“But I don’t like any of the characters.”
Katharine Kerr September 7th, 2006
This is mostly a question for the assembled poplace.Â
When you read a book, do you have to like at least one of the characters in order to enjoy the book — or to bother finishing it, for that matter?  I’ve heard a lot of readers, over the years, say that they disliked such-and-such a book because they couldn’t identify with or even like the characters. (In fact, when it comes to reasons for not reading literary works, dislikeable characters ranks high on the list.)
Opinions?
I never identify with characters, but yes, I do have to care about someone. When I root for the antagonist (yes! she had it coming! go get her!) then the writer has failed - and if the antagonist isn’t likeable either, I usually put the book down.
In fiction, I am willing to put up with a lot more than I do in real life (thieves and murderers, for instance) - but I still expect a character to have basic decency.
Ultimately, I don’t want them to make me uncomfortable for _any_ reason - I expect them not to have the backbone of a wet dishcloth, the charm of a rusty bycicle, or the energy of a lumpy pillow - I want them to get out and do stuff, to stand up for their beliefs (even if they are misguided), to be interesting people - not just to lie there and look pretty and turn out, on closer inspection, to be useless.
It depends on the level of the work. If it’s “B Picture” quality–a light read, thriller, adventure, popcorn, so to speak–then, yeah, I need to like one or more.
If it’s “deep”–say, for instance, Hal Duncan’s VELLUM or something by John Crowley or, on the lit’rary side, John Fowles or Anthony Burgess, etc–then “like” is not necessary. “Fascinated by” would be the operative term there.
This has been an acquired taste, but I think it goes hand-in-hand with the kind of assessments about certain books in general falling outside the parameters of “like”–some books are moving experiences, revelatory, energizing, gripping, all while still not being of a nature one could say one “liked.”
That depends.
If a book is very well written and I can enjoy seeing the characters move about the ’stage’ of the book without liking them or identifying with them, then I will read the book. I read Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park for precisely this reason. I can’t identify with any of the characters, I don’t particularly like any of them, and the hero and heroine irritate me beyond belief, but I really enjoy seeing the characters move through the situations Austen creates, and I enjoy her writing style. I read this book in a very detached and abstract way.
If the characters are well drawn, realistic, and engage me in some way, and if the author is doing something with them that I haven’t come across before, then I will read a book that has major plot holes in it for the sake of the characters, as long as I like (or am indifferent to) the author’s writing style. I won’t enjoy the book as much as one that has a ‘non-holey’ plot, and I’ll grumble mentally all the way through it, but I will still read it. In this case, I have a limit to how many plot holes or improbabilities etc I will tolerate. If the author goes beyond those limits, I will put the book down and I won’t pick it up again, no matter how likable the characters are, or how much I identify with them.
So for me it’s the balance of plot, characters, and writing style that determines whether I enjoy a book or not.
I have to be interested in at least one major character. I don’t like anyone in The Stars My Destination or The Count of Monte Cristo, but the main characters are definitely fascinating.
—L.
I’d flip it around the other way: I have to at least not HATE them all, if I’m going to enjoy the story.
My exemplar of this going wrong is Death of a Salesman. I can admire its technical merits, in a detached, analytical kind of way; if it weren’t well-written, then I wouldn’t have such an overwhelming urge to drop-kick every single character off a very high building. But I detest the play as a story. All I can see, when I read it, are the qualities in the characters that make me dislike them; their redeeming characteristics, if any, get overwhelmed by the ones I despise.
Beyond that, yes, in general, it helps if there’s some character I find engaging, though that doesn’t have to be the same as likeability. (Lymond’s the exemplar here. He fascinated me twenty pages in, when all I’d seen him do was sneak into Scotland, stage a weird stunt with a drunk pig, and then light his own mother’s castle on fire. I couldn’t believe this guy was the protagonist, but hoo boy, did I want to see what he would do next.)
In a short story this (liking the characters) isn’t usually an issue for me. The longer the investment of time involved, though, the more it matters.
There are a few books where I found the viewpoint character so deeply repellent that I couldn’t bring myself to go on–Gregory Benford’s Nigel Walmsley is one example that springs to mind. But there are also books that I read and enjoyed in spite of no sympathy with any significant character: Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds, for instance: the only likeable character (to my mind) in the book is Lady Glencora and she doesn’t show herself at her best here (as opposed to other books in the Palliser series). Christie’s And Then There Were None is an even better example: everyone in the book, except for some faceless characters in the narrative frame, was unsympathetic. That’s why the story works.
