What kills a book for you?

[jedipencil]

Originally Posted by anabolina

Oh yes and annoying characters I want to slap. This was a big problem in the Twilight Series

You thought so too? Oh thank you, I'm not alone...

[Frida Fantastic]

Stuff that kills the book for me:

-books that open up with fight scenes out of nowhere about characters you don't care about yet. Done well, it can be interesting and can pull the reader in... but done badly, it can bore the crap out of me. If 10 pages fly by and it's a boring fight scene and I still have no idea who I'm dealing with or why they're fighting, I don't read further.
-sex scenes between characters that are minor or come out of nowhere. Sex scenes can be enjoyable, but if they don't advance the story in a meaningful way in terms of plot or character development, the author should cut it out.
-too stupid to live characters
-magic systems that the author doesn't follow
-silly fantasy names with apostrophes in the middle
-cliched descriptions. I love descriptions, I'm happy to read 5 pages about the pastoral scene or somebody's clothing if it's done in an entertaining or interesting way. But descriptions for the sake of descriptions is bad
-stories where the only black guy either dies first or is the villain out of nowhere
-science fiction stories where China is the world power and yet there aren't any real Chinese characters around, they're only a bunch of unequivocally evil shady people in suits. No yellow peril in my sci-fi, please.
-mining the same points above, if the non-white characters are constantly dehumanized or portrayed as villains in ways that seem idiosyncratic to the author rather than is part of the story, it can quickly become a wallbanger. If after reading the book, I need to read some Octavia Butler just to detox, that author is not likely to see any future sales from me
-bad research on other cultures. It's best to err on the side of too much research than on too little, because readers are from diverse backgrounds and come from all over the world.

The final four points may be pretty specific stuff to me, but I can't help it. I'm female, not white, and not American. I'm not asking for political correctness. I love splatter and excessive violence, I adore sensationalism and pulp, and one of my favourite directors is Quentin Tarantino. Really, I'm not asking for PC. I'm just asking for the author to treat humanity with a reasonable level of depth.

[VydorScope]

Interesting that you said do not open with a fight scene. When I spoke with a traditional publisher about my fisrt book, they told me that the opposit, and I added a fight scene to the opening of my book based on thier advice. Its only a few pages long depending on the size of your e-reader.

[Frida Fantastic]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Interesting that you said do not open with a fight scene. When I spoke with a traditional publisher about my fisrt book, they told me that the opposit, and I added a fight scene to the opening of my book based on thier advice. Its only a few pages long depending on the size of your e-reader.

Well, I don't mean do not open with a fight scene, but don't open it with a mediocre one.

I love fight scenes. I grew up on shounen manga, sword and sorcery, and all that stuff. I love it when mooks get beat up in creative ways. There's entire books and comics where there's nothing going for it except for the fight scenes, and I still love them to death (growing up, Hellsing was one of my most favourite mangas. There's nothing going for it other than aesthetics and ridiculous fight scenes. It's amazing). But mediocre fight scenes in the beginning of the book? Pass. I just don't like getting thrown into dreary wars in the beginning of a book where there's nothing at stake for me yet. A fight scene in the beginning has to be either (1) creative (2) illuminates the central conflict (3) tells something about the main character. A fight scene alone does not make a scene exciting, especially when it takes itself too seriously without being clear as to why.

[KierstenFay]

The one thing that has my eyes rolling in the back of my head, and my mind fighting to pay attention, is overly descriptiveness. That for me is the worst of all. I just get so bored with reading about the interior decorating of a room that I either skip ahead or move on to a different writer.

That and flat characters! Ugh. I read a book the other day where you couldn't tell one character from the other. And nobody had any emotions.

[Todd Young]

Slow beginnings. If I'm not in the right mood, I will often put a book down if the beginning doesn't grab me.
Another thing is lack of conflict.

[Fru]

I got to say that books which use very few verbs get boring to me instantly.

[lestatar]

Just thought of one - apologies if its been mentioned already.

I can't stand when writers are too lazy to do even the most cursory research into specific subject matters they are writing about, especially those subjects that many people would likely have expertise with.

e.g.
- [non science fiction] writers who totally screw up stuff like how computers work, and what they can or cannot do;

- writing about pool players, tennis, baseball, <insert your hobby/pasttime here> when you have clearly never even spent an hour doing it;

- related: total non-familiarity with the lingo for stuff like the above.

You get the idea...

[jedipencil]

What kills a book for me is buying it, and then finding out it has something called a DRM and I can't read it. I'm obviously a noob at this, but it bothers me none the less.

[anamardoll]

Oooh! I thought of one the other day. I don't like it when a book's first chapter lavishly sets up a character, makes me interested in their backstory, gives me someone to root for in the novel, and then BAM! at the end of the chapter, the character dies to prove that the WEREWOLF / METEOR / GLOBAL WARMING / WHATEVER that the book is *actually* about is, in fact, dangerous. I hate that.

[carpetmojo]

I've just finished "Resurection Day" by the interestingly named Brendon DuBois.

It was OK , rather ho-hum, and somewhat flabby in parts. Had to read it, 'cos Ordered to by son. Not ebook.


But the real thing that killed it for me was the frequent expression "had on".



Now I know it is American usage or vernacular, but in this novel it seemed to crop up every few pages, he had on... she had on... they had on ..

I just longed for the odd "wore" but I appreciate that's a bit Brit, so I just wished they either had nothing on, stayed indoors unseen, or simply got shot in the shower !!

[maggievnc]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

indeed, too much sex in a book makes me
i also hate lame resolutions to conflicts.

So do I!

I also put down a book which is 'perfectly written by the rules' and nothing more.

I can't help making a comparison between such a book and a beautiful silicone / botox woman - everything is so called perfect but artificial and with no self identity or a personal touch.

[xg4bx]

silly/snarky/unrealistic dialogue. i was reading Orson Scott Card's "Empire". I had no problem with the politics but the snarky and completely unrealistic dialogue absolutely killed it for me, I had to put it down. All I kept thinking was "nobody talks like this!"


Sci-fi/fantasy authors so in love with their world building that the books description alone puts me to sleep. When half the description involves made up words and names I'm not gonna read your book.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by bashfulbanshee

-silly fantasy names with apostrophes in the middle

[Aladyleyna]

I don't like books that preach too much, and when it is glaringly obvious that the author is trying to convince me of something. Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series was a perfect example of that, what with it's anti-meat, anti-religious, pro-self serving stance. In contrast, Chronicles of Narnia, despite being a religious book, hardly had any preaching involved - it was all story and action, and I loved it.

Writing styles too. This one is rather had to explain, but sometimes, some writing styles just put me off. That's the main reason why I never got into the Harry Potter series past the first and third book. I actually found it bland and uninteresting, and I couldn't really relate to the characters because of it.

Half-assed research also annoys me. Like when an author barely does any research and bases his or her information on hearsay and 'feeling'. Axis Powers Hetalia, though not a novel, pissed me off because of that. Da Vinci Code too, I refused to read it because of those reasons, and going by all the reviews, it seems like I'm mot missing much.

Sometimes, I stop reading because it gets too emotionally painful to carry on. I did that for Stephen King's Under the Dome, because what happened to the characters was so painful I couldn't go on.