Brooks: Tolkien fanboy with more enthusiasm than skill who nevertheless sucked less than the rest, could actually spell, got somehow published, and impressed many teenaged fanboys and -girls who hoped their inane fanfiction was as good as Shannara.
Eddings: self-admitted shameless hack writing knowingly to the formula.
But really, the worst semi-major author I know of is Mercedes Lackey, the Queen of Tripe. I read a whole trilogy by her called The Last Herald Mage which consisted mainly of the gay main character (which I don't mind) agonizing endlessly over his boyfriends and how his father can't accept his gayness (which I mind very much indeed). The main character felt he was betraying the memory of his dead boyfriend but it came out that the new boyfriend was the old one reincarnated. Oh yeah, and there was a telepathic blue-eyed horse, an epitome of icky girliness in the series presumably intended for teenaged girls. (I'm a girl but the only "girl books" I ever read were the Nancy Drew mysteries.) The few pieces of action far between were lost in the ocean of boring angst. <i></i>
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