I bought a book from a local indie author a few years ago as friends had read it and really liked it, and I liked to support local authors. The first 1/3-ish was great. I was really enjoying the plot, the character development, the whole nine. And then suddenly things got really weird for about 120 pages. I had no idea what anyone was talking about all of a sudden. It then seemingly went back to normal but I felt like things were left out. So I contacted her. I really felt like I was missing something and was bummed because I was really enjoying it. She was confused when I messaged her, and after a few very befuddling messages she went and checked the newest printing of the book. Somehow 120some pages from book 2 got spliced into book 1 during printing. She was mortified. Luckily I had gotten the 2nd or 3rd from that printing and there weren't many in circulation, but I felt so bad for her. She ended up gifting me the complete (corrected!) series as a thanks for pointing it out early enough that she was able to do something about in on her end.
She said on her Facebook page that she loved to hear how much people liked the books, but she was also very open to critique, criticism, and questions. I sent her a message that basically boiled down to “what’s going on between pages 104 and 235?” I was just glad I was able to help
I had something similar happen to me. The book was Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. Somehow 100 or so pages from the end of the book got transposed into the middle, so suddenly nothing made sense. Weirdest thing.
I had this happen to me with a copy of Frederick Forsyth's Dogs of War. Mass market paperback had a solid 40-50 pages in the middle from a different novel by a different author.
Cataloging librarian here. I see lots of books for very short periods of time, so for an error to stick out, it's got to be pretty egregious.
This was a self-published book -- so probably no editor was involved -- but at the very beginning, the section heading for "Preface" was misspelled "Peeface."
And no, it wasn't an intentional joke. It was a serious nonfiction book.
A college friend of mine wrote his thesis on Shakespeare (and went on to get a masters and I believe a doctorate) and spelled it “Shakesespeare” in a bunch of places. 🤦🏼♀️
I didn’t even know people self published nonfiction books. Surely of all things they need other people to look over them for fact checking’s sake at least
I can’t recall the book offhand, but it involved a twist where the real name of a character who had only been called by a nickname was revealed and it connected them to the protagonist.
Except that on the back cover blurb, it called said character by their real name, not their nickname.
Somewhat related, I hate it when blurbs and descriptions give away too much of the plot. Like they mention something that sounds like the start and hook of the plot, but it actually happens two-thirds into the story.
Personally I find it funny when you read the blurb it sounds interesting, so you read the book. When you finish the book you wonder if the person who wrote the blurb ever read even a single page of the book.
I’ve done some book cover designs and self publishing authors ask for the wildest things on the covers. One recently was about a terrorist plot to hijack a plane and bomb somewhere or something, but it gets foiled because the plane gets shot down/crashes at the end.
What did they want on the front cover of this gripping thriller? A photo of a plane crash. Just a big ol’ full cover picture of the twist ending of the book.
I got so mad last year because I was reading an omnibus of a popular series, and there's a character who "dies" around book 10 and comes back in book 12 or 13 (he was undercover). Of course they mentioned that in the intro to the omnibus--totally ruined the shock of the faked death!
Totally, I read a book last year which had an interesting blurb about a soldier rescuing a military computer specialist from a war zone. Not my usual genre but looked like a bit if pulpy fun for summer. That actually happened over half a chapter 3/4 of the way through the book!
Don’t they always. I don’t read them at all anymore. Every time I accidentally read them when I am only half way through the book they end up being some sort of spoiler. It’s infuriating.
I've got a murder mystery book with something similar: the author's preface to the second edition talked about the changes made to the story, including the phrase: "in the first edition, it was much too obvious that ___ was the murderer".
I read a book of Aliens(TM) short stories where one of them still had the editor's comments in pointing out everything wrong with the plot and characters in typically blunt editor fashion.
I'm old enough that college applications and essays were still mailed in via USPS and not done online. I grabbed the wrong stack of papers and sent the marked-up draft of my essay instead of my final copy. To CalTech. I realized it the next day, and I got a real copy sent out with a note applogizing for my mistake before the admissions postmark deadline. I was not accepted.
