Zzzz...
Oh, sorry. You asked if I'd take it to the checkout or put it back, didn't you. I'd put it back. I had to force myself to continue reading after the first sentence.
No action, not even interior movement. No hint of any real conflict beyond the ordinary, every day tripe of daily living that we all experience. No detail of character or setting that would make me want to read further.
It's all general exposition, all telling instead of showing. If the author wanted me to take this novel home and have me read it through, instead of telling me that the staircase was "impressive" she might have shown me its carved, oaken railing, the handwoven Oriental runners on the treads, the two-hundred light crystal chandelier glittering overhead.
(And I think I'll steal this description and put it verbatim into a novel I'm writing...)
Those patients lying in the beds in the emergency side ward? One of them is Mrs. McReady, whose doctor has told her that having her big toe straightened really isn't an emergency that would warrant bumping her up to the head of the outpatient surgery line at the General, and besides, she's convinced that such major surgery shouldn't be done on an outpatient basis. She's got pots of money she inherited from her recently deceased niece, who was a famous writer of Nurse Novels, so she opted to have her surgery done pronto at Mowberry, where they pay much more attention to her needs than the staff at the General.
And she didn't even mention Mrs. McReady by name! How gauche!
Seriously, in the first few paragraphs of any piece of fiction, I want to be introduced to at least one character. I want to be given a reason to care about the character I'm reading about, and the story that's about to be told. I want enough detail so that I can enter the world of the novel and leave the room I'm sitting in behind me, but not so much that it bogs the story down.
Give me that, and genre doesn't matter. Even the overall quality of the story doesn't matter all that much, in the end. I'm asking for a few hours' entertainment, where I can leave the mundane behind. Ms. Norrell doesn't do it for me. Sorry.
Oh, sorry. You asked if I'd take it to the checkout or put it back, didn't you. I'd put it back. I had to force myself to continue reading after the first sentence.
No action, not even interior movement. No hint of any real conflict beyond the ordinary, every day tripe of daily living that we all experience. No detail of character or setting that would make me want to read further.
It's all general exposition, all telling instead of showing. If the author wanted me to take this novel home and have me read it through, instead of telling me that the staircase was "impressive" she might have shown me its carved, oaken railing, the handwoven Oriental runners on the treads, the two-hundred light crystal chandelier glittering overhead.
(And I think I'll steal this description and put it verbatim into a novel I'm writing...)
Those patients lying in the beds in the emergency side ward? One of them is Mrs. McReady, whose doctor has told her that having her big toe straightened really isn't an emergency that would warrant bumping her up to the head of the outpatient surgery line at the General, and besides, she's convinced that such major surgery shouldn't be done on an outpatient basis. She's got pots of money she inherited from her recently deceased niece, who was a famous writer of Nurse Novels, so she opted to have her surgery done pronto at Mowberry, where they pay much more attention to her needs than the staff at the General.
And she didn't even mention Mrs. McReady by name! How gauche!
Seriously, in the first few paragraphs of any piece of fiction, I want to be introduced to at least one character. I want to be given a reason to care about the character I'm reading about, and the story that's about to be told. I want enough detail so that I can enter the world of the novel and leave the room I'm sitting in behind me, but not so much that it bogs the story down.
Give me that, and genre doesn't matter. Even the overall quality of the story doesn't matter all that much, in the end. I'm asking for a few hours' entertainment, where I can leave the mundane behind. Ms. Norrell doesn't do it for me. Sorry.