What ruins a good fantasy story?

[07nightshade]

Flux_o_color

I don't like it when a book goes way to indepth with the politics. I love adventure and action and romance, but when you read a whole chapter about the politics, I sometimes lose interest.

I'm with you on this one. I love adventure, romance and action the more the better. Politics, it makes me want to skip the chapter; but, you can't. Because, a sentence or paragraph could be a clue to what's going to happen next or explain why something happen or will happen.  

[MyLadyMandy]

Filler's the thing that really bothers me. I can put up with just about anything else, but when an author sticks half an inch of absolutely nothing in a book just to artificially extend the life of it, it drives me crazy. confused  

[LadyLarien]

ok, I don't know if anyone posted these reasons, but I got through three pages and just couldn't read the rest. - -'

Not because the answers were bad or anything, mind, I'm just impatient. biggrin

My main peeves when it comes to fantasy books are thus:

Languages. Tolkien has completely spoiled languages in books for me, and I can no longer stand to read a book where an 'elven' character starts spouting gibberish. Granted, I can't expect every author to accurately and perfectly create their own languages, either, but...it's still annoying.

The other one happens in books where the world is very in-depth, but the author sucks at bringing you into it without boring you or losing you. For example, the Dragonlance Series. It's really confusing when a strange character pops up and everyone acts like I'm just supposed to get it. There's never any explanation. They also refer to historical events, or even events from other books in the series, but again, never explain themselves. It's frustrating and I usually find myself throwing the book down and forgetting it.

Tolkien spoiled me on that one, too, by creating an entire world that was close enough to realism to be believable, bringing you into it in the Hobbit so you knew what you were doing, explaining everything with just enough words, and including the appendixes with additional information in case you were curious. The man was a genius.  

[chessiejo]

1. when characters suddenly dramatically change personality.
...it may be through different devices, mind swap, possession, some external control of mind or soul
...but it is phony and unconvincing.
...your mind and your body are ONE THING. there is NO split, NO duality, that was a mistake the ancients made but it does not fit what we know of reality. did you know that your digestive system contains neural connections that provide a backup to the cognitive functions of your brain? it's true! so you cannot split mind/soul from body, period end stop.

2. palace intrigue. somebody else said "too much treachery" and i agree.
...it's just boring, and way too easy to write, and it is manipulative just like the mind/soul swap. let the characters be who they are, and let's have some REAL action instead of something from the court of Louis XIV where everything is social and sexual politics.

3. speaking of which...sex!
why ruin a perfectly good fantasy with extraneous sex?
should we see and hear the intimate details of Aragorn's union with Arwen? NO!
and that includes gay sex too which is increasingly popular in short stories.
fine, you are making a sociopolitical point; do it with a bumper sticker or something. keep your hot sweaty bodies out of my fantasy.  

[NightIntent]

chessiejo

1. when characters suddenly dramatically change personality.
...it may be through different devices, mind swap, possession, some external control of mind or soul
...but it is phony and unconvincing.
...your mind and your body are ONE THING. there is NO split, NO duality, that was a mistake the ancients made but it does not fit what we know of reality. did you know that your digestive system contains neural connections that provide a backup to the cognitive functions of your brain? it's true! so you cannot split mind/soul from body, period end stop.

Brain in a vat problem (purely theoretical): A woman gets her brain entirely removed from her head, attached to a wireless device so that she can still function as if it were still in her head, and her brain is placed in a vat. She looks at her brain in the vat and asks, "What's that?" "That's you," the doctor answers. "That's not me! I'm right here!" the woman protests. "No, it is. Look." The doctor pokes the brain, and the woman's right leg twitches violently. "See? It is you." "But I'm right here! That can't be me!"
The dilemma: Who is right?

<.< That's from my intro to psychology class. I probably messed it up somewhere, but the point is that we don't really know the answer to the problem. We don't know if our consciousness is purely how we think and perceive things, or if it's in our brains. A person's "self" isn't necessarily in the brain, or the stomach's neural connections. While I agree mind swapping or some such is fake and unconvincing, there's no actual proof that the mind and body are one thing.