I think the determining character, for me, is the narrative persona. If I trust or like the voice(s) telling me the story, I’ll hang with it. Otherwise, there’s always something else to read or do.
Also, my impression is that character is something of a shibboleth. People know that stories are supposed to have good characterization, and when they’re put off by something (the style, the plot, something they had for lunch) they’ll latch on to some character as a reason to dislike the story. Even people who read and write a lot can be relatively unreflective when it comes down to articulating their reactions to a piece of writing (especially if it’s something they dislike). Which is why good critics are so rare (and so valuable), I guess.
JE
I go with Larry and Marie–if the characters are engaging, I don’t need to love them; however, I have a hard time reading a book if I loathe all the characters. In that case, I can’t even stay around to see them all get punished for their loathesomeness. Good worldbuilding will help keep me turning the pages, as will excellent prose. And occasionally I will stay with a book with characters I don’t enjoy because I’ve set myself to trying to solve the puzzle of what went wrong with the writing of it.
Like? No, I don’t need to like them, but I have to be interested in them. If at least one character grabs me, I’ll probably continue, but I’ve found that even the most beautifully written book loses my interest if the characters aren’t interesting enough. They don’t have to be good or nice or beautiful (frankly, I’ve had more than enough of the beautiful, young, oh-so-perfect protagonists), but they do have to be interesting.
These days, with all the books out there, all waiting to be read, the author has, at most, fifty pages to sell his work to me. There are just too many options out there for me to waste my time.
Expand likeable to interesting then yes, but it doesn’t actually have to be the characters personality it can be the way they are portrayed. In this way and others someone that I would find, if I were to meet them, a bore or even abhorrent can be interesting reading material. I will also echo Rosamunda in that something new to me will hold my interest; that doesn’t mean it is the best example out there but it is a first for me personally.
Also - although I don’t really like to admit but it is true so I should - I have an incredible attraction to things I hate, things that make me vocally rage. Whether that is characters that are stupid or pointlessly inconsistent, a plot line that drives me insane with its holes or crudely presented brick-to-the-head ideas. At some point I’ve developed a liking to ’shouting at the TV’ but with books; like enjoying the deliberate effect on a viewer that having a female character get up to go downstairs when they hear a noise has during a horror movie.
I might have thrown the book down in disgust but I will have read to the end. I might wonder why I read all seven books but I very rarely put a story down unfinished, there is something attractive about raging at crap.
Interestingly I often find that the characters in these books are more likely to be acceptable ‘real life friends’. In fact it wouldn’t be hard to like them if all their qualities were contained in a real person; they just might not interest you.
I do appreciate these books in another sense; they give me a point of comparison for when I’m reading something good. One of the flaws of literature at my school was that they put forward a savoury reading list on the assumption that the kids will have already read loads of crap to help them recognise the value in these books, this particularly applies to good prose. In my experience most of them hadn’t read any fiction outside of school.
I think the author has to like his/her characters on some level, or at least be able to identify with them. I had a very difficult time with one of the most acclaimed novels of recent years — Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections — because it seemed to me like the author had unmitigated contempt for all of his characters, and was essentially writing the book to taunt and denigrate them.
Must. Like. Character.
I tried to read Grisham’s The Runaway Jury twice, and never could finish because by 1/4 the way through, I hated them all.
I don’t think I’m different from many people in that I put myself in the characters’ place, and try to live the story alongside them. I have to be rooting for somebody, or there isn’t enough emotional investment to care about the outcome.
M
If the characters spark my interest, as many here said, I’m in. Or if the situations tickle me–like Westlake’s Dortmunder books. The characters are okay, it’s the style and the situations that entertain me. Absorbingly complex characters will also draw me in–though I will be propelled right out if my hot buttons get pushed. Like if a protagonist does something horrible to a dog. I don’t care how sophisticated the story, brilliant the style, i am so out of that world. Not exactly mature reading, I know–but there it is.
I’m shallow. If I dislike all the characters in a novel I won’t read it. Life is too short.
However, I can read a book with a protagonist I don’t “like” as long as I don’t dislike hem, and as long as I care about the protagonist in some manner, that is, s/he is interesting or fascinating (words used by others above).