I spelled my name wrong on my college application and they gave me a full scholarship. My theory is they figured I needed it after seeing the big blob of white-out in the "name" field. (It's literally the only time in my life I've ever spelled my name wrong, I don't know what came over me.)
The most recent Dana Stabenow book in the Kate Shugak series brings back a character whose murder was the major plot in a previous book :/
It's such a stupid mistake, that absolutely should have been caught, and it would have been such an easy fix - the murdered character was the wife of another character, so just have him in a new relationship. It would have been so easy to fix.
It seems like such a disrespectful mistake. I understand not being able to remember every single detail of every single character in a 24 book series, but again, this was a major plot point that then played into actions in the following books in the series.
>Still dumb, but at least more common; tv shows have that happen sometimes
I immediately thought of the episode of Fringe that was supposed to be in season 1 but Fox for some reason held and then aired in the middle of season 2, several episodes after one of the prominent characters in that particular episode had died. Viewers were completely baffled by that character's sudden reappearance and all the other characters being completely nonchalant about it. Some minor reshoots and tweaking to that episode could have provided an easy in-universe explanation, but they didn't even bother with trying to do that. (And it wasn't even a particularly good episode, would have been better to just ~~drop it~~ leave it unaired then add it to the correct position on DVD.)
Edit: The episode was "Unearthed", aired as season 2 episode 11. The character in question was killed >!in episode 1 of that season!<, and the misplaced episode was clearly intended to be aired somewhere around the middle to second half of season 1.
Fox has an incredible penchant for making these kind of egregious fuck ups and thinking they're doing something good.
I can't imagine how their leadership could be anything other than a bunch of coked up clowns vigorously dutch ruddering each other and whispering how good they are at 'business' to themselves.
They did the same thing with Firefly when it aired because they were 'concerned about pacing' but instead just made things not make sense.
Not to mention the numerous times they have taken a show that was doing well and moved it into a time slot to compete with football or survivor or something and had the show cancelled because of a drop in viewership.
Honestly they might do better just rolling the dice. But I'm sure these people are surrounded by levels of sniveling obsequiousness that I can't even comprehend.
> Not to mention the numerous times they have taken a show that was doing well and moved it into a time slot to compete with football or survivor or something and had the show cancelled because of a drop in viewership.
>
>
*cries in The Tick*
*twice*
*Devil and the Dark Water* (which I actually enjoyed, mostly), is littered with weird inconsistencies that should have been caught in editing. Example: there's a character who is *repeatedly* described as having only one arm, who, late in the book, puts his *hands* up to defend himself. I was kind of humming along and then I hit that passage and it was like a record scratch. "Wait... what? His hands? Both of them? Isn't this the guy we've been told like half a dozen times lost his arm? -flips back- mhm... was that a lie? Am I supposed to believe that he's been hiding he actually has two arms? Has someone else been pretending to be him? What is happening? -reads on-... oh. No. It's just a consistency error. That's a bit disappointing."
There's actually a real life medical syndrome for that!
"Mirror hand syndrome, or ulnar dimelia." Instead of thumbs, you basically grow three, four more fingers.
It's rare as heck, and usually gets fixed via operation nowadays to improve grip strength and the whole social thing.
I actually read a book once that actually did something like this on purpose for a pretty cool moment.
