Rage on a Page

I am in a grumpy mood caused by something that has rankled with me for ages but has now seen that particular pot boil over.

When a writer constructs a novel or story you expect to be so entranced by the story that the characters and the locations meld seamlessly  into the narrative. I expect to be able to remember each character and where the various incidents take place due to good writing and not forget who is who or where is where.

If I open a book to be confronted by lists of characters, where they live, who is related to whom and so forth plus in some cases maps of the story realm then I switch off.

Is the story so complicated and huge that I as a poor reader cannot be expected to remember any of it? It is an insult to the reader to think this way and it shows that some writers just have no ability to engage their audience by use of good writing instead of lists.

Then we come to another area, the invented word. I will grant some credence to words invented by combination of existing common words to create a meaningful new word but I am totally opposed to the invention of nonsense words used mainly to create a language only used in a particular book or story.

There is a book currently being promoted on social media that is a fantasy novel about animals which has invented words that are incomprehensible unless you refer to the glossary so thoughtfully provided. This book is aimed at younger readers, readers who are still learning English in all it's complex forms, so to use made up words in such a book in indefensible. It would have helped if those words were even vaguely related to English words but they are not.

I do not want young people using invented words that appear nowhere else, all it will do is confuse the reader and quite possibly put them off for life.  Another point , as this book is aimed at younger humans then it may be read aloud to them. How embarrassing for the adult human not to be able to translate one of the invented words with out reference to a glossary -- how to make dad or mum look dumb !