Polite Dissent

One of my pet peeves is authors who ruin the suspension of disbelief in their books by trying to be too clever for their own good. I have no problems with authors basing their works in reality or history. H. Beam Piper was one of the best at basing his works on history yet being totally original. What I hate is when authors hit you over the head with their lack of originality in this regard.

Two good examples come to mind. In David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, the enemy planet Haven was based on events in France after the French Revolution. That’s fine. It was a fascinating period of history and has a great deal of built in drama. But did he have to name the lead villain Rob S. Pierre? This is just way too blatant and totally ruins the suspension of disbelief.

Another example is in Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy. This one hit me before I even started the book. The map of this “imaginary realm” is an inverted map of Alaska. So much for fantasy… (Here’s a fan’s computerized version of the map. Look at the top half of the image.)

For the record, the Harrington series is one of my favorite science-fiction series. It’s the closest I’ve found to a “Hornblower in Space” series. I found the Farseer Trilogy too dense to read comfortably. The follow-up Mad Ship Trilogy was much better.