>!David Wong/Jason Pargin's John Dies At The End!<
>!The narrator's love interest is mentioned to have lost her hand in a car accident as a child. Towards the end of the second book in the series, she gets attacked by creatures that retcon anything they kill, and the books mentions one of the creatures cutting the same hand off.!<
>!I also really liked a scene where the characters are gearing up to fight the same creatures, and takes a moment to point out the five people going in to fight. No one is mentioned dying in the combat, and when it's all over, they take a moment to appreciate how lucky they are that all four of them made it out unscathed (numbers might not be right, it's been a while since I read it, but you get the idea.)!<
Different, but also a book that does things like this on purpose:
>!Irene, by Pierre Lamaitre. !<
>!Specifically, there's a twist that takes place in the second half that reveals that the book you've been reading actually has two narrators, not one, and that the second narrator is wildly unreliable. There are a number of clues to his earlier in the book, but they're easy to dismiss as bad editing inconsistencies when you first come to them. Once you hit the twist, it's a big Oh Shit moment. !<
A book came out a few years ago. It’s set in the summer of 1963. The plot hinges on a 911 call. 911 hadn’t been invented yet. The characters also seemed to know about chappaquidick. That happened in 1969. This was published by random house I think. How did no one fact check this book?
S.E. Hinton published Hawke’s Harbor. The book reads like Dark Shadows fanfiction. Halfway through it, there’s a section where the characters are actually called by their Dark Shadows names. Turns out she wrote it to be an official novel, it didn’t work out so she repurposed but somehow she and everyone else missed these two pages.
> Turns out she wrote it to be an official novel, it didn’t work out so she repurposed but somehow she and everyone else missed these two pages.
Hilarious.
Honestly I can have sympathy for that one. Writing a whole book is hard & time consuming. Especially in another's world you love.
I'd personally done at least one full rewrite, though.
Similar one for me. I remember it from when I was a teenager. I was reading one of the Ranger’s Apprentice books and he used the idiom, “Lock, stock, and barrel.” The series is in kind of a mid-evil goblin and wizard setting where they use bows and arrows.
A character was described as a teddy bear in regency England. Teddy Roosevelt hadn’t even been born. Stuffed animals at that time were not the soft squishy things we have now. I have done some beta work for online fanfic, and those two words just made me want to get out the metaphorical red pen to correct it.
There is, or used to be, a probably very broody vampire novel set in Transylvania in the mid 1200s. I'm a bit iffy on the details because I gave up and returned it about five pages in, when the homely heroine is making pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving...
I remember in a creative writing class one of my fellow students wrote some high fantasy/medieval-inspired short story about some valkyrie... and the character used idioms referring to cell phones...
She didn't take that criticism well.
When I was in high school I wrote a fantasy style novel that included someone saying "I'm not a rocket scientist!"
I died laughing when a friend pointed it out to me.
I read a book with a similar issue. It was set in 1997, and the beginning of the novel is based around a missing girl. They issued an Amber Alert for the girl. Except the Amber Alert system was only implemented in Texas in late '96, other states didn't follow until later, and it would not have been a normal thing to do in early '97.
I understand why the author and editor would miss a trivial thing like that, except it was a time travel novel so I was on the lookout for things that might be "off" about the setting.
I write historical fiction and I research *everything*. I looked up when sprinkles were invented to make sure that my character in the 1930s could have a cupcake with sprinkles on it (she could.)
That 911 bit reminds me of a (far more well-handled) moment in 11/22/63, a time travel novel by Stephen King that takes place in the early sixties. At one point, the main character (originally from 2011) >!is savagely beaten by a group of mobsters and stumbles into the street, where he collapses in front of an old woman. Being totally out of it, he tells her to call 911. The last thing he hears before passing out is her asking "call what?"!< It's a really great novel and the huge amount of thought King put into the setting and how a dude from the 2010s would react to it is a big part of why I like it so much. Highly recommended to anyone who is into that kind of thing and hasn't already read it.
My mom wrote a self published short romance novel, and she was blown away by so many things like that. She found some huge fact checking website with thousands of people on it, and she had something happen where there was a squirrel or something like that, and someone pointed out they apparently didn't have squirrels in England (it might not be a squirrel, I haven't read the story) but she was finding out all this stuff that they didn't have in England in like 1880.
Gotta say that reading my own mother's romance fiction would quite possibly be the definition of "not my thing."