And I like what Dave says. If I sense - by what criteria I am not sure - that the author has contempt for the characters, then I’ve no interest in reading about them.
I do not have to like the characters, but I do have to care what happens to them. One of the reasons I loathe the George R.R. Martin series of books is because he makes you interested in the characters and their circumstances, then kills them off. A lot of people say, “Oh, it’s so unpredictable, you never know who’s going to get it!” However, you never know what’s going on or who’s important or what the main storyline is, either. Frankly, I don’t care enough to wade through the red herrings and find out. When the series is complete, I’ll have a friend give me the Cliffs Notes version.
I find that the characters I get the most attached to are the ones I like. And I tend to buy books featuring characters I like, because I want to visit with them. They become friends in a way, and I want to see what happens next. Not that I don’t buy books of characters I don’t know or characters that are challenging, but it’s an easier decision to go for a character I’ve become attached to.
As for what is it about them that I like? It’s not that they’re perfect people or they always do the right thing. Sometimes it’s because they feel real, like I could reach out and touch them. Sometimes it’s their flaws that make them interesting. Sometimes they seem to have a charisma all their own. When you combine that with an interesting narrative voice and good storytelling, and I’m a happy, happy camper.
I’ve read plenty of books where I felt only so-so about the characters - in those cases it was the storytelling that kept me reading. Or if the storytelling was also only so-so, then boredom. The worst is being trapped on a plane with an uninteresting book.
There have been a few times where I just couldn’t finish a book. In those cases, the writing was either just plain awful or the author had some talent but was more concerned about his/her voice than the story. Where he/she got in the way. I have no patience for that. Maybe I’m naive, but I’d like to think that the author’s job is to serve the story and its characters.
Liking the character(s) — hm.
My short answer would be: I don’t spend time with people I dislike if I can possibly help it. Why would I spend time reading a book about people I dislike?
The long answer is that a character doesn’t have to be “good” in order for me to like him or her. They can do quite appalling things, as long as there is something about the character that keeps me from thinking “what a creep, yuck” and thinking instead “what a creepy thing to do!” If all I’m feeling is “yuck” then I’m likely to stop reading.
I like main characters to be likeable, but I’m also pleased with engaging, intriguing and entertaining.
Mephistopheles, for example, is not an entirely sympathetic anti-hero, but he’s damn funny and completely engaging.
If at the end of a story, the reader wants the entire cast to be taken out and shot, then the writer has failed.
While walking the dog, I reflected that the word ‘like’ can mean many different things to different people, so what I think it means may not be what other people think it means.
So that is to say that I can “like” a character like Raena because she is interesting and believeable, but that doesn’t mean I “like” her in a sympathetic way, as in the idea that one might only read books which had characters the reader felt they could be ‘friends’ with or that the reader admired or wanted to be like. That’s an important distinction.
I have to care, one way or the other. If I don’t care, if there is no point of connection between me and the character(s), then all bets are off.
I’ve started books where I felt this way after the first chapter. those are the books I don’t finish. This feeling isn’t dependent on “likeability.”
What about from the author’s perspective? Obviously some of you know authors who have (or make you think they have) contempt for all the characters in some of their work, but what about for you? Do you have to “like” or at least form some kind of personal understanding of your characters to write them? Or to put it another way–perhaps this is putting it another way, it might be a completely different question–do you always, sometimes, never write characters that have more than a bit of yourself in them?
Hi! My name is Chris and I found out about this blog through Shawna Attebeberry; we’re in a yahoo group together. (Chicago Writes)!
I’m going to add this to my blog and let my group blog know about this group too!
I haven’t had a chance to look around yet, but I will! I love spec. fiction/fantasy too!
Chris
Interesting question, and a good time to delurk here, if perhaps only briefly.
For me to really enjoy a book, it has to engage me emotionally, and I can’t think of any book that has managed to do so without having at least one character whose story I can become caught up in.
I suppose this could potentially happen without quite liking the character, as I am not necessarily identifying with said character, but in general, yes, I need at least one character in there that I like enough to form a strong attachment to.
Without such an attachment, and the emotions that result from it, the story comes out feeling too shallow for my tastes, even if it happens to be well written.
Seems like I’m the ugly duckling in this pond… You might think me shallow, but for me the plain answer is “Yes, I need to like them.” The more I like them, the better I like the story. I never could finish Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever, because I really dislike the fellow (although it gets better in the last book). I keep reading (or plowing, to describe how I feel at that time) simply because I have the book on my shelf. But I’m not liking the story.
