The importance of sympathetic characters

I was recently reading two fantasy books at the same time (I often read more than one book at a time), and I found that I really liked one of them and didn't care for the other. Both were well-written IMHO with interesting plots. The difference was that I was sympathetic to the protagonist of the book I enjoyed and rooted for her throughout, while I couldn't care less about the fate of the protagonist in the book I disliked.

There were two traits that caused me to fail to connect with the main character in the second book:

1. She was not a good person - every character has flaws, but I'm more likely to care about a character if they are a basically decent person. Being good is not a requirement for me though, since I rooted for Kaz's crew in Six of Crows and for Kelsier in Mistborn, for example.
2. She nade dumb choices - whenever there were multiple possible courses of action, the protagonist seemed to always choose the one that put her or those she cared about in danger. I lost count of the number of times I asked "Why???" when I was reading the book. After a while, I was no longer invested in a happy ending for her because she was actively sabotaging her fate through bad choices for the sake of advancing the plot.

If not for the way the protagonist was portrayed in the book I didn't like, it could have been as good as the book that I did enjoy reading. The experience reminded me of how important sympathetic characters are to the overall quality of a story. The character doesn't have to be a saint, but they have to possess qualities that will pull readers to their side and root for them. 

You may have the most engaging plot and beautiful writing, but if the reader doesn't care about your protagonist, then it doesn't matter. A great character can overcome a mediocre plot, but I can't think of an example where I thought highly of a book when I didn't care about the main character. 

Have you read stories where you weren't sympathetic to the protagonist? What was it about them that made you not care? How did it affect your enjoyment of the story?

Introducing my non-fiction book, Your First Investing Playbook

I mentioned in my last post that I was working on a new non-fiction book. Well, it's completed and published! Introducing... Your First Investing Playbook: A Beginner's Investment Roadmap.

What led me to write this book was wanting my kids to be financially prepared when they enter adulthood. Unfortunately, financial literacy isn't something that was taught to most of us in school, and we either learned it through trial and error or didn't learn it at all. I experienced the former path, so I wanted to pass along what I learned to my kids and to all beginning investors out there.

The book is short, only about 60 pages, but it covers the essentials, allowing readers to take the next steps on their own based on their interests. 

You may have noticed that the author name on the book cover isn't H.S. Stone. I chose a different pen name for this book to avoid confusing readers who may wonder why an author of speculative fiction also wrote a book about personal finance. I definitely didn't want anyone to think that Your First Investing Playbook was fictional. 

I enjoyed the experience of writing this book and being able to write for pleasure again. I don't know if I'll write any more non-fiction books in the future, but this first book was definitely fun. I hope you'll find it educational yet entertaining.

 

Writing a new book

It's been ages, but I'm writing a new book again! Instead of writing another speculative fiction story though, this time, I'm writing a non-fiction book. 

The main reason that I chose non-fiction is that I found my schedule is more suitable for writing non-fiction than fiction. Although I've been doing more research for this book than I have for any of my fiction books, it's also been easier for me to dive into writing when I have just a few minutes to spare. This has been a problem for me in writing another novel because I need time to get into the proper state of mind when writing fiction, remembering where I left off and what is supposed to come next, and I haven't been able to find chunks of free time to reach that zone for more than a year. 

With this non-fiction book, I can pick up any section that I want to and add to it. If my day job continues to leave me with little time for writing, perhaps non-fiction is the new direction my writing will take. For the time being, it sure feels good to write what I want to again!

Hopeless (After Z-Day Book 1) is free this weekend

Today and tomorrow, Hopeless, the first book in my After Z-Day series, will be FREE on Amazon! Go on and give it a try, especially if you're a fan of zombie apocalypses. If you like it, consider picking up Relentless and Soulless too. You can get the entire series for less than $7 this weekend!

 

 

Books I liked more than other readers

In May, I listed some highly rated fantasy books that I didn't like as much as other readers did. In this post, I'll do the opposite: list books I liked more than other readers did, but I won't confine the list to the fantasy genre. To determine the list, I sorted my Goodreads read list by rating and chose the books with the lowest ratings that I gave 5 stars to.

In alphabetical order by title, here are the eight lowest-rated books that I liked more than other readers:

