Eight deadly words
"I don't care what happens to these people."
Just dumped a book unfinished, from an author* I've liked before. I got about fifty pages into it, muttered the above to myself, and put it down.
Characters are important, folks.
I don't have to _like_ the characters -- my form of "caring" in the above may involve suggesting eternal torment in the fires of a hypothetical hell, but blah just won't work. No level of gee-whiz skiffy or swords-and-sorcery will carry a whole novel without characters that give me some kind of connection.
*To remain anonymous. Author's sales-figures remain _much_ higher than mine.
Just dumped a book unfinished, from an author* I've liked before. I got about fifty pages into it, muttered the above to myself, and put it down.
Characters are important, folks.
I don't have to _like_ the characters -- my form of "caring" in the above may involve suggesting eternal torment in the fires of a hypothetical hell, but blah just won't work. No level of gee-whiz skiffy or swords-and-sorcery will carry a whole novel without characters that give me some kind of connection.
*To remain anonymous. Author's sales-figures remain _much_ higher than mine.