Cringe Base Camp: Help White-Kettle Shufflepunk plot out the Quest

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Maybe this is a bit indulgent, but people seem to enjoy my little lets reads, so I figured I'd make a thread where people can vote for my next subject. Here's what's on offer for after Divergent:

Vamps:

This “fast-paced and enthralling” ( The Sun , London) debut transports you to an elite vampire academy where a half vampire, half human struggles to hone his bloodthirsty side.

Nestled in the Swiss Alps, VAMPS is the ultimate academy for the children of the most wealthy and powerful vampire families. Unfortunately for Dillon, he’s an outsider—to be more specific, he’s a dhampir: a vampire that is half human.

If he wants to survive more than a single term, he’s going to need to embrace his fangs. But blood never lies and soon, it becomes clear there is something special and deadly flowing in Dillon’s veins. But as his power grows, so does the target on his back…

Yes, there's yet another book about vampire boarding school. I'm mainly interested in doing this one because it's a rare modern YA novel with a male protagonist.

Gender Games:

A toxic river divides nineteen-year-old Violet Bates's world by gender.

Women rule the East. Men rule the West.

Welcome to the lands of Matrus and Patrus.

Ever since the disappearance of her beloved younger brother, Violet's life has been consumed by an anger she struggles to control. Already a prisoner to her own nation, now she has been sentenced to death for her crimes.

But one decision could save her life.

To enter the kingdom of Patrus, where men rule and women submit.

Everything about the patriarchy is dangerous for a rebellious girl like Violet. She cannot break the rules if she wishes to stay alive.

But abiding by rules has never been Violet's strong suit.

When she's thrust into more danger than she could have ever predicted, Violet is forced to sacrifice many things in the forbidden kingdom ... including forbidden love.

In a world divided by gender, only the strongest survive...

You know, when I saw this book on the shelf, I was expecting a contemporary novel about trans shit. A boy vs girl gender war is pratically... retro.

House of Night:

For too long, White-Kettle Shufflepunk has procrastinated returning to the House of Night series, instead distracting himself with endless literary side-quests. It's all his Fallout playthroughs all over again. He intends to keep this up for a long while. Now, you have the chance to force him to at least finish book two, the fucking slacker. Who does he think he is? April Daniels?

I'm also making this thread so you good Kiwis have a place to recommend books for me to cover. I'm willing to tackle pretty much anything, though I have a strong preference for stuff in the fantastical genres that was actually released by mainstream publishing, though neither of those are hard rules. I don't care if it's political, apolitical, right or left leaning, so long as it's bad, or at least interestingly flawed.

At the moment, I'm pondering doing something in the "edgelord fantasy" genre, along the lines of Prince of Nothing, though maybe slightly less ponderously long. Still, recommend whatever you want.

 

[Day Walker]

If you’re ever in the mood for a YA zombie novel, I suggest this.

Feed by Mira Grant

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives—the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them.

 

[Gnillik Yot]

If you want something mainstream & terrible, I am tempted to recommend Courtyard of the Others by Anne Bishop. It is by far the WORST fantasy series I have ever had to experience. I am not joking or using hyperbole. It is extremely popular & will break your mind if you think about it too much. This is a series where the villains are objectively the heroes, but the stupid bitch author doesn't realize it. I

 

[Another Random]

I'd like to suggest Steelheart. It's about superheroes going crazy and evil for seemingly no reason and while I don't recall everything from the cursory read I did years ago, I remember not liking it very much.

I thought about suggesting stuff like The Never King after learning of that book earlier this year [some edgy Peter Pan retelling where the blurb outright uses 'unalive' like it's serious], but apparently it might be porn? I was gonna suggest that because it looks edgy and stupid, but I don't know if Peter Pan porn is even worth reading to laugh at.

 

[Gnillik Yot]

I retract my vote for The Others. I just thought of the perfect book for you to review: Lola's Haunter by J. Neira. It went viral last year and I wrote an essay the Sun wrote an article claiming the author was using it to turn Zoomers against Republicans:

To top it all off, the author is a radical BLM activist...and, well, take a look:

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

You know what we need to look at some day? Something about fairies or "fantasy courtly intrigue." That was big for a while. You know, books titled shit like A Verb of Nouns and Verbs?

 

[Kosher Dill]

How about investigating the (alleged) literary offenses of Fenimore Cooper?

