The re-read test

I've been thinking this week about what makes me fall in love with a book.  It's a complicated question, which doesn't have an easy answer.

The broad definition of a book I love is one which has some kind of adventure at its heart.  Happy family saga-style stories would bore me silly.  So that's the first criteria: something bigger than the domestic sphere has to be happening in the book.  The second thing that would bore me would be a  book which was predominantly a romance.  I can cope with romance as a secondary plot, but if it's the main point of the book, well it's not for me.

I think this can be summed up as a book with some kind of movement in it, but it doesn't explain everything.  I've read award-winning fantasies with huge quests at their heart which have left me completely cold.  And I've just finished reading A Memory Called Empire, a book about an ambassador embroiled in court intrigue, which is quite a slow burn at the start.  That's not usually something which hooks me in, but I loved this book.

I'd also say that generally I don't like military SF... except that I love Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War and  Peace series.  I also fell in love with Karen Traviss's Halo: Kilo Five books, which was a big surprise.  These are very military in focus, but it was the smartarse sentient AI and its interactions with the human crew which made me love the series.

Another left-field series that I loved were the Murderbot Diaries.  On the face of it, the story of a murderous AI shouldn't appeal at all, but these stories aren't what they seem on the surface.  The security unit murderbot of the title doesn't actually murder anyone.  It spends its time saving the lives of humans.  

The fascinating part of the story is watching the sentient construct struggling to deny its growing humanity.  By the end of the series of novellas it's really as human as its close band of human scientists.  There is a full novel with this character out now, and I'm looking forward to reading that.

I think in the end it is this touch of humanity which makes me love a book.  The Vatta's War and Peace series are all about the military protecting civilians.  There are more civilian viewpoints than military in the books.  

What this boils down to is that I need to fall in love with a main character who has a large dollop of humanity to them.  And if that character goes on an exciting adventure I'm likely to get hooked in.

The books I love pass the re-read test.  I have a dozen or so stories and series which embody this mixture of humanity and adventure, and which I come back to read time and time again.


Comments

  1. It shows how different we all are. I prefer books which have what you'd probably consider a domestic setting, and which involve relationships. I've nothing against adventures though, and totally agree that we need to really care about the main character if we're to love the book.

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