Abyss, on 13 December 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:
Another isssue is that the author's personal tastes... judo, single malt scotch, jazz, are transposed onto the narrator/protag in a fairly non-subtle way that can throw the reader out of the story... nothing is just 'great' music... it gets three pages.
Strangely enough this is my exact problem with Richard Kadrey's SANDMAN SLIM...the guy is a tattoo bearing, leather jacket wearing, smoking, beer drinking cool guy from California....and that's exactly who his protag is to a "T"....and it's kind of to the point where it brings me out of the story and makes it harder to get into.
Oh and the proclivity for the protag to think someone looks like an actor (Brad Pitt), and have the protag refer to them that way (in this case, Pitt) the rest of the time they mention it. It's not clever (like when Dresden calls someone after a pop culture reference), and instead feels like pandering for an eventual movie in which they could get Pitt to play that bad guy...it's kind of lazy I guess...
I dunno.
I didn't like the book the first time I tried it....and began enjoying it the second try (now), and yet it still feels like I'm forcing it....
Bah!
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
"Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone." ~Ursula Vernon