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Knowing who the bad guy is on the first page.
Having one location/story which is left behind for the rest of the book and never mentioned.
Both of these are in Pyramids by Terry Pratchet, which I am trying to finish. I like his writing and the other characters in the book are good. Just not the main character or bad guy. I put the book down for week before I decided to finish it.
Something else I really don't like are overly long fiction books. Most books that come in at 700+ pages have far to much padding. I generally avoid fiction books that are that long. There are exceptions to this.
I remember reading Michael Moorcock's Elric sereis. I read these for the first time after giving up on Robert Jordan's books. My friends were begging me to give Jordan's book another chance but they were boring. Oddly they agreed and said it picked up in book 2 and 3.
Moorcock's books were a breath of fresh air. The books were short, but the stories just blew my mind. I think writing great short novels is a lost art. Seems like everything has to be a series or massive in page numbers.
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