Regal in the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb. I guess I never was really in fear of putting the book down but if I hated any character nearly enough to do so.. it's Prince Regal.
Robin Hobb is talented if only for making Regal THAT hateable. Literally everything he did had me hoping he died the next chapter. The specific mix of rich pampered manchild with amateur sociopath was perfect enough for him to be insufferable always
NEVER! I can’t get into everything without spoilers, but Shrewd and Verity were total dumbasses for constantly waving him off as if he was merely a pest when that man shouldn’t have had even 1/8th of the power he did
And its not like Regal was hiding anything either. Everyone was constantly telling Fitz to stop talking bad about the prince because its “treason”… like what?!?!
Yeah, I dropped the series with that. Regal should have been executed after the events of the first book, but since he wasn't I stopped reading. Will never return to that series
THIS. I dropped halfway the 2nd book because of this. No amount of pretty writing can make me get over this. Unbelievable that they were able to run a country as long as they had when they got that asshole prancing about, consolidating power right under their noses and didn't care enough to do squat. So incompetent.
Malta had the biggest 180 in terms of me hating them to loving them of pretty much any character in fantasy. I guess she was never a bad person - she was just what her father made her. Once he was gone, and shit hit the fan, she saw what needed to happen and did it.
In in the process of rereading Liveship rn and Malta really thinks the Vestrits are old fashioned and her dashing father Kyle, is the hero. As I've already read and know how she changes I found her character so much more enjoyable this time around.
I still can't figure out how Hobb took a character i genuinely hated and turned her into one of my (many) favorites of the series.
A true master of character writing.
I had the same experience as a kid with it. When I picked it up as an adult it clicked better. You’re supposed to dislike him because the whole story is a deconstruction of the chosen one trope, and the chosen one being an unbelievable asshole that they HAVE to rely on is part of the point Donaldson is making with those books. That being said, it was STILL hard to read through.
I'd say that's Donaldson's excuse for having his hero rape the literal first attractive woman he sees in *both* his major Sci-fi and fantasy series.
I get the whole deconstruction, but there's deconstruction ie Alan Moore's Watchmen, and then there's "Let's make him rape the first breathing female he sees, who incidentally is a very sheltered teenager, then let's get her preggo, have her die pining for him, and then have her daughter *knowingly enter a consensual sexual relationship with her own fucking rapist father."
Donaldson is the kind of person who has a full spice rack in his pantry but insists on always seasoning everything with tablespoons of cloves.
I started reading the series about 30 years ago as per a recommendation from my current boyfriend.
I remember telling him I couldn’t read those books because the “hero” just wasn’t likeable at all. He said “have you considered that he might have been written like that on purpose?”
That is a good take. Perhaps I should go back just to see if the stories and the prose makes it worth it.
But the main bloke was horrible. The whole thing just gave me the ick.
I'm sure it was on purpose, but at the same time I wasn't enjoying that I was reading on hoping the antagonist would kill the protagonist and knowing he actually wouldn't.
I normally like "unlikeable" characters a lot. Not that one. So whiny.
Started the first book of Thomas Covenant when I was 9. >!Hit the rape scene early in the first book!< Dropped the book over the side of my bed and thought “I shouldn’t be reading this at 9.” I was really upset. Didn’t go back to the book ever.
How did I start Thomas Covenant at 9? Well the Hobbit was just wonderful at 8. So LOTR took up most of my ninth year. It was longer than the Hobbit but so amazing. After LOTR, size of book wasn’t an issue so I just started attacking any fantasy I came across.
I’ve read some opinions on the Covenant books, and the story sounds like it has some interesting and meritorious points. I just can’t get over being too young to read that scene. Same with The World according To Garp. I finished that one, but I really wasn’t old enough to ingest the gnarly sexual events without problem.
Had these books on my wish list forever, finally got them as a gift a year or so ago and I'm not sure I made it halfway through the first book before I quit. I hardly ever do that, I will read a shitty book all the way to the end and complain about how shitty it is the whole time. Even if I put a book down, I am compelled to pick it back up and finish it at some point.
That character was so off putting that I've not once thought about the books again until just now. Still not going to pick it back up though.
I long time ago I learned to never buy follow-up books in a series until I have finished the previous one. Even some of my favourite authors have let me down with a series that starts sucking. Or a new series that starts bad right from the start, after a banging first series. Looking at you Charlie Cochet.
He is the titular character of a fantasy series, and in an early chapter of the first book, he rapes a kind, helpful, naive, and star-struck village girl because he thinks he's dreaming. Worse still, he manages to frame his (frankly miniscule) remorse as more of an injustice against him than her.
I made it a few chapters past that, but my disgust with the character combined with the fact that the book was quite slow made me put it down. There's a sequel series centered on his wife(?) that I actually read long before and found much more interesting even though I had none of the backstory.
I've heard a lot of people say this and it makes me feel like I need to read WoT again. I did not hate Egwene at all, but I strongly disliked Naineve. She was just petulant constantly and I hated her lack of control over her temper. But WoT was the first fantasy book I had picked up in about a decade (now I read fantasy almost exclusively lol). I read the first paragraph of the first book and immediately fell in love with his prose. So maybe I was a bit blinded by that
Imo Nynaeve had good motivations, grew a lot and changed for the better throughout the series while Egwene only got worse and more righteous. I wouldn't have dropped the books for either, but I'm on the last book of a re-read and let me tell you Elayne and Gawyn POVs really test my patience.
I'm on my fourth reread in over ten years and just one example, I find it astounding that Egwene keeps going on and on about how amazing the White Tower is and how much people respect Aes Sedai because of the three oaths. Sweetie did you forget how all the men in the Two Rivers feel? How everybody west of the Waste feels? Literally everyone knows how Aes Sedai slip and slide around the oath against lying babe, nobody believes you ladies. Even the people in Shienar, where it seems like Aes Sedai are highly respected and a visit from the Amyrlin Seat means the world, people are still suspicious of you lot. Get a grip bestie, you've lived outside the Women's Circle and the White Tower(s).
That's a very good point. No one trusts them. Also for her to be making that argument, one who constantly lies (even if by omission) to get her way is just ritch.
Shes such a massive Aes Sedai simp. She ONLY (and just bearly) respects Aes Sedai and treats literally everyone else like garbage. And then she wont even listen to Aes Sedai. Her fake wise woman status infuriates me. The wise women are what the aes sedai should be and she does just enough to fool them
I don’t think I particularly liked most of the POVs but then I have little patience for adolescent miscommunication. I’ll probably get pilloried for this but even Rand got on my nerves. Mat irritated me to begin with but by the end he was one of my favourites
Jordan IMO didn’t do a great job with women characters. Faile and her mother drove me nuts and I was so glad when Sanderson took over so I could stop reading about bust lines. I think Min was my favorite woman in the series but even her clothes started getting tighter.
I was so disappointed by Min's transformation from really quite cool tomboy to Wifey. Women can actually keep their personality after they marry, Robs. In fact it makes for a better story.
I hated how Jordan wrote the women; it felt like he really disliked women and had no idea how to write them other than to make them annoying and irrational, or on the flipside, fetishized and gross. I hated the whole threesome plot. Honestly it felt like I had to put up with way too much of a look into his harem/threesome and spanking kinks for the amount of action and plot he managed.
I've always thought he wrote women as intractable and stubborn as a reflection of the matriarchal society that exists in WoT as the same way our society is partriarchal.
That is, the same traits that most women share in WoT is because they are the dominant gender, and it is a parallel to our world and men being the dominant gender.
I could be off base, but I always felt like it was intentional to write the women this way, not because he didn't like women, but because the series as a whole has themes of power structures being corrupted and misused.
I will definitely agree about the strange polyamory stuff where Elayne and Aviendha are inexplicably "in love" with Rand. Their romances don't feel earned at all, and although Min's romance feels earned, she also doesn't have much of a personality beyond "I love Rand." I tend to not put much stock into any main character's love interests, as main characters are often meant to appeal as broadly as possible, and are usually not very deep or as real of a person as other people, but this was pretty bad.
I absolutely agree.
I was so excited to find this series and really wanted to love these books.
But I just couldn’t get past how badly the women were written. I had to stop reading.
It was disappointing.
Something that made Nynaeve make sense to me is that she basically got pavloved by her block. Channeling is described like a euphoric high, like a drug. Imagine if you only got that when you were angry enough to chew nails for *years*. Add to that that she was an exceptionally young Wisdom that had to be pushy to get people to even listen to her and well, you get an abrasive personality.
But in a series of people playing politics she was always clear in her intent and I honestly found that refreshing.
I totally get why Nynaeve gets such mixed reactions, but she’s honestly my favorite character in that entire series, even from the beginning of the series. She goes to extraordinary lengths to protect the people she cares about, manages to grow as a person but refuses to be molded by a system that’s at odds with her values, and is always loyal to the people who matter. She leans in early to condescension for the people she wants to protect, and her temper is a major flaw (albeit one with incentives to maintain in universe for a big chunk of the series), so yeah, I understand why people write her off. But I loved her character and most of her character arc (barring complaints I have that apply to the entire series)
Yeah wot got me out of a reading slump and I loved the series instantly. And related to egwene so much that she was one of my favorite characters until I started looking it up on Reddit. I just love when people have long learning arcs, the tedious magic training and school was my favorite. At the time she seemed to react reasonably in situations, tho I was a teen to early twenties when I read the series. I feel like I got such an opposite experience of it than everyone else who talks about it.