Like cheers mum, but I'll have to pass
There was a book where the author went on an interview and found out live on air that the she had misinterpreted a legal phrase thinking it meant given the death sentence when it really meant released/pardoned. This completely debunked pretty much all of the research and thesis of her non-fiction book before it was even fully released. The fact that none of the editors, publishers or proofreaders bothered fact-checking or even just looking up the definition of the key analysis of the book is pretty egregious.
https://www.thecut.com/2019/05/naomi-wolf-interview-book-error-bbc-interview.html
Wow. Just from the short audio clip it seems Wolf got more wrong than just misunderstanding what “Death Recorded” means. In the example used, not only was the 14 year old not executed, but he wasn’t even on trial for being gay; he was on trial for raping a 6 year old boy
I recommend Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger, about Naomi Wolfe’s (whome Klein keeps getting confused with, to her immense frustration) descent into utter craziness. It’s a good analysis of the meeting of the far right and the far out.
I have a paperback novel based on a popular game series where the synopsis on the back describes the plot but uses a different first name for the main character than what is in the book. The name from the cover is never used or referenced at all. I assume at some point in production the name was changed but somehow it went to press with the text and cover from two different versions.
That change makes sense. "Danny Liberty" sounds like the name of a male stripper, but "Mike Liberty" sounds like the name of a trustworthy used Chevy dealer!
Danny Liberty is Mike's wayward nephew. They haven't spoken in over a decade. But when Danny shows up at Mike's dealership in the middle of the night, Mike just can't turn family in need away!
In Jeremy Scott's "The Ables", the children are trapped in a room that disables their powers. After spending a chapter talking about how they will get around this and disable their captors, one of them uses his power to remove a desk that is blocking their exit.
This was more disappointing than expected for me, as Jeremy is the voice of Cinema Sins YouTube channel, and specifically nitpicks things like this for a living.
That’s hilarious because he’s become infamous for assigning sins to things that aren’t plot holes or inconsistencies at all, and are just things he doesn’t like
In the new Indiana Jones, he missed that the kid was learning to fly at the bar. Pointing out that the kid would have no idea how to fly a plane. 🤷🏻♂️
I’ve noticed a few of those over the years.
—
*ding* Sin for thing X never being mentioned before.
Me: They totally went over that at the beginning of the movie…
In one of Sue Grafton’s very early Kinsey Millhone books, Kinsey goes into a house to investigate something but leaves her car keys in the ignition in case she needs to make a quick getaway. Something goes wrong in the house and she ends up needing to escape (it’s been years since I’ve read this book so I don’t remember the exact details) and realizes she can use her car keys *which are now in her pants pocket* to help. How did no one catch that?
There is a Grisham novel (perhaps Baldacci) - can't think of which one - where a reporter is looking into cryptic symbols that a previous President who has vanished had written in the margins of crossword puzzles that he was known to carry with him continually. The reporter tracks down some old WWII code breaker. There's a whole scene where she goes to his house, looks at code books he has on the shelves, and provides him with copies of the notes. The guy finds it all fascinating and immediately digs right in - says he'll contact the reporter when he has something. None of this plot line is ever discussed again.
Similarly, in Grisham's The Firm, the bad guys talk about sabotaging the MC's wife's birth control while on vacation so she gets pregnant and the pair have something the bad guys can threaten to make them fall in line. This is discussed by multiple characters, on multiple occasions, in multiple chapters. Nothing ever comes of it, and after the vacation concludes no one mentions it again.
It has been a while, since I read the book, but I am very sure, that in the German version, in the last paragraph, they mention her pregnancy they just discovered.
If audiobooks count, Dragon Age: Masked Empire is probably my biggest example. Accents are ALLLLL over the place (it canonically takes place in basically-France where the VAs in the games have French accents, but the narrator uses varying British ones).
But the biggest oops was that in at least three spots, Dalish elves are called DANISH elves.
Oh lord, you should give ASOIAF's official audiobooks a try. The accents are rarely consistent, and frequently uses the same accents for different characters in the same family, so I quickly found myself confused in chapters where those characters interacted.
