Percentage of "good" fantasy books.

Of the books I finish each year, I would say 80 to 90 percent are good to great. I usually don't get much into the boring or bad to horrible ones - maybe up to the first 10 or 20 pages. If I don't see anything to interest me in that time, I don't continue. Percentages of those? Not a clue. Probably not too many.

I would say about one quarter of the fantasy novels I have read have been horrible, a quarter have been just okay, another quarter have been good, very few have been awesome for me. I think I am just picky though.

You have to remember, what I find good, great, or horrible, will be different in many cases from what you find good, great, or horrible. The most that I ask of a book is that is satisfy and entertain me. Anything above that is a bonus. Below that is a fail.

For me, I am very selective in what I choose so I generally know that the read is going to be satisfying before I get into the book. The only exception are ebooks by self published writers that I want to give a chance to impress me and they fail 99% of the time.

Maybe I am not just picking the right self published books/authors...

More than half of the ones I buy are great. Because I buy authors and themes I know I will enjoy. I don't just walk into the fantasy section and pick something at random.

What Fantasy books do you think are great?

A Song of Ice and Fire is rated great by a lot of people. But I didn't read beyond the first book because I didn't like it much. On the other hand, there are books I like very much that hardly anyone else seems to read.

So what do YOU think is a great book?

Of the books I finish each year, I'd put all in the good to great category. If a book doesn't grab me within the first few chapters, I put it down and start reading something else. I'd say about 1/4 or so of the books I start end up being put down (to be fair, sometimes I will come back to a book I put down later and end up liking it). A couple of books that I came back to and ended up liking in spite of what I thought were bumpy opening chapters were Game of Thrones and the Name of the Wind.

A couple of books that pulled me right in and kept me were Glenda Larke's the Last Stormlord and Lois McMaster Bujold's the Curse of Chalion.

But most of the books I put down for lack of interest are not one's I'd say are bad. They may be good books for other people (often they are books that were recommended to me, in fact, or were books where I read the back and the first few pages and thought were promising).

I tend to prefer a fairly clean, tight narrative and I want a certain kind of connection with the characters from the get go, so I have a hard time with books that are written in a distant omniscient, or where the pov character(s) is or are someone I can't relate to on any level or where the narrative is what I would term overly dense or overly formal for a modern novel. There are also certain premises or fantasy settings that are harder sells for me but which might work really well for other readers.

So to answer your question, I can't say what percentage of commercially published fantasy novels are dross (I'd assume a relatively high percentage of self-published titles are, as those have no quality control at all, and many of the writers don't even spring to have them professionally edited. I would only read a self-published book if it was highly recommended and was available in the nook compatible format, which pretty much tosses out most of the ones on Amazon.com).

I have a pretty strict pre-screening criteria that assures most of the books I try to read are reasonably good by at least some criteria. But I'd say maybe 1/4-1/3 of the books I try to read in the genre end up not being my taste even so.

Of the ones I finish? They're all good or great. Why would I finish them otherwise? (I've read a few books with bad endings, in my lifetime, but I've gotten a lot better at spotting those ahead of time.) It sometimes takes a bit of looking to find a new fantasy book I'm willing to read through, but that's mostly a matter of taste. Plenty of good books out there that I don't like.

...though. Uh. Huh. Now I'm not sure how to answer the question. There's a book or two I've read this year that I didn't like, within the fantasy genre. But I still thought they were good books. They just weren't to my taste.

Odin's crusty nutsack, talk about a subjective question!

It will depend entirely on the reader and the books they happened to chose in a year. So it'll range between 0 and 100%....

For me, this last year, say 10% meh, didn't finish. 40% good books, but not my cuppa. 40% you know, pretty damned good and just my thang. 10% HOLY SHIT!! ETA: the books the year before that or the year before that...probably different percentages. Depends if I get a good run of books, or not.

For instance, last year I went on an 'award winning books' kick. Reading winne s of Hugos, Nebulas, BFS and Word Fantasy awards for the last ten or fifteen years (well, some of them, interspersed with other stuff) Of those rough 15, I flung one in utter disgust, DNF 5, liked 3 well enough, 4 were pretty damned good and I loved 2. This year I went for what I fancied, so the percentages are different.