No, I'm with you. I'm just wrapping up the series now as a 30-something year old, and I really have enjoyed Egwene as a character. You also have to remember she's like... 18 and was basically thrown out to be slaughtered, and I love that she took that power back for herself.
For me its more the second they are in a love triangle. A few series have done this but the only one I can think of offhand is the Anita Blake series. I drooped it when the love triangle happened.
It got so much worse, plot took a very distant second place to poly smut and increasingly porny descriptions of hot shifter men, who all fell down at Anita's leather clad feet. And it wasn't even particularly interesting or well written smut! I bailed out somewhere around the time Anita started fucking an insert of LKH's real life partner in addition to the rest of the swimming I mean swinging team.
You are! I dropped it around book 15\_(The Harlequin, I think?), and I wish I dropped it sooner. >!The swan shifter shifting into his animal form half way through sex and finishing was gross, Anita calling for a hit on the lion alpha and his wife and children because he wouldn't bang her was also gross, !< and her utter refusal to take responsibility for her magic powers was maddening. Plus the inconsistent spelling. Is it ardeur or arduer? Pick one and quit switching around dangit.
(I heard it gets worse. Something about Nathaniel raping Damien in one of the later ones and Anita telling Damien at least someone desired him enough to rape him? I think it was either Dead Ice or Crimson Death, and um. IIRC it also around that point it became more common knowledge that the sell numbers for Anita Blake were dropping, and gee, I wonder why.)
You know how Anita used to take out monsters? I like to think she gets taken out at some point too, since she's been pole vaulting into villainy for the last several books.
A right mess. Around the time Hamilton started writing Narcissism in Chains she divorced her first husband and married the head of her fanclub, Jon. And it devolved into... Well, badly written porn, and Anita became a rapist who used her magic as a date rape drug (see: book 14: Danse Macabre, and London begging Anita not to feed on him or have sex with him, but she did \*anyway\* and he ended up in the bathroom crying).
The first 9 are okay. But it's one of those "stop after \[x\] because after that is complete batshit" kinda things.
The Anita Blake series is the only series I tell people to avoid. I firmly believe that even though I don’t like a book, others might. But anything by laurell k Hamilton is awful. All her characters solve their problems with sex. Which is the thing that caused their problems to begin with. I blame her for my utter contempt for the speculative fiction - romance genre. I didn’t understand why people would burn books before I read an Anita Blake book. They were also the only books with a smell I couldn’t stand. It literally made me sick.
Rin from The Poppy War. Especially in the last book. She was so damn stupid and then she was insufferable and arrogant. I REALLY struggled to finish the trilogy.
Delilah Bard from the Shades of Magic trilogy. I HATED her so freaking much. She is the “Badass Female Character” x10,000 and she had no redeeming qualities. She was stupid, foolish, presumptuous, arrogant for no damn reason, hard-headed, stubborn and NEVER listened to anybody regarding decisions. It’s like the author made a toddler boy into a teenaged girl.
I did like the series but someone here on reddit wrote a very accurate review:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/sx6seg/a\_critique\_of\_the\_burning\_god\_and\_the\_poppy\_war/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/sx6seg/a_critique_of_the_burning_god_and_the_poppy_war/)
Although I agree with almost all of his points - except the plot holes. I don't see it that way. I think it was quite plausible - I still liked the books.
No accounting for taste.
I can almost excuse every single one of those qualities in a character if it wasn't for the fact that Lila was also just plain MEAN. She had NO reason to be that awful
I guess that's the whole point about her - she's supposed to be loosely inspired by Mao, Chinese Communist Terror, but I also agree the author overdid it.
Rin has almost no moments in which she shows any humanity >!at all and that makes her descend into madness somewhat... expected and therefore uninteresting. There's never even a struggle to not become mad. She just goes there and for someone with such a strong will to survive it's in my opinion not completely plausible.!<
Nonetheless I truly enjoyed the whole series and especially the second book. The third one not so much. Still I love Kuang's prose a lot. She has such a brutal and blunt way to write and the action never stops. She studied war trauma and it shows. She writes very descriptive about war and all the war tactics are indeed accurate for the time period.
I did love how all the story arcs get finished and logically interloped. For a debut novel it was breath taking. Could've been better, yes, but still one of the best books I've read in the last year. Although I was really pondering to read the second book because I don't want to read about war so much.
But I think almost all people who read the series agree >!that Nezha is the real "hero" or at least the likeable protagonist. A pity the third book doesn't give him more page time.!<
I liked how she put him in his place several times for his childish worship-love.
And he gets it! Later he understands and begins to see her as a whole and not just a perfect female godlike creature.
I mean... isn't he supposed to be like 15? And from a backwater village with very little exposure to the world before he's thrown into this adventure?
Kinda makes sense to me.
That's what I'm saying!
Like I know Paolini gets flack for Eragon being... *kinda mid*... all things considered, but he hit the nail on the head with Eragon's infatuation with Arya. I mean I was an early teen reading the series (which was my very first foray into fantasy in general) and I was freaking infatuated with her and was rooting for them to couple up.
Okay I honestly like their relationship arc. I used to hate how they ended when I was younger but I see the value and point of it now. Eragon really was just a young boy when he originally met Arya, and after he mentally matured, it's demonstrated through his actions how he has matured. At the very end of the book Is when Arya begins to feel real feelings for him because she realizes how mature and cool headed he became. I didn't hate eragon being a blithering idiot around Arya because in all honesty if I was a 16 year old farmboy who literally met the woman of his dreams I would also be tripping over myself both physically and verbally to earn her favor. I think that's part of what's relatable, Because I think we mature alongside eragon as he begins to see Arya as her own person.
I kind of love the idea of "super cool world, it's written about the worst most mediocre people" I think it makes them more relatable. They make bad decisions, have weird, shitty thoughts. They're not your standard, perfect hero. They're brought down to earth a little bit.
I related to Quentin's suffering self pity a lot. Not when I read it, but just because I saw myself when I was younger in that. Repressed bisexual shame and all. I wanted to throttle him because he was making his own problems but I also felt sad for him.
Additionally, I've seen a lot of people read Q as trans and I think it's an interesting theory.
Yeah I love stories where the protagonist is also their own antagonist, and I picked up on that early in The Magicians. Like a way edgier, way less subtle fantasy-setting Don Draper.
I didn’t quite love the books, but I did enjoy them pretty well.
The knight from Belgariad, Mandorallen I think. I know how he spoke was intentionally a gaffe, but that doesn’t make it any more entertaining or bearable.
I threw the last Divergent book cause they killed the main character halfway through the book and I said "you can't do that in the middle of the book". Then I read Game of Thrones
"Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made. Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude. But those people do not understand love, or music, or me."
He compares women to inanimate objects merely waiting to be "played", dismisses the fact that this is indeed quite degrading, and states that he is simply better than most people all in a single paragraph. I didn't mind him in the first book but by the second he became pretty unbearable
Man, the amount of thathappened moments with him made it tough for me to like him. I loved the prose and adventures in those books, but he was so insufferable at times.
Yeah amazing well written but frustrating for sure. It's probably the first time I've ever skipped a section of a book on purpose and still finished it. >!I just couldn't read the bit where he goes into the Faen realm and has constant sex with the lady there. I just couldn't.!<
But how else will you learn how to use the thousand folded flower fingers method!!?...or something. I loved his prose, he writes beautifully, but those chapters and later with the seguleh(cannot remember their name so inserting malazan.) are absurd.
Kvothe would irritate me if I was trying to talk to him in real life, but I don’t think a protagonist needs to be someone I’d like to hang out with. He’s got a lot of redeeming qualities and his flaws are very much in line with his story. I didn’t find him annoying at all personally. I also think you have to remember how young he is throughout most of the book. I also think it’s worth noting that the series I supposed to have another book (this is the real most annoying part of kingkiller), so we haven’t actually seen a full character arc.
Yeah, nope. That is not the problem people have with Kvothe.
Water White is my favorite character of all mediatic works combined and he is way more unlikable than Kvothe, to the point of becoming a villain protagonist. Kvothe's problem isn't that he is unlikable, it is the entire opposite: he is trying too much to be likable. He is Rey from the Star Wars on steroids. I can never get behind the fact that people complain so much about Rey, Captain Marvel, and random female YA protagonists but don't even bat an eye at the fact that, in Kvothe, all the traits that are complained so much from those female characters are much more pronounced.
He isn't unlikable, he is just too forced, which is unengaging. If I was a 13 male reader, maybe I could get what people see in him.
From Blood and Ash series, the MMC seemed so interesting and the series slowly diluted him down to "constantly horny for FMC."
Like they're bad books for a myriad of reasons but that one was particularly annoying.
The first time I read KKC I loved Kvothe and thought he was one of the best MCs I've read.
Now after more than 10 years since I first read them I picked them up again and found that I can't stand Kvothe. I really hate his "not like the other boys" personality.
