Okay. I had to think about this one for a while. I guess I haven't read that many fantasy novels that I haven't liked in some way, probably because I'm a big sucker for the genre. Any sword/sorcery type fantasy book or movie will interest me at least a little, no matter how bad. Example: I watched Black Knight. Twice. And liked it.
That being said...
I think R.A. Salvatore's The Spine of the World is the worst fantasy book I've had the pleasure of reading. Where to begin... well let's just say that the book tries to be all dark and brooding. This is a rather severe change of direction from the other Drizzt novels, which is not a bad thing necessarily and on the contrary the series did need a change of pace from the light-hearted {instert monster name} slaughters that we've been used to, but Spine of the World does a crappy half assed job at it, which
is a bad thing.
The first half of the book is basically Wulfgar (who is returned to the mortal plane after being tortured by demons and whatnot) being a drunken idiot and wallowing in his own self-pity. It seems Salvatore wanted to show some of the darker emotions that being a hero can entail, but he definately went over the top in this novel. No Wulfgar can't just be an alcoholic, he has to be an alcoholic to rival any other alcoholic! He drinks bottles upon bottles
per day and destroys entire bars in his drunken barbarian rage. Lame-o. To make things worse, Salvatore relentlessly spouts out his cheesy moralistic views at the start of each section via Drizzt's personal thoughts. Bleh. In the Dark Elf trilogy, these journal entries from the mind of Drizzt were a great insight into his character, but in Spine of the World, Salvatore/Drizzt comes off as even more preachy and prudish. If you look on Amazon.com you'll see that this book scored the lowest user-ratings of any of the Drizzt novels. There is a good reason for it too. Bleh again.
This novel could have been pretty decent, but Salvatore isn't the best writer for this sort of thing. He should stick with his happy go lucky drow taking on dragons in his sleep.
Sad thing is, I still buy every Drizzt book that comes out [img]graemlins/funnysad.gif[/img]