(Be forewarned that I LOVE the following two authors, and will finish the series in question, but they have gotten on my last nerves in their last few books)

Example 1: The Wheel of Time

The first few books were pretty darn good, and I really enjoyed reading them, but as the series ground on, there were too many characters, too many plots to follow, and not enough resolution happening. It has gotten to the point that in order to read the newest release in theseries, you have to read the rest of the series again and take notes, just to keep up with what is happening. I don't recall which book it was, but one of the last few to come out was nothing but over-explained filler. I honestly think the entire book could have been summarized in a couple of chapters because NOTHING HAPPENED, and then he added more plots!!! AAAUUGH!!

There are also way too many ultra-powerful characters with no respect for anyone else. They all seem to think that they know better than everyone else, an that drives me NUTS.

Example 2: The Sword of Truth

I really loved this series at first, but the constant separation of the two main characters, and the harping on about the hoplessness of their situation makes me want to scream. If you're going to give two characters love, don't make it impossible for them to enjoy that, or even have time together.

Again, too many all-powerful beings. Gimmie a break.

No one talks to anyone else. Despite countless times when someone has proven themselves to be right, no one listens to them, or shares information. That's probably just a lame pet peeve of mine, but if one person has information, and he/she knows the other people very well, doesn't it stand to reason that he/she would share that information???

I am sick to death of the endless gory descriptions of the evil deeds of the Imperial Order. You don't have to repeatedly and lovingly rehash every single detail of the rape, torture, murder, and whatever disgusting bit of brutality you have already described, and then add some more lurid descriptions of whatever sick ways to hurt and kill everyone from infants to the elderly that you can possibly imagine. Goodkind goes on for entire chapters in this manner and frankly, it's pointless and sickening. I got more than enough of it when the order was first introduced, I got the picture, really.

Don't pontificate or preach at me. Goodkind's most recent book went on for two or three CHAPTERS about why the order was bad, and why their thinking is faulty. Yeah, I get it that they are seriously screwed up in the head, and I understand - from the book centered around the Imperial Order's way of life - how their line of thinking works. You don't need to beat me over the head with it. I get it already.

With both series I will read the last books because I've come this far and want to see how it ends, but I will never read anything else either author writes. (God forgive me for being so critical of poor Mr. Jordan. I sincerely hope the man beats his illness.)

Gratuitous sex scenes. There's one well-known author who basically just writes porn now instead of the genre that made her famous. 200 pages of sex with maybe 25 pages of plot.

The same author also would just cut and paste descriptions of her characters from previous books to her current when they made their first appearance in the current book. Why couldn't she come up with something new to say about the character? She literally plagiarized herself. Drove me up the wall.

I don't read her books anymore.

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Actually, Alye, I think most people do know what a gelding (horse) is.

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What's a gelding? Seriously, never heard the word. I don't know if I'd be able to tell from the text what it was either. I agree with Alye, if it's a horse, tell me it's a horse, unless the fact that it's a gelding actually matters. If so, then tell me that a gelding is a horse. I promise not to feel patronized.

Yes, when adrenaline hits, people can do extraordinary things for a short time. But too many people take that too far. You can stretch my imagination, but don't break it.

- "I hate it when you do that!" he shouted angrily, as wrothful spittle flew furiously from his mouth.

- He extended a friendly hand. (What, is the rest of him not friendly? It's just his hand?)

- Seen recently in a YA-ish novel: Torrents of rain fell like watery molasses. (What in the crap does that mean?)

- Abused MacGuffins: more than one MacGuffin (unless very well done), MacGuffins that aren't the focus of the plot, etc.

- When all the characters have a deep, dark secret.

- Women who write men like women, and men who write women like men.

- Writing every character who doesn't follow your political ideals as evil or idiotic. (I'm looking at you, Heinlein.)

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or at least go on a wholesale slaughtering spree at the nearest elementary school.

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"it could have been you!" school of villain

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1. Psychopathy. A person just seems to be born without any capacity for empathy. Think Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Eric Harris (from Columbine).