On about the same note, I’m reading Clive Barker’s Imagica and I’m really thinking about simply putting the book back on the shelf, because I really cannot identify with any of the characters. They are all to freakish for me. People tell me it gets better, though, so I plow on…
being introduced to a character in a book is akin to meeting someone new in life. We can have our first impressions, but only after knowing them, observing the way they react to things or treat other people (etc.) can we truly ascertain the quality of their inner selves. We don’t have to like someone to interact with them- but we do have to respect and care for any that we choose to bring further into our own worlds.
i have read many books with only tolerable characters- but truly those books were only tolerable themselves. a great book- in my opinion- has to make me FEEL something. There are those literary figures whom(who?) annoy me, make me angry- make me laugh, cry or want to shake them for their stupidity. So… do i have to like them? not necessarily, but i do have to feel for them.
‘Mansfield Park’ is an interesting example. I found none of the characters to be particularly likeable, yet I can sympathize with most of them. So much so that I love the book. Probably something to learn here.
Everybody has pretty much said it, but one example I have of the difficulty of saying ‘like’ about something is when someone asked me if I liked Schindler’s List. After the movie I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I couldn’t say I liked it. But I was moved by it. And not just a little. It had a powerful impact on my imagination and was engrossing for me. But like? eh. It’s a completely inappropriate word for my reaction to that movie.
I never liked the Thomas Covenant books. Never could get into them. I couldn’t stand him. I know, he was supposed to be an anti-hero. Well, worked. He was so anti for me that I couldn’t read the book. But the books I don’t tend to finish on account of characters are generally because the characters are stooopid (as in the scary horror movie character who goes outside when there’s a boogeyman around and she knows it, but . . .); or the characters are boring–they never think, say or do anything; or the characters are revoltingly obnoxious with no discernible redeeming qualities.
Di
Hugh wrote:
I tend to like my characters. Even the obnoxious ones. If I can understand where they are coming from or if I can see some redeemable quality to them. In the WIP, though, I wanted one character to be completely bad. Well, now he’s got a black hat, mustachio, and a black outfit and couldn’t be more melodramatic. Which is to say, it’s clear I didn’t like him, and as a result, he’s flat and rather boring. So. I’m inviting him over for tea and chocolate and hoping to find something likeable about him so that he can be a real person. Right now I’d say he’s sort of a pinocchio bad guy–wooden, painted black, and wanting to be a boy (man, whatever).
Di
I have finished books where I don’t like the characters, but that is rare (Perfume by Patrick Suskind, for example). Such books engage me only intellectually and generally leave me cold. I might read them, but I never recommend them as enjoyable book to others.
I need two things in a character:
1. He should be compelling
2. He should be engaging
I think liability and sympathy are not necessary in and of themselves. If the character is compelling and engaging, it is “almost” a given that they will elicit an emotional reaction out of me. That reaction might be love, it might be hate, or it might be something in between. Any of those emotions is enough to sustain me through a story.
However, if all I feel for the character is …. apathy …., I may as well just pick up another book because I can’t see any reason to read another word. If I don’t care about the characters, the choices they make, or what they have at stake to lose, I may as well be reading a “How To…” manual. How to Invade the Black Castle and Live to Tell the Tale - Now doesn’t that sound like a page turner!
Tangent Alert –
One of my biggest character pet peeves is when the author keeps telling me what’s going to happen to the character in the future and why his current responses are so interesting. Ugh! I tried to read a book last month that kept doing things such as, “John would never know such love for more than twenty years when a girl who isn’t born yet would finally show him tenderness.” Now, I know that sounds awful, and I am completely hamming it up, but after the tenth such reference I just couldn’t take it anymore. The book had to go! …. OK, tangent alert over.
Someone mentioned emotional connection, and I think that applies to me the most. I think George Martin has the most refined prose of the ‘big series’ authors, but I’ve never been able to finish the first book (Game of Thrones is it?). The furthest I’ve gotten is half way before giving up. I just don’t give a flying fig about the characters or what they’re doing.
Like many here, I have to be engaged or interested in at least one character rather than liking the character.
Even if I DO like a character, the kiss of death for me is if the characters don’t grow or learn or change at all throughout the book. I think that makes any book completely forgettable.