1. All This & More by Peng Shepherd (3.34 Goodreads rating) - I don't know if the low rating was due to the book's Choose Your Own Adventure format. Although the format was a positive feature for me, I also thought the story was good even if it was told using a regular narrative structure.
2. Armada by Ernest Cline (3.56 Goodreads rating) - Were people expecting the same magic as Ready Player One (which has a 4.23 Goodreads rating)? Although I didn't think Armada was as good as Ready Player One, I still liked it a lot.
3. Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams (3.49 Goodreads rating) - You may know Taylor Adams from his more popular and more highly rated book, No Exit (3.99 Goodreads rating). I actually liked Hairpin Bridge more than No Exit.
4. Landline by Rainbow Rowell (3.54 Goodreads rating) - It's a travesty that a Rainbow Rowell book could have such a low rating! I don't know what other readers were thinking, but Landline is a great book! Enough said.
5. My Calamity Jane by Brodi Ashton, Cythia Hand, Jodi Meadows (3.57 Goodreads rating) - Another travesty. OK, My Calamity Jane may be a tad less awesome than the other Lady Janies books, but they're all great IMHO.
6. Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty (3.56 Goodreads rating) - Yes, I liked the book as well as the TV series. I'd recommend Nine Perfect Strangers for anyone who wants to start reading Liane Moriarty.
7. Once Upon a Beanstalk by Kate Avery Ellison (3.50 Goodreads rating) - I read this over ten years ago when I was very much into fairy tale retellings. If that's what you're in the mood for, Once Upon a Beanstalk is as good an option as other more popular mashups.
8. A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke (3.52 Goodreads rating) - This book was marketed as The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue meets Life of Pi. Maybe it's because the former is one of my favorite books of all time that I liked A Short Walk Through a Wide World so much.

If you've thought of reading one of these books and hesitated due to the Goodreads rating, I suggest you reconsider because you may end up liking it as much as I did!

 

Update on my 2025 reading goal

At the beginning of the year, I set a reading goal to finish reading more series, or at least make more progress through them than I usually do. This is because I'm notoriously slow in making my way through a series, even the ones I like. 

I've been reading at least one book in a series each month. The books I read so far were:

• Royal Assassin - Robin Hobb
• Fatal Revenant - Stephen R Donaldson 
• The Poppy War - R.F. Kuang
• The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu 
• The Valiant - Lesley Livingston 
• Death's End - Cixin Liu 
• The Defiant - Lesley Livingston
• The Shadow Rising - Robert Jordan 

Three of the books listed (The Poppy War, The Valiant, and The Defiant) were not part of series that I had already started but rather series that I've been meaning to read.  I've heard so many good things about The Poppy War series that I was going to start it this year anyway, but now I'm vowing to complete it, especially since I enjoyed the first book so much. The Valiant is a lesser known series that I've been planning to read for years, and this year was as good a time as any. I'm glad I did because I've liked the first two books.

Of the 8 series books I've read so far, four earned 5 star ratings, three were 4 stars, and I gave one 3 stars. That's a pretty impressive average rating of 4.375. Maybe I should be finishing series more quickly than I have been doing.

 

Highly rated fantasy books that I didn't like as much

No book will appeal to every reader. That is true no matter what the book is or how well-written it is. On this blog, I've documented my reading history with well-regarded books, including my positive experience with Goodreads Choice Awards finalists in 2021 and my less positive experience with NY Times bestsellers in 2020. I thought it'd be interesting to look back on which books from my read shelf have the highest Goodreads ratings that I didn't like. In this post, I'll focus on fantasy books since that is my favorite genre (closely followed by sci-fi and thrillers). I may list books from other genres in future posts.

In alphabetical order by title, here the top eight highly rated fantasy books that I didn't like as much:

1. A Clash of Kings (4.42 Goodreads rating) - Ten years ago (!), I talked about how my dislike of the Game of Thrones books was the reason why I was late to watching the TV show. I didn't read past A Clash of Kings because it was so painful to finish, but I finished the TV series.
2. A Day of Fallen Night (4.34 Goodreads rating) -  I thought The Priory of the Orange Tree was good but too long. A Day of Fallen Night wasn't as good and still too long. Maybe I would've liked it if it was under 400 pages rather than over 800.
3. The Fifth Season (4.30 Goodreads rating) - I thought The Fifth Season was boring until the twist at the end. It boggles my mind how this book won so many awards. Needless to say, I didn't continue reading the series.
4. A Game of Thrones (4.45 Goodreads rating) - See A Clash of Kings above. A Game of Thrones wasn't as awful as A Clash of Kings, but I still didn't like it.
5. House of Earth and Blood (4.46 Goodreads rating) - Before Sarah J. Maas fans berate me, let me say that I really enjoyed her Throne of Glass series. It turns out that I don't like her romantasy books as much, or romantasy in general. 
6. Iron Flame (4.37 Goodreads rating) - This is another case of my not liking romantasy very much. I thought Fourth Wing was fine, mainly because the novelty of the dragons and the training outweighed the romance aspect. That didn't happen with Iron Flame.
7. The Lies of Locke Lamora (4.31 Goodreads rating) - I'm still confused why I didn't like this book. It had all the elements of a story I should like, but the story wasn't quite interesting enough, the characters not quite likeable enough, and the writing not quite good enough, so the end result was a book that was just meh.
8. The Stand (4.35 Goodreads rating) - This applies to just about every Stephen King book because I've yet to come across one I really liked. The Stand happens to be the highest rated of the ones I've read.