Authors Build Trust.

If you sit down to read, you are trusting the author on many levels. If you have read them before you are trusting their tone and consistency to be in not only the genre you expect but the vibe you love. Some authors are so aware of this they have multiple pen names if they change vibes too hard. After all if you know them writing grimdark fantasy and they pit a cozy fantasy int the world you might feel betrayed.

Authors build this level of trust. We hang off cliffs with them all the time.

We trust the author to finish what is started. Threads are not to be lost, though they can be postponed. Character arcs are to be satisfying and in the right direction, meaning consistent or sensical. The characters and plots are to fall out of the world which is built in a manner which makes sense.

In other words, we trust them within the bounds of writing and the expectation of genre to be sensical.

There is a trust we less for granted and that is the validity of the characters and narrators. Characters can lie, be wrong, have ulterior motives and we don’t have any guarantee that what is said on the page between characters is the fact of the matter. This is used to great effect to keep readers in the dark at times, but it must be used carefully to not irritate the reader. It is one thing to feel like you were along for the ride and something else entirely to feel lied to by the author.

I say all this in brief because I am 900 pages, about 250,000 words into a series, and I was told by the narrator / author that the first-person perspective we have followed for 100 % of this journey is first and foremost a liar. I am 5000 words past this revelation as we get a different character’s perspectives on some of the same events, and people.

I am on the fence. I put the book down when it happened and stopped to think about the last book and change of reading, and realized … I am definitely on the fence. It might be genius, reframing everything I thought I knew about the world and the lore and the people. On the other hand, it might end up being a slap in the face to all the reading which has gone before. Without giving up the book name, because I don’t want this to be a book review, and I don’t yet know how I feel, I do want to say to would be writers, unreliable narrator is a great trick. But be careful the trick is on the other characters, not necessarily on the reader. There is a line too far. I don’t know if this writer crossed it.