Absolutely. The characters are everything to me in a literary work — if I don’t care about them, I don’t like the novel/story. Sounds simple, but that’s the way it is for me.
Hrm, I can get on board with that but only to the extent that the growth and change makes sense. I’ve seen characters who, in the course of a couple of paragraphs, experience profound enlightenment and are suddenly reborn as kinder, gentler, utterly different people - and, of course, they never relapse into their old behaviors. They are Forever Changed ™.
On the other hand, some characters remain precisely who they are throughout various hardships, and that’s a victory of sorts.
In thinking about it more, I suppose I require two things: I have to care about the character and I have to find his or her actions believable and consistent with what I know about him or her.
I don’t have to identify with or even understand the characters in a book but if I don’t have any emotions beyond annoyance with the characters (love, hate, sympathy) then I have very little reason to care what happens to them, or what their motives are. If you spend the entire book thinking ‘this guy is an idiot’ or ‘ah hell, will you die already!?’ then its hard to care about the book enough to finish it.
I would have to say for me, I have to like the character or they have to evoke some sort of emotional response from me. Most of the books I don’t finish reading are littered with characters that I wish the author would kill off or characters that are just too boring for me to read about them for the entire book.
The characters don’t neccessarily have to be black and white, but they have to have something that makes me hope in some way that they’ll succeed at what they are trying to do, even if that means they have to die to do it by the end of the book. I also have to care about the villians of the story - they have to have something deeper than an urge to rule the world. There has to be a motivation that I can identify with, that makes me understand why they do what they do.
Characters must be of interest, and they must be plausible, as do all the other characters around them or along side them or above them or below them.
What they cannot be are twits.
Astonishing how many heroes and heroines are.
Twits, I mean.
Can’t stand ‘em and don’t read ‘em.
I also really dislike characters that are cookie cutter standard issue. Ooooh, tomboy, doesn’t like dresses, likes to fight, all feisty, ooooooh, good character, I like her, I identify with her — oooooh, girlygirl who believes in love, likes to keep a clean house and run her business competently, can’t break heads with one blow or stab with zippy rapier strike to the heart, bad character, not somebody I identify with — gads, can I just say how much I don’t read books with those characters?
And how I cannot stand ‘feisty?’ Caricatures these are, not characters, not personalities. Taking fencing lessons and wearing dresses are substitutes for real psychological creation.
Love, C.
In order for me to really enjoy a book, there has to be at least one character I care about and am anxious to find out what happens to. I may finish a book otherwise, but the books that stick with me have characters that stick with me.
I’m mostly drawn to characters who are vulernable and multifaceted. They may or may not be like me. I can’t always explain what draws me to a character, but once I’m hooked I can’t put the book down, and I have to immediately jump on Amazon and get the next if it’s a series. *grin*
Speaking as an author: I must understand my characters’ motivations, whether I like them as people or not. But “understanding” doesn’t mean that they have “more than a bit” of myself in them. Some of them don’t even have a little bit. Others do. Closer observations of other people will reveal many fonts of inspiration quite far removed from oneself.
Speakiing as reader: count me among those who don’t care of the characters are all despicable. If they and their circumstances are sufficiently interesting to me, a story has me hooked. If they present a character I could, based strictly on character traits, identify with but make her (or his) predicament hum-drum or simply not within any of my spheres of concern, and I won’t even give the work a second glance.
(Unless I’m acting in my editorial capacity, in which case I broaden, or add, spheres as necessary for the anticipated audience.)
I find that I need to be able to live by the character so I need to feel as though I have some connection with them. The best books that I read are the books that I feel live in a different world, and by feeling that reading a book is like leaving this reality. The series of book that does this best are the Deverry books. I feel as though I’m in the world with them, seeing what they see.
To answer the question, I don’t necessarily have to like them as long as I can connect with them.
Hmm, do I have to like a character? I would have to say I can’t dislike them, although I’m reading Emma by Jane Austen right now and I dislike Emma but still like the book…although her lack of description makes it difficult to read — but that’s for a different discussion.
In order to like a book I would say I have to enjoy two out of three things: plot, character, writing. If the plot is really good and I enjoy the writing style then I don’t mind the characters being a bit flat or dislikable. The same thing works the other way around, if the plot is a bit flat or boring, but the characters are interesting and real and the writing style works for me, then I’ll still like the book. The third way to turn my three point system, with the writing style being boring or just not working for me, is the hardest one to work. I read through The Wizard of Earthsea series because I’d read the first book and liked character and plot, but haven’t been able to make myself pick up any other book by Ursula K LeGuin because her writing style just didn’t work for me. And the system doesn’t always work anyway — if the characters are extremely boring or the plot is exceedingly dull then I might not enjoy the book even if the other parts are good.
