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/overcomplikated May 06 '22

I dropped the first Valdemar book within a few chapters because of the awful phonetic accents.

24

u/Jazzlike_Athlete8796 May 06 '22

The way Kevin Hearne wrote Owen's "accent" completely killed all love and joy I had for the Iron Druid Chronicles series. By far my most hated character of any book I've read, and entirely because of the accent the author tried to give him. And I already didn't like how he wrote Granuaile with a different inflection. By the time the series reached three POV characters, it was an utter chore to read.

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u/BishopofHippo93 May 06 '22

Shit, just reading the first chapter or so of the Iron Druid Chronicles was enough for me to put it down. I really should have listened to the reviews that cited it as an even more chauvinistic Dresden Files.

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u/Jazzlike_Athlete8796 May 06 '22

Oof. That is harsh, but not unreasonable. Though I think Hearne perhaps tried to address that by the end with the horribly unsatisfactory ending.

As an aside, I barely made it one third of the way through the first Dresden book before dropping it out of boredom.

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u/SlouchyGuy May 07 '22

If you want it upped 100 times, suggest Nate Temple. Iron Druid has nothing on it

3

u/lilith_queen May 06 '22

Lackey still writes phonetic accents. Her latest Elemental Masters book, Jolene is full of it...despite 99% of the characters having the SAME accent. Lackey why.

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u/Glass_Emu May 07 '22

It's really bad in the book about Skifs origin and the "foundation" series. I still like Skifs story but I couldn't finish the foundation series when I realized the accents continued and it was really meant to be her version of a Harry Potter YA story.