I have a hard time completely giving up on any book I start to read, I'm just weird like that. I will have to say about 80% of the SFF books I read are good to great. I used to stick to specific authors and not try anyone new, way back in the day this was, because I didn't want to be disappointed by someone new. Horrible way to think but I was very young so forgive my idiocy on this point. Once I started branching out in authors and genres I figured out that you're going to be disappointed once in a while because there are some bad books out there that in some people's eyes should NOT have been published. But sometimes you can be surprised by something you wouldn't expect. That's one of my favorite things about reading a new book, going into unsure if I'm going to wanna throw it out the window or give it pride of place on my bookshelf.

Well okay, but there's non factual/discussion and so-subjective-my-head-implodes...


Like asking 'Why do you like living?' or 'how nice are colours?', perhaps, 'Cats, what's up with them?' Something a little more concrete/less vague to actually discuss helps?

PS: I change my answer to 0%. No, wait 3%, no, 150%! What have we learned from this? (Bar, I am a sarcastic moo when the mood takes me?)

ETA: In other news, I have a kitten on my lap.

Dagnabbit. Where's MY kitten?

I like about 90% of what I buy, but I screen them carefully first. I'd say maybe 10% or less of the books I look at end up being purchased in the first place.

Best Guess:

(5 Star) Excellent = 1%
(4 Star) Great = 4%
(3 Star) Good = 10%
(2 Star) Okay = 15%
(1 Star) Poor = 20%
(0 Star) Terrible = 50%

I'd say a good half of the fantasy books I started I never finish. Those which make it to the end usually are about average. There are a few gems and even rarer are those I would consider fantastic.

There are a few gems and even rarer are those I would consider fantastic.

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LOL yeah fantastic fantasy is rare Lame, I know.

Briony-zisaya said:

I used to stick to specific authors and not try anyone new, way back in the day this was, because I didn't want to be disappointed by someone new.

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I used to do this too, and not just when I was young, unfortunately. I just got a list of favorite authors who, when a book came out, I'd drop everything to go read.

But since I've been writing more seriously, I've tried to branch out a bit more within the fantasy genre, and I've been thinking more critically about what I do and don't like in a story (in any genre). So I've discovered some new writers (even a few I've encountered in online fantasy boards like AW). Now I have far too many books on my to read list, which makes me even more likely to drop a book that doesn't suck me in right away.

But conversely, I've been trying to make myself stick the books that are "meh" for me a bit longer, if for no other reason, than I'm trying to put my finger on what does and doesn't work for me in a story.

Roxxsmom said:

But conversely, I've been trying to make myself stick the books that are "meh" for me a bit longer, if for no other reason, than I'm trying to put my finger on what does and doesn't work for me in a story.

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This is exactly why I don't allow myself to put a book down if it doesn't immediately grab me. I may put it away and come back to it at a later time to see if it's still as uninteresting to me as before, but I like to figure out why I'm not interested.

Briony-zisaya said:

This is exactly why I don't allow myself to put a book down if it doesn't immediately grab me. I may put it away and come back to it at a later time to see if it's still as uninteresting to me as before, but I like to figure out why I'm not interested.

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I don't put a book down that soon just for 'meh' ness. DNFs are 'I can't stand to read another page. (because of boredom, or life is too short or whatever)' That's usually at least over the 100 page + mark. *If it's just okay (or it's probably a good book that doesn't particularly mesh but is all right), I'll usually carry on.

Books that are lobbed can get lobbed at any point they piss me off (usually it's a build up of things and one thing just pushes me, or the book, over the edge)

* mostly because I get there and realise a) nothing has happened much in those 100 pages or b) stuff has happened but is so uninteresting/drawn out/overblown description wise I am losing the plot/will to live.

Like others in this thread, I'm picky about what I read (checking samples, aligning reads to my personal taste, and skimming trusted reviews) so most of the books I read are excellent.

I'm also trying to teach myself to be more critical over my reading and to put down books I'm not enjoying.

I stick with books I find thematically unappealing (or indecipherable) or that have characters I don't care for much longer than those in which the language is unrewarding. Not elaborate necessarily, but I don't like to be taken out of the story by linguistic stumbles, be they subject-verb disagreement or confusion which person is being referred to or other grammar garbles. I can stick around for even a very average conception when it is well-related. I'll never find out if a book is brilliant -- or, to be honest, care much -- if it is sloppily written and edited or otherwise unfocused.