So to move back to the idea of characters being likable, I would agree with what a bunch of other people have said that the character doesn’t have to be likable so much as interesting and real. I know for sure that I don’t have to be able to identify with the character to like them.
I was talking to a friend of mine about this book I was making her read (well, at the moment there weren’t any other books available, so I was pretty much making use of the opportunity…) where she found one of the situations the main character had to go through completely unrealistic. She said no normal person could endure what the character endured and live through it. Therefore, she couldn’t identify with the character as she (character) wasn’t real, so she (friend) couldn’t enjoy the book as much. My answer to that was who knows what people can endure if they have to (just look at Holocaust survivors for proof) and I don’t read fantasy expecting everything to be real to life. So what if the character could do something I couldn’t - I can’t create fire with a touch, either. About a different character in the book my friend said that she disliked him completely and could never forgive him for what he did to the main character and therefore never wanted to read about him. So in this case I would say my friend wouldn’t like a book about a character she dislikes. On the other hand other friends and I find this character to have many layers with funny and ruthless all mushed together and love reading about him. So I would say that what one person dislikes about a character another will like or see more to that character than one trait.
Ultimately, for me, it gets down to plot, character and writing style and how much I’m willing to put up with one to enjoy the other.
It rather depends what one means by ‘like’. I think I would have to ‘like’ something about some of the characters in order to persue a book to its end. However, I can like characters because they are interesting or outrageous, or because they mirror some aspect of myself. These traits don’t have to count as likeable. Terribly unpleasant people can be interesting. Outrageous behaviour can be magnetic, but you don’t necessarily like the outrageous individuals. The fact a character exhibits aspects of myself that I would be interested to see in play is probably going to make them hard to like (me being antisocial and acerbic), but it gives me a vested interest in seeing how they fair. I didn’t ‘like’ any of the characters in ‘A clockwork orange’, but I wasn’t about to put it down. I’ve shamelessly mapped Burgess’ approach onto a fantasy novel of mine with a main character whose only redeming element is a certain charm.
Since I only read (i.e. finish) 12 - 20 novels a year, I am a very picky and impatient reader. When the story or characters don’t grab me right away, I put the novel down and go back to my own writing. Time is precious.
One curious example were the first two parts of Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series. The story was boring. A typical quest for an artifact. Nothing new whatsoever. And yet I couldn’t stop reading because I liked Alec and Seregil, the two main characters, and wanted to find out how they would survive and develop. And I was rewarded by the third part of the series, which had a much more complex plot.
But I actually have two main reasons for putting down a novel.
1) The characters don’t interest me. I don’t care what becomes of them. Recent example: The Lies of Locke Lamora. (I still haven’t given up entirely but it doesn’t look good… I just don’t care what happens to L.L. though the language is beautiful.)
2) Language and description doesn’t get past high-school level. Right now, I am close to despairing again. I’ve tried three different new authors since Christmas and haven’t gotten past page 20 or so because on 20 pages I haven’t found a single thought or idea or piece of description that had me thinking: wow, nicely put! I mean, it is mostly trite and mediocre, as if the author had jotted down the first image or thought that came to him. Flat, unimaginative language puts me off before I can even get to whatever exciting development the plot might take on page 50 or so.
The most recent book I did NOT buy despite interesting-sounding jacket blurb: because the first chapter began with six very short sentences — the paragraph sounded as if straight out of a Stepping-Stone book — and the seventh was a line of very obvious dialogue. That is enough to discard a novel/entire series. (Unfortunately, perhaps, but there it is. Too many books on the shelves.)
Combinging point 1 and 2: I don’t care for the flippant or pouty narrator, using too much slang and colloqualisms. This happens mostly in urban fantasy. Perhaps the genre is aimed at teenagers, but I don’t want to be talked to like I was a teenager. I can’t stand this “and-all-the-adults/rest-of-the-world-suck” sort of tone.
(I do like Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, and the early Vampire Files, the early Southern Vampire Mysteries, but I can’t get into Phaedra Weldon, Wraith – only one example among many. It is a matter of taste to be sure.)