Today, the guys in the Goodreads Top 5 Wednesday group have an interesting topic, one which is straight forward and to the point: Characters on My Naughty List! “Villains or just characters you don’t like!”
Well, well, how do I narrow them all down. There are so many whom I dislike for different reasons. But I have to admit really enjoying the idea of getting to point fingers at certain individuals and say “Lump of coal for you, you jerk.” It makes me smile.
5. Prince Bifalt
This eldest son of the Bellegerin King is a serious sort, determined as well as loyal to his father and his country. He will lay down his life for either without a second thought, but he is the most stubborn, ridiculously bull-headed person I’ve read about in quite some time. His one track mind so firmly fixed on a single objective that he can’t see the solution to his problems if it slapped him. So here is your coal Bifalt, because you definitely earned it in my book.
4. The Warden
Even though I like this guy, empathize with him to a certain extent, I can’t say that I understand why a man with such unique talents has set his sights on doing nothing with it. Sure, he has issues. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. Each setback and bad choice in his life having left him with scars, but he is such a cynical, unpleasant bastard all of the time that he probably would be happy to land on the naughty list, since it would prove his negative outlook on life.
3. Princess Melodía
This Imperial Princess is on my list because I just cannot ever seem to truly grow to like her. Sure, she has moments here or there where I begin to think she is growing up and we can be fast friends, or at least companions, along this journey, then she does something damn annoying which causes me to roll my eyes, shake my head in disdain, or sigh loudly. No matter the method of my display of annoyance it always means one thing and one thing only: I’m damn tired of the immaturity already.
2. Princess Adare
There are many elements of this trilogy from Brian Staveley which I truly adore, but one of them that I never warmed up to was Adare. I appreciate her unique position at her father’s side at his death, her struggle to deal with the politics of the capital, and her continued precarious situation. Not sure exactly what it was that consistently rubbed me the wrong way about this imperial scion, but she and I never could make a real connection where I was fully invested in her journey, which led to me ultimately disliking her.
1. Nona
I’m not sure it is fair for me to dislike Nona as much as I do. Mark Lawrence did a good job developing her, showing her growing up, and placing her into several dangerous situations where she showed her true grit and skill, but I found her rather boring. Annoyingly boring. Well, except for the flashforwards to some epic fights. Now, those I really enjoyed and liked that Nona. The young, teenage Nona I could live without and believe readily deserves her place on this list.
Agree? Disagree? Have your own characters you’d like to mention? Let us know!
bookwraiths.com 
Not Thomas Covenant? Such a horrible, horrible protagonist.
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I was trying to pick from books I read this year. If not, TC would have been in an All-Time Naughty List for sure.
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Nona seems to have a single defining trait – defends those she holds dear without regard to the consequences or her own well being. Skills aside, there is little else to her character that stands out. Her biggest problem is that she is trapped in a narrative that doesn’t have much of a story with a convincing dramatic core to it. So the book ends up being mostly a description of a girl in the situation of being trained to be a killer nun – fun for a short while but quickly became tiresome to read for me. I love the ice world Mark has created. There are some great scenes I really loved too, but for me, Nona needed to have goals, a motivation for achieving them and be in conflict with something preventing her from achieving those goals. Most of all there needed to be something at stake should she fail so we are anxious for her to succeed. The business of the chosen one came too late in the story and was too weakly presented to work. Why is the chosen one so important anyway? Why is it important for Nona to become a Red Sister or whatever? There was never any suggestion she would be tossed out into the cold if she failed at anything. The Tacsis family were too remote with many periods of the story appearing to have lost interest in Nona for them to qualify as antagonists despite the fact they return at the end as shown in the opening flash-forward scene.
Either that or I missed something as I struggled to stay engaged with the book.
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Well said.
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Man, this would be a wicked tough topic for me to do. Only 5? I’m not sure where I would even start. Of course, limiting it to this year would help a lot.
For me, my top spot would be either Michael Kearney, the serial murder from M. John Harrison’s “Light” or Myrmeen from Scott Ciencin’s forgotten realm book “Night Parade”.
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Out of your five books, I’ve only read the Emperor’s Blades. I agree with you completely on that one. I think that character could have been left out of the book altogether, unless she serves some important purpose in the sequels. Even then, they could have just mentioned her, and cut all her scenes. Her story rarely held my interest. I just wanted to see what her brothers were up to.
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She gets better in book two, but not by much. Have yet to finish the trilogy, so I’m not sure about part three.
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