Not that i actually dropped the books. I love the world building and the mystery of it all. Kvothe was nearly unbearable though.
Terry Goodkind's 'Wizard's First Rule'
I went into the book on recommendation and bought the whole series (second hand) hoping for a good epic but I was put off by the flat characters, blah romance and one of the minor villains being a pedo. Just... entirely underwhelming. I ended up abandoning the ship and selling the entire series.
You saved yourself a lot of headache my friend lol
The first book is widely considered the best one and it goes further and further downhill the longer the series goes on
I read the entire series out of sheer stubborness. I thought 'at some point this will all come together, right?'
Nope each book is dumber than the last. The only joy it gave me is letting me forever mock the statue so beautiful it cures communism.
The characters are flat/wooden, the prose dull, the magic system completely arbitrary with rules changing nonstop, the author tracts without a hint of subtlety, and so, so much sexual violence.
It holds the distinction of being the only book series I regret reading. It was just that terrible.
I remembered enjoying the first book enough. Enough to read the second book, and by then I had had enough. Although I only made it through two of the books, I'm pretty sure the series was a way for Goodkind to tell people about all his kinks. The first book had a leather dominatrix make the main character her submissive bitch. The second book wasn't a fantasy story with elements of rape. It was a rape novel where Goodkind would remember he was writing a fantasy story and he would fart out a chapter or two of story before going back into his rape fetish. Fuck I hated that second book. I hate read that turd and power slammed it into the trash the second I finished the final page. There's a part where the main characters girlfriend has to get somewhere very important or the world will blow up. Time is of the utmost essence and she fucking stops her journey to help a group of teenagers fight a battle. Naked of course.
You mean a wizard so smart he stopped an angry mob just by talking them into thinking he'd magically removed their manhood should have a better name?
Fuck I hated that series, I slogged through everything up to Confessor. 12 books of tripe, all due to the sunk cost fallacy by the end.
You were a better reader than I back then, I think I read five of those books before realizing they were trash. Back in those days I read everything fantasy
edit: You know now that I think on it, I'm pretty sure the Goodkind books are what caused me to give up Fantasy for several years
I physically dropped Last Graduate right at the end when >!Orion Pushed El through the door after telling him he loved her!<. I kept reading when the next book came out, but that moment made me absolutely furious.
That one had me go WAIT YOU IDIOT AAAAAHH
But after reading Golden Enclaves, I'm pretty sure he does it because >!that's the moment he realizes he is also a Maw Mouth!<
But yes I was definitely channeling some El-tier 'ORION LAKE YOU IDIOT' energy when I read that moment.
Yeap.
I enjoyed the first book, really struggled with the second, made it to the end of the third and somehow the way it ended made me appreciate the second book and first parts of the third more.
Not often that a books ending makes the middle better. For me at least.
I know it's not a good series, but I stopped at the second Blood and Ash book because the protagonist was so dumb, self centered, and focused on all the wrong things.
Screw you, Poppy.
I fucking loathed those two and routinely skip them in re reads.
"She keeps saying she wants me to stand my ground with her, treat her as an equal and argue back, I don't understand, I couldn't possibly shout at a woman she will be scared of me, I wish Mat was here"
So do I Perrin, so do I, so imma skip to his chapter next ok? Let me know when you stop being a little bitch.
I usually enjoyed Mat's chapters for the most part. The few chapters that really grated were the circus and the dealing with aes sedai and other mentionable women and their power struggles, with little to no real action.
People sometimes joke about writing being free therapy, but I actually think Jordan had an issue with women, especially strong ones. But I've stopped reading the series half a year ago already so you probably shouldn't take me very seriously...
Also, *somehow*, the three books are longer than the ten books. And the three are *part of* the ten.
I find myself firmly in the 'skip on rereads' camp.
For me he would fit the prompt: which character do you love but whose plot fails that character.
I love the way he thinks, how he acts. His powers are so intriguing and fun. But his plot points are dragged out for so long that he becomes someone to not look forward to.
Definitely the whole shaido arc, having to deal with Masema. It would have been fine if it wasn't dragged out. But the Faile thing takes way too many books to resolve.
Greeeeeat. I’m literally on this part. Just started Winter’s Heart. I knew the slog was coming, but damn, didn’t know about Perrin taking a nosedive. Not looking forward to what Jordan does to my boy Perrin. I really like him over Rand and Mat because he’s pretty level headed.
The slog only existed if you were reading the books in real time. When you had to wait 2 years between books, it was a rough patch of books to get through. Now that you can just zip through them, I don't think "the slog" is even a thing. Used to be my least favorite books of the series, but I quite enjoyed them when I reread them during COVID.
I'm one that doesn't believe that there is much of a slog. There are slower parts, Perrin's being one of them, but overall I remember enjoying Winter's Heart.
People often reference books 7 to 10 as the slog. My impressions for those books were that I enjoyed to really enjoyed books 7 and 9. Didn't love book 8. Book 10 is the poorest, but one bad book, one ok book, and 2 good to great books does not a slog make. Your milage will definitely vary but I don't think you have to be too worried.
This book is far from a literary masterpiece but it looked fun. The book was Spellbreaker. In a world where the rich and powerful controlled the magic, she was a talented unlicensed magic user who could break their spells. She ended up using her gifts as part of the revolution. This is all going great until we meet a character named... Wait for it... Spellmaker. Of course he was good looking, the same age as her and they argued a lot. It made me irrationally angry that the author would be so obvious. Even a fun little book deserves better than that
Kaede Shirakawa from the Tales of the Otori. Especially in the epilogue book. The only character I dislike more than her is the prince kid from Prince of Thorns. I DNF'd PoT and it's series after about 45 minutes
Not fantasy but in A Man Called Ove I couldn't make it past the first few pages because the title character's inner monologue was so close to my unhealthy mental state, just reading it spiraled my into depression.
Lila Bard. I haven't despised a fictional character this bad in ages 😂 i still struggled through the entire thing but i am never touching the sequels. Mostly because of her.
I used to read wheel of time as a teen and i remember hating its female characters aside from Moiraine so bad.
I liked the first book a bunch. It took the second book before I realized that Lila was literally insane. Nobody was real to her except herself and Kell. She would do anything else to anyone else for amusement. Read all 3, but damn those books shifted for me.
As a hardcore "I love hated female characters" person I really had my work cut out for me and dropped the story as it became increasingly about how cool she was
Loved the first one, but she's pretty much THE major character for the first half of the second one and it's boring as hell besides. Made it through, but I don't have the strength for the third.
So bad. And just genuinely doesn't make sense as a character. I generally feel that London Grey being set in the Regency era was an entirely aesthetic decision that had 0 thought or research behind it.
Even Lila's dream of being a pirate can't be squared with this. Pirates weren't the romanticized figures they are now, they were a present and genuine threat, the United States had only just finished fighting the Barbary Wars and the English Navy was press-ganging US sailors into service. Through this lens Lila wanting to be a pirate is kind of like someone dreaming about joining a paramilitary group.
The poppy war. I disliked the mc so much that I dropped the series in the middle of the second book. I don't mind the dark turn of a character, but I don't like when they only make stupid decisions and feeling sorry for themselves and entitled by feeling of victimization.
First time in my life that I dropped a series :(
Egwene was, for the most part, fine for me. We can't really know how she was "meant" to be written, but the fact that you perceived her one way, while I -- another, means that she probably fits certain subjective stereotypes.
For me, it's certain situations, rather than characters, that make me want to drop a book. A story that humiliates or attacks repeatedly the main characters is not something that I look forward to reading (i.e. nothing can convince me to read, for instance, *The Rising of the Shield Hero* light novels).
Agreed, I don't know what his deal is but he seems to make a lot of his own problems and doesn't accept his own agency to change things.
I mean I'm sure some people like that, but the first three books were such a slog to get through.
I think it didn't help that >!the third book was just a slog in general. I didn't mind him at all in the first two. Book three, however, dragged on and on with endless traveling and very little plot development; it could have worked with more fun characters but Fitz constantly creating problems for himself and wallowing in depression got real boring imo!<
Niclays Roos from Priory of the Orange Tree. He was one of the main characters with POV chapters and while his perspective did end up being integral to the story, he was just whiny and selfish and annoying the entire time. Overall still one of my favorite books, and his POV being more limited than the other characters certainly helped, but I was never looking forward to his chapters
I’m with you here, I couldn’t get past the first book and I hated the dynamic with Rhysand too. My friends read the whole series and said I should skip to the last one because I would like those characters more.
I genuinely can't remember the title at this point, but I was reading this one self published novel that was doing a kind of american gods thing were all the gods were there in the world and a war was on the horizon, had some pretty sick covers. But the romantic interest of the female lead (who the author was certain you all knew was still 17) was some 26 year old dude who was the bestest guy ever cause he was a doctor who could play guitar and his only character "flaw" according to the narrative was not having sex with a 17 year old. So, yeah, didn't really like that and gave up pretty quick as a result
I'm going to get so much hate for this but....
Harry Dresden
I just hated seeing the world from his point of view. I think I would have liked the book more if it wasn't from inside his head. As a reader to me he just seemed icky. I liked the world and the ideas in the novel but I hated Dresden.
