What Sort of Thing Annoys You in Fantasy Series?

ixoy

I'm reading "The Wheel of Time" (Bk 10) currently and it inspired this thread

What elements of fantasy annoy you? Little or big?

For example, I find it irritating when they consistently have women (generally well bred) swearing "in a manner that would make a sailor blush". It's a constant comparison and wearying - especially when all noble women seem to do it at some point in a series.

Another would be the way that they describe young soldiers always as "he'd probably only need to shave once a week". It's just repeated so often that it makes me cry to myself.

Then there's the bigger things: Lots of books having huge casts of indistinguishable characters. WoT is particularly notorious for this - many of the Aes Sedai act the same and it makes it more difficult to track them. It also means novels tend to drag as they are intent on informing us where everyone is at any particular point and what they're wearing/doing. It might make it seem epic initially but the flow of the storyline becomes sluggish. More novels should look for a leaner character set or better writing skills.

Poor characterisation can be another. Again, critiquing WoT but the characters never seem to develop - Nynaeve, for example, will still pull her braids and so forth. I've seen it in Feists' latter novels - the characterisation is very poor and not much sense of development. The ones that I enjoy - Pug, Nakor, etc. - were developed in prior books (when Feist, I feel, was more on form).

Then there's poorly drawn maps or badly realised continents where there's all sorts of odd geographical features shoved together for the sake of a storyline rather than decent world building - e.g. scary haunted forest leading into goblin-infested mountains. They don't feel convincing often or, sometimes when they do, each country is far too similiar (politics wise, etc) to make any real sense...

I could rant on for ages.. but wonder if anyone else feels the same?

AM

I agree with all your points. It's a relief to see someone else realise Feist's
early work was far superior to his current stuff. The only books of his I
reckon are great are the original Magician trilogy and the Empire trilogy
with Janny Wurts.

I think too many authors, such as Feist and Jordan, are full of enthusiasm
initally but once they've had some success they hit cruise control and churn
them out for the fanboys.

Anyway, fantasy irritations in no particular order are:

• Every fantasy must be a trilogy
• Each book in the trilogy must be the size of a brick
• Despite being the size of a brick, characterisation is woeful
• Every location on the map must be visited/mentioned in the plot
• Boy-becomes-king/god/mega-wizard/super-assassin etc. (although
  when done well, which is rare, it's tolerable)
• Jaded character who decides to help the other characters save the world
  despite his better judgment
• Nationality/race determines personality/behaviour (re: Eddings)
• Dark lord - why? Is the author too lazy to think of reasons why the
  'bad guy' does what he does?
• Book covers featuring +1 Bikini Armour Of Exposure

growler

1. Robert Jordan
2. Filler books in a series, nothing happens much but it costs me money
3. how untrained blacksmiths can suddenly defeat crack troops
4. a hero can only be a prince or a blacksmith (or both)
5. Lizards are always bad
6. Interventions by a God to save a plot from self implosion
7. how highly feared assassins are so stupid
8. no one ever goes to the toilet
9. blatant theft of celtic mythology plot lines (though May and Keneally didn't attempt to disguise it)
10. Good guys always come from temperate climes (like say NW Europe) and the bad guys from somewhere warmer (or colder or both).
11. Robert Jordan


btw I quite like the bikini armour covers, more of this please !!

Earthhorse

Pretty much everything everyone's said and in addition:

Repition of the same phrases or adjectives. All bad authors are capable of this but it seems to be a fate suffered in particular by genre righters. I remember reading an Anne McCaffrey book in which the only way characters would react was by raising or lowering their voices. Their speech went "up an octave" or "down an octave" or, if you were lucky, a "semi-octave". By the end of the book I had octaves coming out my ass.

In the same book everything was homely. There were homely cakes, homely smiles, homely hugs, homely homes, homely homies and god knows what else. We get it already, it's a homely place, move on.

Development of culture beyond what is neccessary. This is a tricky one. I like the culture of another world to be imbued in its everyday objects. The customs, costumes, traditions and trinkets of a people can tell us a lot about them.

Large tracts on a country's culture on the other hand, tend to be terribly written and not very interesting at that. Guess what guys? There's a whole world of interesting cultures right here on earth, and if I wanted to study anthropolgy I'd pick up a book on one of them, and not your ill thought out excuse for a history that reads like it was invented by an eleven year old.

Finally, most fantasy authors should realise that the fact that they've managed to tackle prose does not mean they're ready to take on poetry. I really don't want you to dedicate twelve pages of your book to The Song of the Dwarves/Elves/Dragons so you can engage in some exposition or help your characters bond. Seriously, your grasp on English is tenuous at best, so give the rhyming a rest and stick to full sentences.

That's all I can think of right now. I think we can all agree though that it's more a case of bad writers trying these ideas than these ideas being bad in and of themselves.

Undergod

I hate when authors spend ages describing a historical event or a specific culture in detail. It wrecks the continuity of the plot and just reinforces the fantastickal, fictional nature of the story and makes it so much harder to immerse yourself in.