You believe in monism, where the mind and body are inseparable, and that's fine. But other people believe in dualism, where the mind and body are two separate entities. Those are probably the same ones who write the mind-swapping plots. There's no undeniable proof that makes either theory solid.
[/completelyrandomshpeal]  

[arugala]

God awful characters.
I read a book of short stories. One of the stories was one I could barely stand. A girl in high school of sumfink took a lead pipe to the heads of two girls walking down the street. One of the grls who was beaten up said that back in her home country, she hated dark streets because people did bad things in them. Anyways, he main character was just so stoamch churningly awful I wanted to skip through story but I didn't because of the plot... Anyways, it really made a terrible story I'm sure the ending woud;'ve been much more filling if the main character oh I dunno...HADN'T busted up two innocent girls.

Twists
Plot twists can be good or bad. I loved the part where Harry "died" in Haryr Potter 7. I adored Roren (sp?) coming to the mountain place...with the dwarves...(Dear God my Eragon knowledge is failing!) after his village was destroyed. It made the book interesting. But in a book I read called the "Conch Bearer", the child who had done everything for his family ditched them to stay with a bunch of crusty old monks. In another book, a girl's motehr had told her duaghter all her life that her grandmother was a crazy woman who sacrificed cat's and innocent creatures for magic. The mother turned out to be batty and suicidal, magic was real and a pervy tailor boy teamed up with the girl and the "evil" grandmother to fight the forces of evil of sumfink. Anways, it was very disturbing and I couldn't finish the book.

Futhermore...dryness!
Dear God some things can be so dreary! I couldn't even START the Lrod of the Rings books because there were so many pages of explanations! It took me forever to get through even the first book of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (techincally not fanatsy...) because some parts were so dry!

Undescribed characters.
I wanted to KNOW the protagonist/antagonist/bartender guy polishing glasses/hobo in the corner. I want to invision them as I read.  

[Xenologista]

chessiejo

1. when characters suddenly dramatically change personality.
...it may be through different devices, mind swap, possession, some external control of mind or soul
...but it is phony and unconvincing.
...your mind and your body are ONE THING. there is NO split, NO duality, that was a mistake the ancients made but it does not fit what we know of reality. did you know that your digestive system contains neural connections that provide a backup to the cognitive functions of your brain? it's true! so you cannot split mind/soul from body, period end stop.

2. palace intrigue. somebody else said "too much treachery" and i agree.
...it's just boring, and way too easy to write, and it is manipulative just like the mind/soul swap. let the characters be who they are, and let's have some REAL action instead of something from the court of Louis XIV where everything is social and sexual politics.

3. speaking of which...sex!
why ruin a perfectly good fantasy with extraneous sex?
should we see and hear the intimate details of Aragorn's union with Arwen? NO!
and that includes gay sex too which is increasingly popular in short stories.
fine, you are making a sociopolitical point; do it with a bumper sticker or something. keep your hot sweaty bodies out of my fantasy.

1. yeah that can be annoying
2. don't read much of that but i do know that social delicacies (like in pride and prejudice) make me wanna barf
3. TOTALLY, i read stormborn by richelle mead and also succubus blues by the same author, too much, too detailed  

[Maze353]

chessiejo

3. speaking of which...sex!
why ruin a perfectly good fantasy with extraneous sex?
should we see and hear the intimate details of Aragorn's union with Arwen? NO!
and that includes gay sex too which is increasingly popular in short stories.
fine, you are making a sociopolitical point; do it with a bumper sticker or something. keep your hot sweaty bodies out of my fantasy.

I hate it when authours do this! stressed Tell me they got together but don't tell me every bloody detail of who did what where! If I wanted to read that crap I'd read romance.  

[chellybear10]

When a really good character dies. It doesn't have to be the main character but one that is really cool. *cough* JK Rowling *cough*  

[Draug Heltikana]

Stephenie Meyer.

But seriously -- boring or ridiculous characters who are such Mary Sues. Or just poor editing in general: grammar mistakes and misspellings are the worst, but that goes with any genre. Oh, and random filler text.

