. . .because I did it to myself. I bought the thing knowing what I’d find.
David Weber has a series of goat-gaggers–the Safehold series–from TOR that I find interesting but have had the same issues with from the very first book, Off Armageddon Reef (2008). Other issues have presented in the six books that have followed, but, as I said, I knew what I was getting when I bought it.
Weber still pretty consistently misuses some words. An example: he pretty consistently uses “less” when “fewer” is correct. But every time he misuses a word it does throw me out of the story.
Weber also really overuses banter in dialog. Meetings about serious matters are consistently trivialized by light-hearted banter. Some is healthy, but Weber has a tendency in everything he writes to overdo it. His Honorverse books feature too much if it for me, but not nearly as much as the Safehold books. The Safehold series doesn’t seem to have any editor handy to tell Weber, “Stop already! That’s too much!” *heh*
And then there’s the extremely irritating treatment of proper names. *gagamaggot* Zhaspahr Clyntahn? Rhobair Duchairn? It goes on and on and on. Sure, Weber “named” his Safehold characters into a corner in the first book, and there was no easy way out, especially after book 2. . . or three, four, five and six. *sigh* And this book includes a cast of characters sixty-six pages long with such names.
But still, I’ve bought every one of ’em. These last two have been ebooks, but the others, hardcopy, all but one hardback. Why?
Well, I bought and read the first one because Weber. Yes, his Honorverse books have some of the same issues (though apparently the editors at Baen are better than the ones at TOR *heh*), but they’ve still been worth my time for more than a few reasons. So, I knew it’d be readable and would at least tell an interesting story. But. . . issues. (“Lords secular and temporal”–*feh* Weber! You use that ALL the time and ALWAYS wrongly! Well, at least he didn’t include that abortion of sense in this book as he has in every other book i the series, IIRC, as well as in several of the Honorverse books.)
The rest? Well, interesting story, despite the aforementioned issues and a few others. Fun stuff on “rediscovering” technologies. Interesting low-tech milfic as well.
So. . . I buy ’em, even though I know the negatives will irk me.