S. Worthen | Weblog

I nth the "insufferable smugness" clause. At least two books that people I like and trust have praised to the skies -- War for the Oaks and Freedom and Necessity -- I nearly hurled aside because I felt that the author(s) were just so in love with how cool their characters were. The characters themselves had self-esteem issues, but the narrative voice was constantly in paroxysms of ecstasy about how damn great they were in every respect, and I just couldn't take it any more.

But serious moral disagreement can cause it too. I would've given Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword the staircase treatment for the discussion where one of the protagonists describes why it's perfectly justified, by her lights, to make a living as a mercenary. But it was a library book, so I just put it down and screamed.