2. Us vs. Them. This is somewhat related to #1, but everyone is capable of it, and does it to some extent. People who are "us" are human, and "they" are not. It's fairly easy to justify atrocity with this world-view. Think terrorists. They love their children, but hate yours. Yours are cattle, or less.

3. Genuine clash of goals. When two rival factions fighting over the same resources, the "other" leader is the villain to your side.

The "it could have been you!" school of villain writing thinks these aren't interesting enough, or don't have enough emotional impact, or something. In particular, they reject #1 as shallow and hard to identify with, and try to inject humanity into the villain by showing how his villainy came about, but generally without regard to traits specific to the villain. If they do regard specific traits, it's usually something common in the population.

Some of them even do it to make you afraid of yourself, which is where I get the name from.

George Lucas is the latest perpetrator of this nonsense. Really, if you had been Anakin, would you have choked your wife? Really? And all it takes is these circumstances and a person who is "unwilling to let go"?

I see it as a pendulum swing away from the classic mustache-twirlers. It's just as wrong.

The media played this up with the Columbine tragedy. Pick on a goth kid enough, and he might snap. It could be your kid. Well, we know better now, but this hasn't been popularized:

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002115.html

- I hate it when people write a whole paragraph where ever starting word of each sentance is the same... Usually the word "The." I know there is are some that believe the word "the" is one of those invisible words, but believe me, I've read enough bad fiction, some of which every sentance in the story begins with the word "the," and after a while you begin to notice. You can't tell me there isn't some other perfectly conventional way of tossing up the word order of a paragraph so that every beginning word isn't the same.

- I hate first person narative. I know its a legitimate thing to use, but unless it's somebodies actual biography, it just annoys the crap out of me. Probably because I'm not a fan of biographies.

- Clive Cussler. I loved Sahara the movie, I never read that book, I read the one on Atlantis. And he is the perfect example of the author who writes his heroes just TOO PERFECT. That novel also brings up:

- The use of Nazi's as your main villian in a present day era novel, and catagorize that as not being science fiction. Where do you get off?

- On that note, I hate the mainstream belief that just because a book is characterized as Science Fiction means its not worth reading. I swear, people just don't get what Science Fiction really is. Desperate Housewives is science fiction so long as it continues to be narrated by a dead person.

- I hate long chapters. I like to end my reading times at the end of a chapter, and if someone puts in a great cliffhanger I cannot help but continue to keep reading. Three days later, as my wife is giving me the evil eye...

- I hate cookie cutter characters. Neil Gaimon's American Gods was full of these. Gaimon failed miserably to convince me his character Shadow could convey any legitimate emotion, and the whole plot seemed to revolve on such a huge suspension of disbelief, I think the only character anyone could connect with in that novel was the Native American lesbian.

- I hate main characters that have wierd, arbitrary names, like "Shadow," or "Dirk Pitt."

- I hate characters with wierd alien names that are difficult to pronounce. I know on some elitist "Proper Science Fiction" level and you're writing about aliens, they ought to have alien names. But be logical about it. If they've got a mouth and a tongue, chances are they might have some version of vowels. So you're character Kjltxsx, while that sounds exotic, the rest of us normal people trying to read your book are going to be constantly stopped at that and going "How the **** do you pronounce that??

- I hate it when authors write a great book and then sabotage it with an ending that undermines the importance of what was just said in the climax. And this one will get me in trouble because it's directed at Orson Scott Card over Ender's Game. If the Buggers could telepathically reach Ender through the Ansible and recreate the Giants Drink... Isn't it logical to assume that they had the capability to read EVERYONE's thoughts at the Battle School, and thus determined what was about to happen to them, and done something to stop it? Now granted I haven't read anything else in the Ender or Bean series, but that really ruined for me what was otherwise a great book.

I'm sure I could think of these all night, but I'd rather be happy with the 102 words I managed to pull for the day (I know, pathetic... my attention has not been where it should have been... One of these days I'll figure out that all I gotta do is take out the wireless card, and TADA! Productivity!) and be off to bed.

- I do dislike excessive swearing, but I have to admit, Joe Lansdale makes it work.

Firtsly, the excessive use of capital letters. One sentance must have had ten or twelve capital lettered words which made it difficult to get my eyes around.