Worst David Gemmell book?

Brian G Turner said:
Just curious as to which book or books by David Gemmell I should put at the end of my reading list. :)
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I personally never really got into the Troy stuff but that might be a case of expectations as I thought it'd be a lot more about Troy and not so much standard Gemmell. Dunno why I thought that, but I did. Didn't help that Heliakon belongs to his set of protagonists that have everything except for some emotional hole and a tendency to get into trouble; give me the young unsure heroes, give me the old brawlers aware of how much they're losing, not the nigh-perfect warrior-philosopher.

I never got into Swords of Day and Night either, as I didn't think that much of Skilgannon to begin with (see the above) and thought he'd mined Druss as deep as he could.

Out of the ones I read all the way through (note - never read Jon Shannow, never read Macedon):

The Arthurian/Stones of Power ones are the ones I remember the least about and have the least desire to reread - in fact, virtually none - so I reckon they're down at the bottom of the list. They're cases of too many elements in too little space, and none of the characters are people I root for.

Coming shortly after for me would be Morningstar and Ironhand's Daughter although we're firmly into good book territory here.
 
I wondered after if I should have called this "Least favourite David Gemmall book" after. :)

The Big Peat said:
never read Macedon
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Lion of Macedon often comes up alongside Sword in the Storm as a favorite among readers. Would definitely recommend considering that. :)
 
All of them is a solid shout. Although maybe the question is what sort of period do you really like Mike? He did a bunch of different stuff (although all with the same Heroic Fantasy theme), and that might guide you best.

Legend and Sword in the Storm are probably the most common starting points as they start series, but if you like the look of another book, they mostly stand alone well enough.
 
Brian G Turner said:
Lion of Macedon often comes up alongside Sword in the Storm as a favorite among readers. Would definitely recommend considering that. :)
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So I got my hands on Lion of Macedon and fair underwhelmed was I. I guess it's part due to expectations, as I wasn't expecting it to be mainly based around Sparta, but mainly it just felt a bit crude and lacking. The big emotional moments didn't connect with me. I'd probably put it as one of his worse personally.
 
There is only one DG book that I found hard going and it was Rhyming Rings. To be fair, I really am not a fan of the serial killer thriller genre, so it had little chance with me. Even so, despite an exciting climax, I thought most of the book was a slow plod with a very unsympathetic protagonist.
The big man himself felt it was not good enough to publish which says it all really, though I am still glad that it WAS published. Being a bit ofa collector of his works, I was more than happy to get more DG, even if it wasn't the best.
Second worst is Ironhand's Daughter in my opinion, but I can still enjoy that one a lot, despite the book's problems.
 
Narkalui said:
Ironhand's Daughter is the only Gemmell book I couldn't finish and I never tried it's sequel The Hawk Eternal
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Okay, started reading Ironhand's Daughter a few nights ago. Seemed alright at first but there were a few red flags - the main character is a woman, but there's a lot of male gaze and every male character leches at her, and even the one who rescued her as a baby gives her a good looking up and down; plus the guy who initially appears like he's going to be a love interest tells someone else that he thought she was a whore because she may have been up for sex without wanting money for it. This was all very iffy but I was prepared to let it go.

Then she gets grabbed and gang-raped in a way that's all very contrived, and in the next chapter two of the main characters talk about how they've raped in the first and thought it was alright at the time, with one of them arguing that it wasn't right after all. WTF???

I can imagine Gemmell was riffing from the Boudicca legend, but even still it's still a bad taste book.

I don't read stories about rape, and this is definite Will Not Finish. Have removed it from my Kindle.
 
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