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Sometime I really need to tackle Mists of Avalon. There's a lot of interesting cultural context around those shitty books. Also, the author was a comparitively rare lady nonce.

 

[IridiumDragon06]

You know what we need to look at some day? Something about fairies or "fantasy courtly intrigue." That was big for a while. You know, books titled shit like A Verb of Nouns and Verbs?

Ah, Mass's "Court of Thorns and Roses" series!

I tried the first book, because I was playing in a Changeling: The Lost campaign at the time and I was hoping I could mine interesting tidbits for my character, but I gave up after less than a third of the book when I realized it was maybe 5% Fey Shenenigans and 95% Mediocre Softcore Werewolf Romance. It could be an interesting exploration of romance tropes, if nothing else, but I'd vote against it just because I ran out of interesting things to complain to my gaming group about it, and thus stopped reading it, so I'd probably have less to say in the thread itself.

---

I'd actually like to recommend the Uglies books that were brought up earlier, because I definitely remember cringe bits of them, and I think they'd be a contrast to the pure-dreck by having some occasional interesting asides, but I'd also encourage you to not neglect the House of Night grind, and just be free to elide larger and larger passages with "This was followed by eight paragraphs of drivel about the elemental magic system, which I didn't read and neither will you." It's not like you're going to run out of material any time soon, I don't think.

How do people feel about the Percy Jackson books? I understand that the first few are serviceable YA and then rapidly go downhill as wokification grows more extreme?

Or...damn, I realize I'm throwing out a lot of suggestions, but how about a Greatest Hits? abbreviated bit? Could we maybe have a mini-thread on, say, Eragon, just to discuss the absolutely fabulous elfification in the second book?

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Or...damn, I realize I'm throwing out a lot of suggestions, but how about a Greatest Hits? abbreviated bit? Could we maybe have a mini-thread on, say, Eragon, just to discuss the absolutely fabulous elfification in the second book?

That's an interesting idea. Given how much I praise Harry Potter (a series genuinely close to my heart for a bunch of reason) I feel like I should do a post at some point where I actually critque it.

 

[Dick Johnson]

Might be a little too late to make any difference, but I would suggest Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig. You've covered various sorts of fantasy, might be fun to mix it up with some sci-fi. Aftermath has prose so bad it's become a meme and Chuck Wendig has a thread on KF, so I think it would be a splendid choice.

 

[Gnillik Yot]

Might be a little too late to make any difference, but I would suggest Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig. You've covered various sorts of fantasy, might be fun to mix it up with some sci-fi. Aftermath has prose so bad it's become a meme and Chuck Wendig has a thread on KF, so I think it would be a splendid choice.

If he's going to do Chuck Wendig, I would rather he review a book that was 100% the creation of Chuck. The Star Wars books were heavily controlled by Disney by what he could write, since what he wrote had to lead to the movies. I recommend going with a Chuck Wendig original: The Book of Accidents.

 

[Dick Johnson]

If he's going to do Chuck Wendig, I would rather he review a book that was 100% the creation of Chuck. The Star Wars books were heavily controlled by Disney by what he could write, since what he wrote had to lead to the movies. I recommend going with a Chuck Wendig original: The Book of Accidents.

My first thought was Wanderers, his zombie apocalypse novel. I read an excerpt on io9 when it was released a few years ago, and even the handful of people who commented thought it sucked. I looked up the page count, and it's like 780. The Book of Accidents is still like 550, while Aftermath is only 350ish. While it's not his original universe, it's still his story and characters even if they're owned by Disney.

 

[Gog & Magog]

"This was followed by eight paragraphs of drivel about the elemental magic system, which I didn't read and neither will you."

better writing than most fantasy novels

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Idle thought, a duology of Cassandra Claire threads, where first we cover the "Draco trilogy" then The Mortal Instruments.

 

[spiritofamermaid]

Ok so I am midway reading your thread on Divergent and I have a ton of YA dystopia recommends because I was into those when younger.

There's the Matched series by Ally Condie, who even flat out states her inspiration was chaperoning a high school dance and wondered about government-sponsored algorithms for romantic pairs.

The second one is Under the NeverSky series, about a girl who has to leave the dome where she's lived her entire life to find her mother and has to team up with SAVAGE outsider to do so.

Though I definitely second the Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses. Even when younger I was taken aback by the dumb stuff. Super amazing assassin who also complains about getting up early in the morning.