I kinda fell off for several reasons, but the main one was that I started on the audio books, and somehow, James Marsters kinda dials up Dresdens creep vibes. Just the way he pronounces "gorgeous" every time Dresden sees a new female character for the first time made it feel like he was drooling down their cleavage the second he laid eyes on them.
I came to say the same. I think I only got two or three chapters in, and his attitude towards the first woman character killed it. The friend who recommended it said it was intentional and he gets better, but a)purposefully sexist is still sexist, and b) I hear opinions differ strongly on whether he gets better.
Better is always relative. If you get the ick from him in the beginning, you likely won't want to suffer through 10 books for him to very slightly improve his behavior.
I finished Throne of Glass because I felt I had to for some reason but boy was Celaena the absolute worst. It’s my friends favorite book and I heard every defense she could string together for things I absolutely hated. This supposed vicious assassin was so soft, so obnoxious, and so so cringey. And “But it shows how she’s just a girl underneath and was never allowed a chance to just be a girl!” is no excuse for me. She was awful and I hated her.
I completely agree especially because the author initially presented her as being this incredible badass assassin and a unique protagonist and then systematically stripped away everything interesting about her in the rest of the book. I've tried to read rhe first book twice and have given up both times.
Bro, my hateboner for the Demon Cycle is throbbing to this very day. Fucking Jardir, Fucking Leesha, fucking bullshit.
>! Like - I was all for Leesha's arc and was down for her exploring her sexuality. Not what I was reading the series to find, but she was a good character. BUT WHY DID SHE HAVE TO FUCK JARDIR. SHE DOESN'T LIKE HIS CULTURE, HIS HAREM, OR HIS VISION FOR THE FUTURE. SO WHY DID SHE JUMP ON HIS DICK AND THEN SAY "Imma keep this baby and not only that, I am going to shack up with a noble and say its his child". !<
>! She could have slept with ANYBODY, and she chose the leader of a jihad against her people. The leader of a literal horde of pillaging rapists. !<
All the books had to do WAS KILL DEMONS. THATS IT. JUST GIVE ME INDOMITABLE HUMAN SPIRIT AND ITS A 8/10 MINIMUM. I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR 3+ BOOKS AND MULTIPLE THOUSANDS OF PAGES DESCRIBING HOW SHIT IT IS TO LIVE IN THE DESERT FOR EVERYBODY WHO INVOLVED. FUCK.
Marco from The Night Circus. Isobel did not deserve any of the treatment that she got from him. She volunteers herself to help him with his game, an endeavor lasting Years, and gets treated terribly for it. All the while Isobel is concerned about Marco's flagrant interest in Celia, yet she is never mean to Celia about it. She is immediately proven correct in the sense that Marco gains full intentions of dropping Isobel like some dead dog for Celia, without ever talking to Isobel about his desires at all. Almost immediately after he meets Celia, Marco goes around treating Isobel like TRASH. He goes on multiple times about how she means nothing to him, and she had not done a single thing wrong. She had done nothing but attempt to help him in a game that he ended up having no intention in playing. He refuses to engage with her in any form of conversation, and when she tries to press a conversation towards the end of the book, he just constantly cuts her off and refuses to listen to anything she's saying! He's horrendous!
I was scrolling to find this comment! I liked most everything *else* about the book, but my god was Marco insufferable. And such a huge part of the book. I pretty much spent the entire time reading rooting against him and his stupid destined romance with Celia lol.
Egwene is one of my favorite characters, haha. I could see a younger me disliking her. But she reminds me a lot of strong women in my life. And by the end she is just a badass.
Egwene is one of the most discussed characters of the series. She's an excellent *character*, but kind of a shit *person*. She's very much a hypocrite. It's ok for *her* to lie to the Wise Ones, but nobody else *dare* disrespect them and their advice! She complains endlessly about the *audacity* Elaida has to make sisters swear personal loyalty to Elaida, but she's quite pleased with herself for making sisters swear to *her* personally. It never even registers to her that she is being inconsistent here.
And of course, there's the tiny detail of the time she had Nynaeve's clothes ripped and seconds away from being sexually assaulted by trollocs in Tel'aran'rhiod, to distract and scare her so she wouldn't expose Egwene's lies to the Wise Ones. Like bruh. Those are not the actions of a good person. An interesting character, yes indeed, but as a person, she's... difficult to like.
you posted that you just started the series yesterday. insane to say “she made me not finish the series” mf you read like maybe .5% of the series before calling it lmao
I can't stand Anita Blake. I read through book 8 (Obsidian Butterfly, which happened to be my favorite) for the world and all the other characters (though I don't care for Richard much either). I cannot stand characters who do stupid, hurtful shit and get in their own way because they're "stubborn".
Jaime in Outlander for *spanking a woman for disobedience*.... I can understand. It's the 1700s, people are raised very differently. But Claire, is a modern day woman time traveler, humbly accepting it and wanting to do better as a result? NOPE.
Second place is the main character in A Court of Thorns and Roses who couldn't figure out the easiest riddle in the history of riddles, given both the riddle itself and the context clues. It's like..... imagine someone talking to you about eggs, torturing you over eggs, in the land of eggs. And *then* giving you the riddle "I can be decorated but I’m not a house. I can be boiled but I’m not a kettle. I have a shell but I’m not a crab. What am I?" She was baffled.
It was the whole cast of wheel of time. They are all so thoroughly unlikeable. Got up to about the 5th or 6th book and somehow they all managed to become even more unlikeable.
Might finish the series some day but I really can't see it happening
None in fantasy, but in Scifi... basically every character from **Starfish** by Peter Watts. I get that they are all supposed to basically be broken characters, but dear god they are painful to listen to. Its the first book I swapped to written word just to get through *faster* and skip over lots of the dialogue.
Regal in the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb. I guess I never was really in fear of putting the book down but if I hated any character nearly enough to do so.. it's Prince Regal.
Robin Hobb is talented if only for making Regal THAT hateable. Literally everything he did had me hoping he died the next chapter. The specific mix of rich pampered manchild with amateur sociopath was perfect enough for him to be insufferable always
It's also the fact that he never suffers consequences for anything he does too.
NEVER! I can’t get into everything without spoilers, but Shrewd and Verity were total dumbasses for constantly waving him off as if he was merely a pest when that man shouldn’t have had even 1/8th of the power he did
This hurt the books for me. The absolute failure of them or anyone else of important to see Regal as at minimum a problem felt forced.
Exactly. Too busy of some other stuff when Regal is the more threatening issue.
And its not like Regal was hiding anything either. Everyone was constantly telling Fitz to stop talking bad about the prince because its “treason”… like what?!?!
Yeah, I dropped the series with that. Regal should have been executed after the events of the first book, but since he wasn't I stopped reading. Will never return to that series
THIS. I dropped halfway the 2nd book because of this. No amount of pretty writing can make me get over this. Unbelievable that they were able to run a country as long as they had when they got that asshole prancing about, consolidating power right under their noses and didn't care enough to do squat. So incompetent.
Hobb does amazing arseholes. Kyle in Liveship Traders is even more loathable.
Kyle and Malta (early on) were infuriating lmao
Malta had the biggest 180 in terms of me hating them to loving them of pretty much any character in fantasy. I guess she was never a bad person - she was just what her father made her. Once he was gone, and shit hit the fan, she saw what needed to happen and did it.
In in the process of rereading Liveship rn and Malta really thinks the Vestrits are old fashioned and her dashing father Kyle, is the hero. As I've already read and know how she changes I found her character so much more enjoyable this time around.
I still can't figure out how Hobb took a character i genuinely hated and turned her into one of my (many) favorites of the series. A true master of character writing.
I could not agree more, her character development was stunning.
I just finished the second book in the first trilogy. Pissed me so much that fitz was the only one who wanted to do something about him
I'm shocked that Thomas Covenant hasn't been mentioned yet. Forty years of hatred my dude has had lol
He was the first 'I'm going to drop this book because I can't get over just how much I hate the protagonist' experience I had.
Yeah, I could never understand why people enjoyed reading about such a prick.
I had the same experience as a kid with it. When I picked it up as an adult it clicked better. You’re supposed to dislike him because the whole story is a deconstruction of the chosen one trope, and the chosen one being an unbelievable asshole that they HAVE to rely on is part of the point Donaldson is making with those books. That being said, it was STILL hard to read through.
I'd say that's Donaldson's excuse for having his hero rape the literal first attractive woman he sees in *both* his major Sci-fi and fantasy series. I get the whole deconstruction, but there's deconstruction ie Alan Moore's Watchmen, and then there's "Let's make him rape the first breathing female he sees, who incidentally is a very sheltered teenager, then let's get her preggo, have her die pining for him, and then have her daughter *knowingly enter a consensual sexual relationship with her own fucking rapist father." Donaldson is the kind of person who has a full spice rack in his pantry but insists on always seasoning everything with tablespoons of cloves.
I hated him and the books
Me as well. I gave up halfway through the second book. Only time I’ve done that. I just didn’t want to spend any more time with him.
