What ruins a good fantasy story?

[arugala]

1. When the author buidls up a great story and has the main character die.
2. When the main character is a total jerk (i.e. full of him/herself)
3. When there's too much treachory.
4. Bad description
5. Too unrealistic animals.
6. -added- when the story moves slower than molasses  

[Iconoclast Enthusiast]

Sexism in a fantasy book ruins it for me.  

[Serenity-Revers]

I hate it when they just keep going on. Sometimes that is a good thing but sometimes you just think enough and end it. I also hate it when the author kills one of your favorite characters. That can really ruin it for me.  

[Unwanted_and_Unloved]

To have an ending where everyone dies or is otherwise miserable. Or a gratuitous sex scene. when it's called for, they can be ok, but if it's just out of the blue, 'hey lets f**k' kind of a thing, i think it totaly ruins the book.  

[tyty998877665544332211]

If the main character dies!!  

[Kittenfleas]

A bad ending,that always ruins it for me.

Or,if one of the really fun characters is killed of >.<

 

[Kittenfleas]

arugala

1. When the author buidls up a great story and has the main character die.
2. When the main character is a total jerk (i.e. full of him/herself)
3. When there's too much treachory.
4. Bad description
5. Too unrealistic animals.
6. -added- when the story moves slower than molasses

I agree with all of these.Good work.

 

[MinervaEvenstar]

What is with so many of you hating when the main character dies? It's stupid when the author does it because they can't think of a better way to end the story, but I thought it was done very well in the Bartimaeus trilogy. Nathaniel had always been so selfish and then he gave his life for everyone else's sake. It was a beautiful momnet.

Well, what bothers me is predictability. Like you all, I've read so many fantasies it's easy to pick out the cliches. Normally just by a character's physical description I can tell you what their personality is like. An ending without closure and lots of loose ends is very irritating too, like in the Guardians of Time. What really, totally, completely ruins a book, however, is when a character suddenly has a complete personality transformation. A character developing over time is brilliant, but just a random switch, such as in Magyk? Gah, that makes me hate it! It's like what happens in poorly written fan fiction.  

[Kahahana]

1. Generic happy endings. (And Harry and Ginny and their children, all named after dead people, went into the graveyard to look at the real heroes' graves.)
2. Guys always saving stupid, whiny, materialistic girls from totally escapable situations. Grr.
3. When the author doesn't tell me what color people's eyes are. I don't know why, but I just hate that.  

[MinervaEvenstar]

Kahahana makes very good points. i didn't think to list those and I agree with them. I too hate it when an author fails to give me an adequate physical description, not eyes in particular, but the same basic idea.  

[fairywaif]

When characters do stupid things and they don't realise it and they should. The REALLY should. (sometimes this is okay, but there's a point.)

Blatently Christian fantasy. Narnia is perfect.

Sexism. Now, if one of the characters struggles against it or it's only one character, that's okay, but it shouldn't get in your way of reading it.

An ending that leaves you wanting more but there's no sequel or something that you can tell the author wrote the ending in 5 minutes. Or if it's just boring. You want the girl to get with the guy, blah-de-blah, but if they kill the bad guy and it's done, that's bad. Very bad...

I've actually seen stories where the characters death is well done because it's noble and just, but I hate when a character is killed for NO REASON.  

[fairywaif]

YourAzureGoddess

1. when the author fails to make the characters empathetic (or even interesting) and the reader just doesn't care about what happens to them
(I'll suggest that Phillip Pullman, though a wonderful plot writer falls into this trap)

2. If the author has an interesting character (s) s/he kills them off (grrr)

3. The book plays out the author's intimate fantasies (I'm going to suggest Storm Constantine's Wraethuthu is a bad example of the *twitch*) as in - I don't want to know what erotic dreams make an author all steamy. I just don't wanna know.

4. excessive wordiness. Longer =/= better, I like it when things are not repetitive. (do you hear me, JK Rowling?!)

I agree with evry one of those. I loved the Golden Compass series, but at the end I was like okay... boohoo.

I hate when authors do that. One example that has seared my mind is Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. I thought that because I liked the Blue Sword series, I'd like this. Not! Vampire sex...ewww. OLD vampire sex.

I loved Harry Potter, but after the 4th one I wanted to finish the series but I wasn't really interested. I think it should've ended at the third one, to be honest.  

[godhi]

What ruins a good fantasy for me? When an author creates a universe that is just not believable. For example:

arrow If magic in a universe is all-powerful, why don't wizards rule the world?
(i.e. Sourcery by Terry Pratchett)

arrow If any wizard can be killed by a barbarian with a sword, why would there be any wizards left in the world?
(i.e. What Good is a Glass Dagger? by Larry Niven)

arrow If adventurers in a medieval culture spend gold like it's going out of style, what happens to the local economy?
(i.e. too many bad fantasy novels based on roleplaying games)

arrow If a fantasy world is populated with so many carnivorous monsters, where are all the large herbivores? And what happens to the ecology?
(i.e. too many bad fantasy novels, period)

arrow If the fantasy world is based on medieval Europe, how does magic change history?
(i.e. Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff)  

[Angleic Shadow]

FaeDreamer

I've been reading a book that I thought was ok; it had some interesting plot twists. But the main characters personality was bothering me, the way he reacted to some situations was completely different than what I expected, but annoyingly so. Then over halfway through the book they finally introduce the potential love interest. He naturally starts falling immediately in love and then completely flips out when she isn't the poor servant he thought she was. (Which incidentally was foreshadowed the entire small amount of time they were together) Uggh....I think when they give the main character an annoying personality that is what kills the book for me. domokun

Incidentally that book is sitting on my book shelf....I keep looking at it going...I really should finish that...then I cringe and decide I don't want to deal with it. *sigh* crying sweatdrop

That like same exact thing happened to me... was it the Dragonbone Chair?
I tried really hard to get past the main characters idiocy, but I just couldn't do it. When the main chararcter acts really stupid it really annoys me, I end up like screaming in my head what they should have done