This section may end up to be incredibly vague and nebulous, but I thought it was important to try and give readers of my reviews a little bit of an understanding of where I’m coming from, what I’m looking for, which might help you to see whether you’d agree with me or not.
Now comes the hard part – what do I like? I’ve come up with an inexhaustive, potentially contradictory list, with the caveat that there are stories I love that don’t even hit half of the points on this list.
The list is as follows:
- Intelligent protagonists
- Imaginative social setting
- Well written female characters
- Political machinations
- Weighty action
- Complex morality
- Distinct authorial voice
- Creative/original worldbuilding
- LGBTQ+ characters
- Mysteries
- Strong emotional core (plotline builds with the emotional through-line)
- Big climaxes
- Creative/original magic systems
- Varied forms of conflict resolution
That was… probably not as useful as I’d hoped. That was in part because there were a lot of times I wanted to write ‘not’ something, since I feel like that belongs in a separate list. So here’s a list of things I prefer not to read about! (Again, there are plenty of examples of books I like that have these things, they just have a harder job of grabbing me).
- Coming of age
- Prophecies
- Space Battles
- Near perfect protagonists
- Romance
- YA (if it sticks to the tropes)
- Books where violence solves almost everything
- Vampires and werewolves
- Fairies/Fey-folk/Sidhe
- Cool for the sake of cool
These lists are likely to be living lists – after getting back into books in a big way a year and a half ago, I’ve been finding that my tastes have changed, and rediscovering what I like is a fun, but lengthy process.
For more on what books I enjoy, check out the lists below (I’ll add more lists as I make them):
Writings of a Doomscribe 