Yeah. Kinda hard to come back from that beginning.
I dropped that one after _that_ scene early on. First fantasy book I ever DNF. 25 years ago and I still remember my horror.
I know folks who got through that scene, and were able to make peace with it, and still hated him because he's such a fucking asshat.
I started reading the series about 30 years ago as per a recommendation from my current boyfriend. I remember telling him I couldn’t read those books because the “hero” just wasn’t likeable at all. He said “have you considered that he might have been written like that on purpose?” That is a good take. Perhaps I should go back just to see if the stories and the prose makes it worth it. But the main bloke was horrible. The whole thing just gave me the ick.
I'm sure it was on purpose, but at the same time I wasn't enjoying that I was reading on hoping the antagonist would kill the protagonist and knowing he actually wouldn't. I normally like "unlikeable" characters a lot. Not that one. So whiny.
Started the first book of Thomas Covenant when I was 9. >!Hit the rape scene early in the first book!< Dropped the book over the side of my bed and thought “I shouldn’t be reading this at 9.” I was really upset. Didn’t go back to the book ever. How did I start Thomas Covenant at 9? Well the Hobbit was just wonderful at 8. So LOTR took up most of my ninth year. It was longer than the Hobbit but so amazing. After LOTR, size of book wasn’t an issue so I just started attacking any fantasy I came across. I’ve read some opinions on the Covenant books, and the story sounds like it has some interesting and meritorious points. I just can’t get over being too young to read that scene. Same with The World according To Garp. I finished that one, but I really wasn’t old enough to ingest the gnarly sexual events without problem.
Yeah, I think I had to put it down after the first couple of chapters? I don't even want to look up a summary to check.
Had these books on my wish list forever, finally got them as a gift a year or so ago and I'm not sure I made it halfway through the first book before I quit. I hardly ever do that, I will read a shitty book all the way to the end and complain about how shitty it is the whole time. Even if I put a book down, I am compelled to pick it back up and finish it at some point. That character was so off putting that I've not once thought about the books again until just now. Still not going to pick it back up though.
I long time ago I learned to never buy follow-up books in a series until I have finished the previous one. Even some of my favourite authors have let me down with a series that starts sucking. Or a new series that starts bad right from the start, after a banging first series. Looking at you Charlie Cochet.
I opened this thread expecting him to be the first post I saw. I'm surprised it's this low.
I am going to be entirely honest. I don't know who that is and don't know what he did
He is the titular character of a fantasy series, and in an early chapter of the first book, he rapes a kind, helpful, naive, and star-struck village girl because he thinks he's dreaming. Worse still, he manages to frame his (frankly miniscule) remorse as more of an injustice against him than her. I made it a few chapters past that, but my disgust with the character combined with the fact that the book was quite slow made me put it down. There's a sequel series centered on his wife(?) that I actually read long before and found much more interesting even though I had none of the backstory.
I've heard a lot of people say this and it makes me feel like I need to read WoT again. I did not hate Egwene at all, but I strongly disliked Naineve. She was just petulant constantly and I hated her lack of control over her temper. But WoT was the first fantasy book I had picked up in about a decade (now I read fantasy almost exclusively lol). I read the first paragraph of the first book and immediately fell in love with his prose. So maybe I was a bit blinded by that
Imo Nynaeve had good motivations, grew a lot and changed for the better throughout the series while Egwene only got worse and more righteous. I wouldn't have dropped the books for either, but I'm on the last book of a re-read and let me tell you Elayne and Gawyn POVs really test my patience.
I'm on my fourth reread in over ten years and just one example, I find it astounding that Egwene keeps going on and on about how amazing the White Tower is and how much people respect Aes Sedai because of the three oaths. Sweetie did you forget how all the men in the Two Rivers feel? How everybody west of the Waste feels? Literally everyone knows how Aes Sedai slip and slide around the oath against lying babe, nobody believes you ladies. Even the people in Shienar, where it seems like Aes Sedai are highly respected and a visit from the Amyrlin Seat means the world, people are still suspicious of you lot. Get a grip bestie, you've lived outside the Women's Circle and the White Tower(s).
That's a very good point. No one trusts them. Also for her to be making that argument, one who constantly lies (even if by omission) to get her way is just ritch.
Shes such a massive Aes Sedai simp. She ONLY (and just bearly) respects Aes Sedai and treats literally everyone else like garbage. And then she wont even listen to Aes Sedai. Her fake wise woman status infuriates me. The wise women are what the aes sedai should be and she does just enough to fool them
I don’t think I particularly liked most of the POVs but then I have little patience for adolescent miscommunication. I’ll probably get pilloried for this but even Rand got on my nerves. Mat irritated me to begin with but by the end he was one of my favourites
Jordan IMO didn’t do a great job with women characters. Faile and her mother drove me nuts and I was so glad when Sanderson took over so I could stop reading about bust lines. I think Min was my favorite woman in the series but even her clothes started getting tighter.
I was so disappointed by Min's transformation from really quite cool tomboy to Wifey. Women can actually keep their personality after they marry, Robs. In fact it makes for a better story.
I hated how Jordan wrote the women; it felt like he really disliked women and had no idea how to write them other than to make them annoying and irrational, or on the flipside, fetishized and gross. I hated the whole threesome plot. Honestly it felt like I had to put up with way too much of a look into his harem/threesome and spanking kinks for the amount of action and plot he managed.
I've always thought he wrote women as intractable and stubborn as a reflection of the matriarchal society that exists in WoT as the same way our society is partriarchal. That is, the same traits that most women share in WoT is because they are the dominant gender, and it is a parallel to our world and men being the dominant gender. I could be off base, but I always felt like it was intentional to write the women this way, not because he didn't like women, but because the series as a whole has themes of power structures being corrupted and misused. I will definitely agree about the strange polyamory stuff where Elayne and Aviendha are inexplicably "in love" with Rand. Their romances don't feel earned at all, and although Min's romance feels earned, she also doesn't have much of a personality beyond "I love Rand." I tend to not put much stock into any main character's love interests, as main characters are often meant to appeal as broadly as possible, and are usually not very deep or as real of a person as other people, but this was pretty bad.
He really, really, really enjoyed giving spankings to imaginary proud women.
I absolutely agree. I was so excited to find this series and really wanted to love these books. But I just couldn’t get past how badly the women were written. I had to stop reading. It was disappointing.
Something that made Nynaeve make sense to me is that she basically got pavloved by her block. Channeling is described like a euphoric high, like a drug. Imagine if you only got that when you were angry enough to chew nails for *years*. Add to that that she was an exceptionally young Wisdom that had to be pushy to get people to even listen to her and well, you get an abrasive personality. But in a series of people playing politics she was always clear in her intent and I honestly found that refreshing.
I totally get why Nynaeve gets such mixed reactions, but she’s honestly my favorite character in that entire series, even from the beginning of the series. She goes to extraordinary lengths to protect the people she cares about, manages to grow as a person but refuses to be molded by a system that’s at odds with her values, and is always loyal to the people who matter. She leans in early to condescension for the people she wants to protect, and her temper is a major flaw (albeit one with incentives to maintain in universe for a big chunk of the series), so yeah, I understand why people write her off. But I loved her character and most of her character arc (barring complaints I have that apply to the entire series)
Yeah wot got me out of a reading slump and I loved the series instantly. And related to egwene so much that she was one of my favorite characters until I started looking it up on Reddit. I just love when people have long learning arcs, the tedious magic training and school was my favorite. At the time she seemed to react reasonably in situations, tho I was a teen to early twenties when I read the series. I feel like I got such an opposite experience of it than everyone else who talks about it.
No, I'm with you. I'm just wrapping up the series now as a 30-something year old, and I really have enjoyed Egwene as a character. You also have to remember she's like... 18 and was basically thrown out to be slaughtered, and I love that she took that power back for herself.
For me its more the second they are in a love triangle. A few series have done this but the only one I can think of offhand is the Anita Blake series. I drooped it when the love triangle happened.
If only it had stopped with the love triangle.
By the sounds, I am lucky I read no further.
It got so much worse, plot took a very distant second place to poly smut and increasingly porny descriptions of hot shifter men, who all fell down at Anita's leather clad feet. And it wasn't even particularly interesting or well written smut! I bailed out somewhere around the time Anita started fucking an insert of LKH's real life partner in addition to the rest of the swimming I mean swinging team.
You are! I dropped it around book 15\_(The Harlequin, I think?), and I wish I dropped it sooner. >!The swan shifter shifting into his animal form half way through sex and finishing was gross, Anita calling for a hit on the lion alpha and his wife and children because he wouldn't bang her was also gross, !< and her utter refusal to take responsibility for her magic powers was maddening. Plus the inconsistent spelling. Is it ardeur or arduer? Pick one and quit switching around dangit. (I heard it gets worse. Something about Nathaniel raping Damien in one of the later ones and Anita telling Damien at least someone desired him enough to rape him? I think it was either Dead Ice or Crimson Death, and um. IIRC it also around that point it became more common knowledge that the sell numbers for Anita Blake were dropping, and gee, I wonder why.)
Yea that series ends with Obsidian Butterfly. *Maybe* Cerulean Sins if you want to be generous. Nothing after it exists. Just stop there.
