Read a *sigh* “cute” series of novellas (touted as novels but roughly 1/3 the length, or less, of anything I’d class as a novel). Irritating. OK, so they were REALLY fast reads. Clean plot/characters (for the most part–a “super upright, never tell a lie” character? Liar. And the character still viewed himself as honest *sigh*) But, one persistent problem: the writer(s) just did not do their homework. Bits here and there just would NOT work or were utterly and even sometimes laughably impossible, but were essential to the plot. “Dunning-Krugerand” moments* destroying suspension of disbelief, and suspension of disbelief was hard enough to begin with given the premise. Bits like that piled up and kept on piling up until the last “installment” was just a slog, finished just so I could notch up a bit of “reader masochism.”
*”Dunning-Krugerand” is a neologism coined–as far as I know–by Larry Correia to refer to those stuck somewhere on the lefthand side of the Dunning-Kruger Curve, having an unrealistic view of their knowledge base and competence, thinking of themselves far more highly than they ought. Usually, it is simply used to refer to those people, but here I have it to characterize the examples of the writers thinking they were using the right word/term but using exactly the wrong word/term, or describing a physical action or some equipment in such a way that they demonstrated they had no earthly idea how such worked in the real world, getting it so glaringly wrong as to completely destroy suspension of unbelief.
I hesitate to ask… what was the series…
A rather silly series of books that utterly destroyed the Doyle canon of Holmes stories. Had Mycroft and Sherlock as undying, unaging super-intellects, though, since the writer wasn’t NEARLY as intelligent as Doyle, both Holmes boys were less impressive than Dolye’s Sherlock (and occasional cameo by Mycroft). But that’s frequently the problem when writers of average intelligence try to write characters they represent as “geniuses.”
The only really entertaining aspect of the books was making LOADS of snarky comments and submitting them as “corrections.” I know, I know: it seems unkind, but surely it’s better that someone tell them.