 

[Lunar Kissed]

LadyLarien

ok, I don't know if anyone posted these reasons, but I got through three pages and just couldn't read the rest. - -'

Not because the answers were bad or anything, mind, I'm just impatient. biggrin

My main peeves when it comes to fantasy books are thus:

Languages. Tolkien has completely spoiled languages in books for me, and I can no longer stand to read a book where an 'elven' character starts spouting gibberish. Granted, I can't expect every author to accurately and perfectly create their own languages, either, but...it's still annoying.

The other one happens in books where the world is very in-depth, but the author sucks at bringing you into it without boring you or losing you. For example, the Dragonlance Series. It's really confusing when a strange character pops up and everyone acts like I'm just supposed to get it. There's never any explanation. They also refer to historical events, or even events from other books in the series, but again, never explain themselves. It's frustrating and I usually find myself throwing the book down and forgetting it.

Tolkien spoiled me on that one, too, by creating an entire world that was close enough to realism to be believable, bringing you into it in the Hobbit so you knew what you were doing, explaining everything with just enough words, and including the appendixes with additional information in case you were curious. The man was a genius.

Tolkien spoiled me for many things regarding fantasy, too. xd  

[Destined Savior]

SPARKLE AND SHINE!!!!!!

And some lovely-dovey moments. I'm not a Romance person.  

[PtolemaeusZero]

What annoys me is when the character in the fantasy has too many special abilities or powers. It brings down the whole thing. Or vice-versa they dont have enough. I like variety but I don't like too much. In the Rangers Apprentice for instance (I only read the first) all he can do is shoot a bow and hide in the shadows... he can climb too. Not very interesting. A good plot does make up for it but it can be annoying. In the Shamer's Chronicals for another instance Dina (the main character) has the power to make people relive their most shameful moments. Throughout the series she gets another ability. She can cast illusions to trick people. That was just enough variety without going overboard. emo Im just picky sometimes I guess but I like reading and reviewing books so if you have any interesting books you think I should read and talk to you about. (I sooo need a bookclub) then comment on my new thread: "Bookclub... sorta". Sorry for the advertising, but I kinda want to get new ideas for books I should read and I love talking to others about them. Its hard to find the right threads for the books though, figured I'd cut it down a bit. mrgreen  

[lillyshak]

I don't like fantasy - religion either. I once borrowed a book from the library about a boy called Peter and it was totally awsome for about 3 pages until he started preying for the answer. His lover heart Ann preyed that Peter would find the answer. Ugh. It was boring and I wouldn't advise it to anyone.  

[MusingDragonfly]

One word: Predictability way too soon. It's the reason I can no longer watch most "Mob" movies... I'm already going to know "The cripple did it, I bet that's the traitor" Most of those I'm just like "Show of hands, who didn't see THAT coming?!" Now, later on in the story..it's not bad. Like if I've read a whole series (Harry Potter, comes to mind) It's kind of fun to read something and be like "Oh God, I know how well THAT's gonna go over." But if I'm like 4 pages in a book and it's like

"And then the boy/girl was called for by the village elder" You almost automatically know he's been chosen due to his lineage or birthmark to do some extremely dangerous task that only he and a group of companions can do. But even the wisest of the wise don't know how or where to do it...He'll just have to wing it."

Also, and this is really peeving me about Angels&Demons. I read the DaVinci Code before I saw the movie and just out of curiousity, I also grabbed Angels&Demons...Now, guess which one I read first. Yeah...

---SPOILER---

There's a life or death instance towards the end of Angels&Demons concerning Robert Langdon....well if 5+ years later he's running all over Europe with Sophie Noveaux....I'm guessing he made it. -_-

As for indepth stuff. Kinda odd but, the Tolkien thing drove me nuts. Waaay too much detail for me. Don't get me wrong, the man was genius...I just think that a chapter on pipeweed was a little too much. And I don't care about someone's lineage right in the middle of them getting an a$$kicking. I dunno, probably just me. ^^

Anyway, that's my say. LOL.