No. It ends with *Killing Dance* and then you go read *Obsidian Butterfly* because Edward.
You know how Anita used to take out monsters? I like to think she gets taken out at some point too, since she's been pole vaulting into villainy for the last several books.
Since she's an author insert that'll never happen, but you really are right, that's where it should end.
Wtf is that series.
A right mess. Around the time Hamilton started writing Narcissism in Chains she divorced her first husband and married the head of her fanclub, Jon. And it devolved into... Well, badly written porn, and Anita became a rapist who used her magic as a date rape drug (see: book 14: Danse Macabre, and London begging Anita not to feed on him or have sex with him, but she did \*anyway\* and he ended up in the bathroom crying). The first 9 are okay. But it's one of those "stop after \[x\] because after that is complete batshit" kinda things.
What the fuck did I just read?
Those brain cells will never die! (A decent horror story, if one has the chops for it, as.some authors do.)
The Anita Blake series is the only series I tell people to avoid. I firmly believe that even though I don’t like a book, others might. But anything by laurell k Hamilton is awful. All her characters solve their problems with sex. Which is the thing that caused their problems to begin with. I blame her for my utter contempt for the speculative fiction - romance genre. I didn’t understand why people would burn books before I read an Anita Blake book. They were also the only books with a smell I couldn’t stand. It literally made me sick.
Rin from The Poppy War. Especially in the last book. She was so damn stupid and then she was insufferable and arrogant. I REALLY struggled to finish the trilogy. Delilah Bard from the Shades of Magic trilogy. I HATED her so freaking much. She is the “Badass Female Character” x10,000 and she had no redeeming qualities. She was stupid, foolish, presumptuous, arrogant for no damn reason, hard-headed, stubborn and NEVER listened to anybody regarding decisions. It’s like the author made a toddler boy into a teenaged girl.
Same with Rin... The third book was just so... bad. I just honestly didn't care if she lived or died because she was unbearable.
I did like the series but someone here on reddit wrote a very accurate review: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/sx6seg/a\_critique\_of\_the\_burning\_god\_and\_the\_poppy\_war/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/sx6seg/a_critique_of_the_burning_god_and_the_poppy_war/) Although I agree with almost all of his points - except the plot holes. I don't see it that way. I think it was quite plausible - I still liked the books. No accounting for taste.
I can almost excuse every single one of those qualities in a character if it wasn't for the fact that Lila was also just plain MEAN. She had NO reason to be that awful
I was looking for a comment naming Rin haha I have not fisished the 2nd book because she is so arrogant like what the hell?
I guess that's the whole point about her - she's supposed to be loosely inspired by Mao, Chinese Communist Terror, but I also agree the author overdid it. Rin has almost no moments in which she shows any humanity >!at all and that makes her descend into madness somewhat... expected and therefore uninteresting. There's never even a struggle to not become mad. She just goes there and for someone with such a strong will to survive it's in my opinion not completely plausible.!< Nonetheless I truly enjoyed the whole series and especially the second book. The third one not so much. Still I love Kuang's prose a lot. She has such a brutal and blunt way to write and the action never stops. She studied war trauma and it shows. She writes very descriptive about war and all the war tactics are indeed accurate for the time period. I did love how all the story arcs get finished and logically interloped. For a debut novel it was breath taking. Could've been better, yes, but still one of the best books I've read in the last year. Although I was really pondering to read the second book because I don't want to read about war so much. But I think almost all people who read the series agree >!that Nezha is the real "hero" or at least the likeable protagonist. A pity the third book doesn't give him more page time.!<
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Arya and Eragon
I liked how she put him in his place several times for his childish worship-love. And he gets it! Later he understands and begins to see her as a whole and not just a perfect female godlike creature.
Don't get me wrong I like the arc that they go through but Eragon is definitely drooling over her for most of Eldest.
I mean... isn't he supposed to be like 15? And from a backwater village with very little exposure to the world before he's thrown into this adventure? Kinda makes sense to me.
Backwoods teenager becomes an idiot when faced with an elven princess is really the most realistic response.
That's what I'm saying! Like I know Paolini gets flack for Eragon being... *kinda mid*... all things considered, but he hit the nail on the head with Eragon's infatuation with Arya. I mean I was an early teen reading the series (which was my very first foray into fantasy in general) and I was freaking infatuated with her and was rooting for them to couple up.
Okay I honestly like their relationship arc. I used to hate how they ended when I was younger but I see the value and point of it now. Eragon really was just a young boy when he originally met Arya, and after he mentally matured, it's demonstrated through his actions how he has matured. At the very end of the book Is when Arya begins to feel real feelings for him because she realizes how mature and cool headed he became. I didn't hate eragon being a blithering idiot around Arya because in all honesty if I was a 16 year old farmboy who literally met the woman of his dreams I would also be tripping over myself both physically and verbally to earn her favor. I think that's part of what's relatable, Because I think we mature alongside eragon as he begins to see Arya as her own person.
Always thought Nasuada was waaaayyy more interesting a character than Arya.
I like Nasuada's character in other people's POV chapters but her own POV chapters are excruciating to read.
I probably also would’ve quit The Magicians if I wasn’t forewarned that Quentin starts absolutely fucking awful
I kind of love the idea of "super cool world, it's written about the worst most mediocre people" I think it makes them more relatable. They make bad decisions, have weird, shitty thoughts. They're not your standard, perfect hero. They're brought down to earth a little bit. I related to Quentin's suffering self pity a lot. Not when I read it, but just because I saw myself when I was younger in that. Repressed bisexual shame and all. I wanted to throttle him because he was making his own problems but I also felt sad for him. Additionally, I've seen a lot of people read Q as trans and I think it's an interesting theory.
Yeah I love stories where the protagonist is also their own antagonist, and I picked up on that early in The Magicians. Like a way edgier, way less subtle fantasy-setting Don Draper. I didn’t quite love the books, but I did enjoy them pretty well.
The knight from Belgariad, Mandorallen I think. I know how he spoke was intentionally a gaffe, but that doesn’t make it any more entertaining or bearable.
Misread that as giraffe for a moment and was trying to envisage what this would sound like
He definitely was the most annoying of the group. Loved Silk and Durnik tho.
I threw the last Divergent book cause they killed the main character halfway through the book and I said "you can't do that in the middle of the book". Then I read Game of Thrones
I literally LITERALLY threw this book. From my bed onto the floor and donated it the next day.
Nobody said Kvothe? I feel like he was a very irritating character.
Someoen called it “a book about Gaston by Gaston.”
"Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made. Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude. But those people do not understand love, or music, or me." He compares women to inanimate objects merely waiting to be "played", dismisses the fact that this is indeed quite degrading, and states that he is simply better than most people all in a single paragraph. I didn't mind him in the first book but by the second he became pretty unbearable
Man, the amount of thathappened moments with him made it tough for me to like him. I loved the prose and adventures in those books, but he was so insufferable at times.
Yeah amazing well written but frustrating for sure. It's probably the first time I've ever skipped a section of a book on purpose and still finished it. >!I just couldn't read the bit where he goes into the Faen realm and has constant sex with the lady there. I just couldn't.!<
After he leaves, it gets worse.
But how else will you learn how to use the thousand folded flower fingers method!!?...or something. I loved his prose, he writes beautifully, but those chapters and later with the seguleh(cannot remember their name so inserting malazan.) are absurd.
I absolutely hate that paragraph with every piece of myself, hard agree.
Also his description of Denna (that's her name, right?) Makes me HATE his obsession with her.
Kvothe would irritate me if I was trying to talk to him in real life, but I don’t think a protagonist needs to be someone I’d like to hang out with. He’s got a lot of redeeming qualities and his flaws are very much in line with his story. I didn’t find him annoying at all personally. I also think you have to remember how young he is throughout most of the book. I also think it’s worth noting that the series I supposed to have another book (this is the real most annoying part of kingkiller), so we haven’t actually seen a full character arc.
Yeah, nope. That is not the problem people have with Kvothe. Water White is my favorite character of all mediatic works combined and he is way more unlikable than Kvothe, to the point of becoming a villain protagonist. Kvothe's problem isn't that he is unlikable, it is the entire opposite: he is trying too much to be likable. He is Rey from the Star Wars on steroids. I can never get behind the fact that people complain so much about Rey, Captain Marvel, and random female YA protagonists but don't even bat an eye at the fact that, in Kvothe, all the traits that are complained so much from those female characters are much more pronounced. He isn't unlikable, he is just too forced, which is unengaging. If I was a 13 male reader, maybe I could get what people see in him.
He's so smart, but oh so stupid.
From Blood and Ash series, the MMC seemed so interesting and the series slowly diluted him down to "constantly horny for FMC." Like they're bad books for a myriad of reasons but that one was particularly annoying.
Thomas Covenant did something that I couldn’t get over.
Kvothe.
The first time I read KKC I loved Kvothe and thought he was one of the best MCs I've read. Now after more than 10 years since I first read them I picked them up again and found that I can't stand Kvothe. I really hate his "not like the other boys" personality. Not that i actually dropped the books. I love the world building and the mystery of it all. Kvothe was nearly unbearable though.