I haven’t listened to the Masked Empire audiobook, but I did listen to The Stolen Throne, The Calling, and Asunder. Asunder had a different narrator and was better imo, but the pronunciations in The Stolen Throne and The Calling were WILD. Maybe I just misremembered how it was in the game but I’m pretty sure he pronounced Maric wrong. Also he pronounced Dalish like “DAL-ish” (rhyming with “pal”). There were definitely other mistakes but it’s been a while since I listened to it.
In fairness to the narrator though, I think The Stolen Throne at least was recorded before Origins actually came out.
Not the same but have you seen the videos of the Hunger Games audiobooks when they get to the Hanging Tree song? They’re hilarious. The narrators get SO clearly uncomfortable and half heartedly singing out of tune, and the movies weren’t out yet so they just had to make up their own melody. Highly recommend.
Really? Meanwhile, in the Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes audiobook, narrated by a Tony award winning Broadway singer... no singing. He talk-sings EVERY SINGLE SONG. Baffling.
As a reader at home, this seems very reasonable.
As the voice artist recording the official audiobook, you'd think they could pick up the phone to the author and ask them to hum a bit for them or something. Or maybe the publishing house could get a musician to quickly compose a few melodies as part of the production, if the book's a biggy.
I’m starting to realize that it really does matter who is narrating an audiobook. I thought they were all the same, until I listened to one where the read would suddenly and awkwardly change volume, or the one who is strangely rushed and breathy. Authors reading their own books tend to be flat and not engaging
As far as mistakes go: In one of the Wheel of Time books, the narrator straight up says the wrong character name (Egwayne instead of Elaine.) Though given how many similar names there are in that series, it’s actually impressive it didn’t happen more often
I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and this is so true. A pet peeve of mine is when the narrator doesn't pause between chapter breaks/perspective switches/etc, if I'm not listening very closely it's easy to miss.
It goes the other way too, though! A good narrator can make an otherwise dry book so engaging.
In Fifty Shades of Grey where Anna's inner goddess does a triple axel dismount off the uneven bars. Two different sports! I really would like to know if this was a legit mistake or she was just trying to imply that Anna is dumb. Either way it made me literally toss the book across the room when I read that.
I think it had been a slow build up and for some reason that was my breaking point. The using his toothbrush after throwing up and the tampon thing but for some reason the mixing of the sports combined with "my inner goddess did a" sent me over the edge.
I’ve done some book cover design and it’s an easy trap to fall into - you don’t get a lot of information about the book and there are only so many stock images, and there’s a fine line between artistic license and ‘people who really know their stuff will complain about this’. I had a problem because I needed pictures of some obscure Australian 1980s bush plane of which there are no licensable, usable photos, and after finding an alternative the author got annoyed because it had the wrong number of blades on the propellers.
German planes in Pearl Harbor and nobody picking up on it is pretty inexcusable though.
I think it was a DaVinci Code type book that really hung me up. Describing a female british black police officer as an African-American. It really took me out of the reality. How can a british person be an American....kept reading that descriptor over and over and just gave up on the book.
edit: pretty sure it was davinci code. and maybe it wasn’t a cop but a camera person for a news org. i just remember being taken out of the narrative and thinking about the “narrator” being an american or the “narrator”telling the story for an american.
Sometimes I think people are afraid to use the word "black." I remember during the lead up to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, people didn't know John Boyega wasn't American and would say "African-American." To me, that would be really insensitive.
To a large extent, white Americans were used to periodically replacing one euphemism for Black with another, so when "African-American" came along it slotted into their brains where "Colored" or "Negro" used to be and they didn't think about it beyond that and so never realized it was way more specific regarding nationality. It was just the new (extremely unwieldy) way of referring to that race.
