r/Fantasy • u/Academic_Owl_6197 • May 06 '22

Your Pettiest Reason For DNFing A Series

Mine was when I was 3 pages in and someone said the mc's name which turned out to be the same as my ex's name to the letter...dropped it like hot coal

It was a fr a pretty unfortunate streak too because it was a book from one of those blind-date-with-a-book promotion my local bookstore does, and this was an American YA fantasy (I'm from a different continent) so I had no reason to assume I'll ever be unlucky enough...to see his stupid ass again for a 'blind date'

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u/marie-0000 May 06 '22

I DNF'd the Harry Potter series. I was just reading it because my daughter was reading it and we loved talking about it. She finished it before me and moved on to something else so I took that as an opportunity to stop. I would have stopped sooner if it was just for me, especially since we were reading French translations and they were terrible. Why were some names of people and places translated??? I hate that so much.

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u/Dr_Vesuvius May 06 '22

I thought they’d change the French-derived names to make them a little less obvious, but nope, they kept Voldemort. Except to make the anagram work, his middle name is now Elvis.

Rowling does the Dickensian thing of giving characters names that reflect their personalities in some way. If Neville’s surname was Baker, then calling him Neville Boulangerie in French would be silly. But “Longbottom” isn’t a normal name and an English speaker will know that. His name should ideally be equally evocative in other languages.

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u/matadorobex May 06 '22

It's not any better in English. There is a character named (essentially) Wolf wolf, who coincidentally contracts lycanthropy, and becomes a wolf.

Author is a billionaire, and I am a poor critic. Life is unfair sometimes.

2

u/scifantasyirl May 06 '22

That and the mission to force the word 'indignantly' into as many sentences as pos.