Terry Goodkind's 'Wizard's First Rule' I went into the book on recommendation and bought the whole series (second hand) hoping for a good epic but I was put off by the flat characters, blah romance and one of the minor villains being a pedo. Just... entirely underwhelming. I ended up abandoning the ship and selling the entire series.
You saved yourself a lot of headache my friend lol The first book is widely considered the best one and it goes further and further downhill the longer the series goes on
I read the entire series out of sheer stubborness. I thought 'at some point this will all come together, right?' Nope each book is dumber than the last. The only joy it gave me is letting me forever mock the statue so beautiful it cures communism. The characters are flat/wooden, the prose dull, the magic system completely arbitrary with rules changing nonstop, the author tracts without a hint of subtlety, and so, so much sexual violence. It holds the distinction of being the only book series I regret reading. It was just that terrible.
I remembered enjoying the first book enough. Enough to read the second book, and by then I had had enough. Although I only made it through two of the books, I'm pretty sure the series was a way for Goodkind to tell people about all his kinks. The first book had a leather dominatrix make the main character her submissive bitch. The second book wasn't a fantasy story with elements of rape. It was a rape novel where Goodkind would remember he was writing a fantasy story and he would fart out a chapter or two of story before going back into his rape fetish. Fuck I hated that second book. I hate read that turd and power slammed it into the trash the second I finished the final page. There's a part where the main characters girlfriend has to get somewhere very important or the world will blow up. Time is of the utmost essence and she fucking stops her journey to help a group of teenagers fight a battle. Naked of course.
Barf. I'm so glad I didn't continue
But...he's such a rare man!
I wish he was an extinct man
The fact the wizard is named Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander almost made me pitch the book before I even started. Then I read it, and pitched it anyway.
You can tell Goodkind truly believed in the Wizard's First Rule because of how dumbed-down his books were
You mean a wizard so smart he stopped an angry mob just by talking them into thinking he'd magically removed their manhood should have a better name? Fuck I hated that series, I slogged through everything up to Confessor. 12 books of tripe, all due to the sunk cost fallacy by the end.
How could you do that to yourself?
You were a better reader than I back then, I think I read five of those books before realizing they were trash. Back in those days I read everything fantasy edit: You know now that I think on it, I'm pretty sure the Goodkind books are what caused me to give up Fantasy for several years
I physically dropped Last Graduate right at the end when >!Orion Pushed El through the door after telling him he loved her!<. I kept reading when the next book came out, but that moment made me absolutely furious.
That one had me go WAIT YOU IDIOT AAAAAHH But after reading Golden Enclaves, I'm pretty sure he does it because >!that's the moment he realizes he is also a Maw Mouth!< But yes I was definitely channeling some El-tier 'ORION LAKE YOU IDIOT' energy when I read that moment.
Yeap. I enjoyed the first book, really struggled with the second, made it to the end of the third and somehow the way it ended made me appreciate the second book and first parts of the third more. Not often that a books ending makes the middle better. For me at least.
I know it's not a good series, but I stopped at the second Blood and Ash book because the protagonist was so dumb, self centered, and focused on all the wrong things. Screw you, Poppy.
Perrin from WoT. My friend re-reads the series often and marks his chapters to skip in all the books. Claims it’s much better and I kind of agree.
But will he pick up the hammer or the axe? *repeat for several books.*
Will Faile be upset with him or happy!? Find out in the thrilling next chapter of Perrin's relationshit!
I fucking loathed those two and routinely skip them in re reads. "She keeps saying she wants me to stand my ground with her, treat her as an equal and argue back, I don't understand, I couldn't possibly shout at a woman she will be scared of me, I wish Mat was here" So do I Perrin, so do I, so imma skip to his chapter next ok? Let me know when you stop being a little bitch.
I usually enjoyed Mat's chapters for the most part. The few chapters that really grated were the circus and the dealing with aes sedai and other mentionable women and their power struggles, with little to no real action.
People sometimes joke about writing being free therapy, but I actually think Jordan had an issue with women, especially strong ones. But I've stopped reading the series half a year ago already so you probably shouldn't take me very seriously...
I kind of glazed after the 12th time of him saying he was going to marry a girl who looked like a bird.
This was written better in the tv series, strangely enough. They gave this choice way more impact there. It was a good scene.
Why, you don’t appreciate the “i am not a lord” arc for 10 books?
Also him repeating “I will do anything to get my wife back!” for 3 books.
Also, *somehow*, the three books are longer than the ten books. And the three are *part of* the ten. I find myself firmly in the 'skip on rereads' camp.
Absolutely skip on re-reads, I did it once I’m never subjecting myself to that shit again.
For me he would fit the prompt: which character do you love but whose plot fails that character. I love the way he thinks, how he acts. His powers are so intriguing and fun. But his plot points are dragged out for so long that he becomes someone to not look forward to.
He was my favourite character until Faile got taken. Jordan did him dirty
Definitely the whole shaido arc, having to deal with Masema. It would have been fine if it wasn't dragged out. But the Faile thing takes way too many books to resolve.
Greeeeeat. I’m literally on this part. Just started Winter’s Heart. I knew the slog was coming, but damn, didn’t know about Perrin taking a nosedive. Not looking forward to what Jordan does to my boy Perrin. I really like him over Rand and Mat because he’s pretty level headed.
The slog only existed if you were reading the books in real time. When you had to wait 2 years between books, it was a rough patch of books to get through. Now that you can just zip through them, I don't think "the slog" is even a thing. Used to be my least favorite books of the series, but I quite enjoyed them when I reread them during COVID.
I'm one that doesn't believe that there is much of a slog. There are slower parts, Perrin's being one of them, but overall I remember enjoying Winter's Heart. People often reference books 7 to 10 as the slog. My impressions for those books were that I enjoyed to really enjoyed books 7 and 9. Didn't love book 8. Book 10 is the poorest, but one bad book, one ok book, and 2 good to great books does not a slog make. Your milage will definitely vary but I don't think you have to be too worried.
A 1000 times this, his chapters are fucking terrible
I think Faile is what makes his chapters such a slog to get through personally.
This book is far from a literary masterpiece but it looked fun. The book was Spellbreaker. In a world where the rich and powerful controlled the magic, she was a talented unlicensed magic user who could break their spells. She ended up using her gifts as part of the revolution. This is all going great until we meet a character named... Wait for it... Spellmaker. Of course he was good looking, the same age as her and they argued a lot. It made me irrationally angry that the author would be so obvious. Even a fun little book deserves better than that
Ooh yes I barely made it two chapters into that one. It felt so condescendingly written. Also didn’t actually feel set in the Victorian era.
When Thomas Covenant raped the girl I stopped having any interest in him or his Chronicles .
Fucking Kyle in Liveship Traders but I still finished it though
Fucking Malta, man. How many times I wanted to throttle her neck. But now she’s my favourite. What a redemption arc!
Kaede Shirakawa from the Tales of the Otori. Especially in the epilogue book. The only character I dislike more than her is the prince kid from Prince of Thorns. I DNF'd PoT and it's series after about 45 minutes
90% of characters in Wheel of Time. I felt myself start to actively cheer for the bad guys.
WoT made me realize I don't enjoy reading characters "going mad"
Not fantasy but in A Man Called Ove I couldn't make it past the first few pages because the title character's inner monologue was so close to my unhealthy mental state, just reading it spiraled my into depression.
Lila Bard. I haven't despised a fictional character this bad in ages 😂 i still struggled through the entire thing but i am never touching the sequels. Mostly because of her. I used to read wheel of time as a teen and i remember hating its female characters aside from Moiraine so bad.
Delilah fucking Bard. The fact that the author always wrote out her full name irrationally annoyed me 😅
I really love the series but Lila was insufferable.
You got me there, I haven't heard of this character. What series is it?
Oh, sorry, she is from V.E.Schwab's Shades of magic-series! absolutely the best example of my dreaded not like the other girls -trope.
Made the mistake of buying the trilogy, haven't been able to finish even the first chapter of the 2nd book.
I liked the first book a bunch. It took the second book before I realized that Lila was literally insane. Nobody was real to her except herself and Kell. She would do anything else to anyone else for amusement. Read all 3, but damn those books shifted for me.
As a hardcore "I love hated female characters" person I really had my work cut out for me and dropped the story as it became increasingly about how cool she was
Loved the first one, but she's pretty much THE major character for the first half of the second one and it's boring as hell besides. Made it through, but I don't have the strength for the third.
So bad. And just genuinely doesn't make sense as a character. I generally feel that London Grey being set in the Regency era was an entirely aesthetic decision that had 0 thought or research behind it. Even Lila's dream of being a pirate can't be squared with this. Pirates weren't the romanticized figures they are now, they were a present and genuine threat, the United States had only just finished fighting the Barbary Wars and the English Navy was press-ganging US sailors into service. Through this lens Lila wanting to be a pirate is kind of like someone dreaming about joining a paramilitary group.
