Dragonlance

This one falls under the "Books That Were Good When You Were Young /New to Fantasy" category.These are simplistic popcorn-style fantasy that don't offer anything new to the genre or even attempt to provide anything outside of a strictly regimented and never-changing formula.Popcorn can be good, but by golly at least make sure it's good popcorn. Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms are bad popcorn, folks, with very little to recommend them to anyone outside of those who are rabid D&D fans. I'm not against popcorn fantasy, but I am against badly made popcorn fantasy.These books may have been entertaining when you were a kid or new to fantasy, but if you manage to evolve your taste in fantasy, these books taste about as good as stale bread.Why so bad? Badly written fantasy cliches ripped straight from Tolkien's world. Bad prose that's more wordy than a drunk Snookie, re-used plots that are about as unoriginal as a copy of the Mona Lisa, and cardboard characters so flat you could use them as paper. Yea yea, there are worse out there. I'm not going so far as to label these in the "Terribly Written Books" category, but on the whole there is soooo much better to read out there right now.This badly written popcorn fantasy is the kinda stuff that gives the fantasy genre a bad name as a whole. Avoid these novels! They're like that cheap type of bread you pick up for fifty cents in the discounted section at Safeway. You might think you got a good dealâtill you find it crumbles to pieces on the way home. Pick up a real author like George Martin or Joe Abercrombie and enjoy a real feast.