Bottom 10 of 2013

When one reads 66 books, many of them way off the beaten path, one is bound to hit some stinkers. Since I love lists, here's my bottom 10 of 2013, ending with the worst.
10) The Subtle Knife. OK, maybe not entirely fair here. It's very well written. But for a YA book, it is intensely dark with very bad things happening. I had an extremely hard time finishing and it put me off to the last book in the trilogy for six months. Unnecessarily violent.
9) Summer Knight. I typically enjoy the relative mindlessness of Harry Dresden. But for some reason, this book was overly violent, lacking in humor, and totally perposterous. I know that's kind of the point, but I don't care. Just fairly dopey with little resolution or even advancement of story lines that I actually cared about. I took a four month break halfway through.
8) Hexed. Cheap Dresden ripoff and mostly forgettable. I think the Druid Chronicles are a bit better paced, but so derivative, it feels like I've read them before.
7) Dog of the South. Boring. Really, really boring. I can't even remember anything from it.
6) City of Bones. I like reading YA fiction. Typically easy reads that I can tear through. Some are great (Harry Potter, Ender's Saga) some are mildly interesting at first giving way to trite conclusions (Twilight, Hunger Games) and some are just bad. City of Bones is just bad. Uninteresting characters, Harry Potter derivatives (Mundanes instead of Muggles? Really?) and forced cliffhanger ending. Saw the movie and it was actually worse (unlike Hunger Games where the movie was much better).
5) Simulacra. I guess even Philip Dick should get a mulligan.
4) Amped. Like Robopaclypse well enough, but Amped never got amped. This might be the worst written book of the year.
3) Walk in the Woods. I can't think of anything more torturous than a long hiking trip, but a book about one comes close.
2) Warlock of something blah blah blah by Michael Moorcock. I was really excited about this. Until I realized it was socialist propaganda. Should have been in the social studies section. Pure torture.
1) Lando Calrissean. Laughably bad. Probably shouldn't be number 1 simply for the fact that it's given so much grist for my shit talk mill. This books should remain largely forgotten.