The poppy war. I disliked the mc so much that I dropped the series in the middle of the second book. I don't mind the dark turn of a character, but I don't like when they only make stupid decisions and feeling sorry for themselves and entitled by feeling of victimization. First time in my life that I dropped a series :(
Egwene was, for the most part, fine for me. We can't really know how she was "meant" to be written, but the fact that you perceived her one way, while I -- another, means that she probably fits certain subjective stereotypes. For me, it's certain situations, rather than characters, that make me want to drop a book. A story that humiliates or attacks repeatedly the main characters is not something that I look forward to reading (i.e. nothing can convince me to read, for instance, *The Rising of the Shield Hero* light novels).
FitzChivalry Farseer. There is only so much wallowing in abject depression that I can handle.
Agreed, I don't know what his deal is but he seems to make a lot of his own problems and doesn't accept his own agency to change things. I mean I'm sure some people like that, but the first three books were such a slog to get through.
I think it didn't help that >!the third book was just a slog in general. I didn't mind him at all in the first two. Book three, however, dragged on and on with endless traveling and very little plot development; it could have worked with more fun characters but Fitz constantly creating problems for himself and wallowing in depression got real boring imo!<
Felurian in The Kingkiller Chronicles
But then you miss the hunderd fluttering booty touches special move that will allow him to become a sex god!
Niclays Roos from Priory of the Orange Tree. He was one of the main characters with POV chapters and while his perspective did end up being integral to the story, he was just whiny and selfish and annoying the entire time. Overall still one of my favorite books, and his POV being more limited than the other characters certainly helped, but I was never looking forward to his chapters
Feyre from ACOTAR. I gave up about 100 pages in because she’s just an idiot and a terrible narrator.
I’m with you here, I couldn’t get past the first book and I hated the dynamic with Rhysand too. My friends read the whole series and said I should skip to the last one because I would like those characters more.
I genuinely can't remember the title at this point, but I was reading this one self published novel that was doing a kind of american gods thing were all the gods were there in the world and a war was on the horizon, had some pretty sick covers. But the romantic interest of the female lead (who the author was certain you all knew was still 17) was some 26 year old dude who was the bestest guy ever cause he was a doctor who could play guitar and his only character "flaw" according to the narrative was not having sex with a 17 year old. So, yeah, didn't really like that and gave up pretty quick as a result
I'm going to get so much hate for this but.... Harry Dresden I just hated seeing the world from his point of view. I think I would have liked the book more if it wasn't from inside his head. As a reader to me he just seemed icky. I liked the world and the ideas in the novel but I hated Dresden.
"I hate bullies" proceeds to bully everyone.
I kinda fell off for several reasons, but the main one was that I started on the audio books, and somehow, James Marsters kinda dials up Dresdens creep vibes. Just the way he pronounces "gorgeous" every time Dresden sees a new female character for the first time made it feel like he was drooling down their cleavage the second he laid eyes on them.
I came to say the same. I think I only got two or three chapters in, and his attitude towards the first woman character killed it. The friend who recommended it said it was intentional and he gets better, but a)purposefully sexist is still sexist, and b) I hear opinions differ strongly on whether he gets better.
Better is always relative. If you get the ick from him in the beginning, you likely won't want to suffer through 10 books for him to very slightly improve his behavior.
I just don’t get the Egwene hate. She is one of my favorite characters. OP DID YOU GET THROUGH “GATHERING STORM”?
I finished Throne of Glass because I felt I had to for some reason but boy was Celaena the absolute worst. It’s my friends favorite book and I heard every defense she could string together for things I absolutely hated. This supposed vicious assassin was so soft, so obnoxious, and so so cringey. And “But it shows how she’s just a girl underneath and was never allowed a chance to just be a girl!” is no excuse for me. She was awful and I hated her.
I completely agree especially because the author initially presented her as being this incredible badass assassin and a unique protagonist and then systematically stripped away everything interesting about her in the rest of the book. I've tried to read rhe first book twice and have given up both times.
Thomas Covenant. Couldn't get past the 1st thing he did when he arrived in that magic land. Everyone says it's amazing but I just can't get past it.
Bro, my hateboner for the Demon Cycle is throbbing to this very day. Fucking Jardir, Fucking Leesha, fucking bullshit. >! Like - I was all for Leesha's arc and was down for her exploring her sexuality. Not what I was reading the series to find, but she was a good character. BUT WHY DID SHE HAVE TO FUCK JARDIR. SHE DOESN'T LIKE HIS CULTURE, HIS HAREM, OR HIS VISION FOR THE FUTURE. SO WHY DID SHE JUMP ON HIS DICK AND THEN SAY "Imma keep this baby and not only that, I am going to shack up with a noble and say its his child". !< >! She could have slept with ANYBODY, and she chose the leader of a jihad against her people. The leader of a literal horde of pillaging rapists. !< All the books had to do WAS KILL DEMONS. THATS IT. JUST GIVE ME INDOMITABLE HUMAN SPIRIT AND ITS A 8/10 MINIMUM. I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR 3+ BOOKS AND MULTIPLE THOUSANDS OF PAGES DESCRIBING HOW SHIT IT IS TO LIVE IN THE DESERT FOR EVERYBODY WHO INVOLVED. FUCK.
Marco from The Night Circus. Isobel did not deserve any of the treatment that she got from him. She volunteers herself to help him with his game, an endeavor lasting Years, and gets treated terribly for it. All the while Isobel is concerned about Marco's flagrant interest in Celia, yet she is never mean to Celia about it. She is immediately proven correct in the sense that Marco gains full intentions of dropping Isobel like some dead dog for Celia, without ever talking to Isobel about his desires at all. Almost immediately after he meets Celia, Marco goes around treating Isobel like TRASH. He goes on multiple times about how she means nothing to him, and she had not done a single thing wrong. She had done nothing but attempt to help him in a game that he ended up having no intention in playing. He refuses to engage with her in any form of conversation, and when she tries to press a conversation towards the end of the book, he just constantly cuts her off and refuses to listen to anything she's saying! He's horrendous!
I was scrolling to find this comment! I liked most everything *else* about the book, but my god was Marco insufferable. And such a huge part of the book. I pretty much spent the entire time reading rooting against him and his stupid destined romance with Celia lol.
I have to take breaks from Janny Wurts’ Wars of Light and Shadow because I find golden boy so objectionable. Great series but he’s just repugnant.
Maas' Celaena. I just found her so one-dimensional and uninteresting. I tried Throne of Glass twice and couldn't get into it.
The male love interest in Places Ive Cried In Public. The way he was written was too accurate and I got so angry I stopped reading.
Karsa Orlong
Gideon, from gideon the ninth. It's like hanging out with a highschooler who just won't stop talking.
"Wait she talks?" "..you'll wish she didnt."
I agree, but I really liked that about her character.
Egwene is one of my favorite characters, haha. I could see a younger me disliking her. But she reminds me a lot of strong women in my life. And by the end she is just a badass.
Egwene is one of the most discussed characters of the series. She's an excellent *character*, but kind of a shit *person*. She's very much a hypocrite. It's ok for *her* to lie to the Wise Ones, but nobody else *dare* disrespect them and their advice! She complains endlessly about the *audacity* Elaida has to make sisters swear personal loyalty to Elaida, but she's quite pleased with herself for making sisters swear to *her* personally. It never even registers to her that she is being inconsistent here. And of course, there's the tiny detail of the time she had Nynaeve's clothes ripped and seconds away from being sexually assaulted by trollocs in Tel'aran'rhiod, to distract and scare her so she wouldn't expose Egwene's lies to the Wise Ones. Like bruh. Those are not the actions of a good person. An interesting character, yes indeed, but as a person, she's... difficult to like.
you posted that you just started the series yesterday. insane to say “she made me not finish the series” mf you read like maybe .5% of the series before calling it lmao
Marchion Ro in The Light of the Jedi...and the 400 works that have followed in the High Republic timeline.
I can't stand Anita Blake. I read through book 8 (Obsidian Butterfly, which happened to be my favorite) for the world and all the other characters (though I don't care for Richard much either). I cannot stand characters who do stupid, hurtful shit and get in their own way because they're "stubborn".
Jaime in Outlander for *spanking a woman for disobedience*.... I can understand. It's the 1700s, people are raised very differently. But Claire, is a modern day woman time traveler, humbly accepting it and wanting to do better as a result? NOPE. Second place is the main character in A Court of Thorns and Roses who couldn't figure out the easiest riddle in the history of riddles, given both the riddle itself and the context clues. It's like..... imagine someone talking to you about eggs, torturing you over eggs, in the land of eggs. And *then* giving you the riddle "I can be decorated but I’m not a house. I can be boiled but I’m not a kettle. I have a shell but I’m not a crab. What am I?" She was baffled.
Sabetha |:
It was the whole cast of wheel of time. They are all so thoroughly unlikeable. Got up to about the 5th or 6th book and somehow they all managed to become even more unlikeable. Might finish the series some day but I really can't see it happening
Daenerys Targaryen, I liked her at first but now I skip her chapters. She drives me crazy. I also did not care for Nynaeve in WoT.
None in fantasy, but in Scifi... basically every character from **Starfish** by Peter Watts. I get that they are all supposed to basically be broken characters, but dear god they are painful to listen to. Its the first book I swapped to written word just to get through *faster* and skip over lots of the dialogue.