Unfortunate Implications|anything different is bad, and any creature that doesn't look human is a monster]].

** It should also be noted that ''she ''didn't actually publish it''.; Herher husband found it among her things after her death.