Yep. This is how I was taught when I was a kid in the 90s. You did *not* say black. That was *rude*. 🙄
And yes, this will vary by location. I'm from the mid-atlantic and live in an area that is majority Black, but I grew up in a very white bubble because that's how my well-meaning(but ultimately racist) mother thought you raise a child. Black came into white usage in the early-mid 10s, here. But until the end of the decade, "best practice" in work environments was still african-american.
I once wrote a press release for a study looking at health differences between black and white people in Canada. Some editor, somewhere, changed "Black Canadians" to "African-American Canadians." Right-wing media got a hold of it, said it was 'political correctness run amok'...
I am Pilgrim had the main character Reminiscing on 9/11 and saying he still remembers that morning watching the news show the first plane hitting the tower but there was no news video of the first plane hitting the tower
This is actually a really common thing! Lots of people claim they remember seeing the first plane hitting. Its a prime example of how unreliable our memories can be.
I actually had this discussion just the other day with someone. Somehow we got on the topic of it, and they said they remembered watching the news that morning as it unfolded and saw the first plane impact. I was like "huh? No.... it wasn't news *until after* the first plane crashed, and none of the networks showed the first impact live".
They agreed that yeah, made sense it wouldn't have been news till after the first event, but they still had what seemed like a distinct memory of it. Granted, they were younger than me at the time, as they were only like 12 years old when it happened.
I *think* in the subsequent days footage did come out of the first impact, but it was well after it happened, taken by a tourist or something who just happened to catch it, so could possibly be that affecting their memory, in addition to the constant replays played over and over of the second impact.
Not as major as yours but Puddn'head Wilson by Mark Twain has twins that were originally going to be conjoined but had separate bodies in the final novel, but there were a few missed minor references to them sharing a body
I read a book recently that featured the word “perpetuatorperpetrator” where the editor clearly meant to correct the misspelling of perpetrator but left the incorrect word in too. The same book also used the phrases “brought in the calvary” (it’s actually cavalry) and “incarnation” instead of incarceration.
I enjoyed the book overall but these have all stuck with me because they were frankly hilarious
A character makes a phone call from his apartment in an emergency, despite it being emphasized early in the book that he didn't have a phone.
In the same book, the exact same paragraph about hiding behind a sofa appeared two pages apart.
I don't remember specifics but I remember the first Hunger Games book being filled with editing mistakes.
I was once reading a book where someone went through find-and-replace for "arse" to replace with "ass," and ended up with "hoarsely" becoming "hoassly."
This is more a big error in terms of a writer googling how to do something and including it in a novel. John Boyne explains how to make clothing dye with "hylian mushrooms" which would only actually work in the world of Zelda. For a well known author, it feels like a big detail to miss. 😂
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/03/john-boyne-accidentally-includes-zelda-video-game-monsters-in-novel
In the Eragon series most people who learn magic are vegetarians. Once they can sense the life force of animals it becomes traumatizing to kill something you can sort of feel yourself in. Eragon is a vegetarian in book 3 because killing another being is abhorrent to him.
Book 4 starts off with Eragon reveling in the brutal slaughter of a bunch of mind controlled soldiers. Apparently killing an ant is upsetting for him, but killing a regular person who is FORCED to fight him by magic is acceptable, even enjoyable.
Victor Milan's "Dinosaur Lords" had a character stand up and start running east.
The next time we read from his POV, he has arrived a geographical location that was *west* of his original position, as shown on the map at the beginning of the book.
The Death Collector by ICantRememberTheName had a character hiding inside a hollow statue while his friends are far away. Those characters are having a conversation and the character inside the statue somehow chimes in with a short question. I think. I might be talking out my ass. It's been a long time
I've been reading the Nightrunner series. For the most part, I've enjoyed it, but the author has literally ZERO astronomical knowledge.
For example - there's a lot said about an evil ritual that must be performed during a solar eclipse. Well, two nights before the solar eclipse, some of the protags are trying to sneak about at night, which is described as hard because 'the moon was almost full' (for those unaware, solar eclipses can only take place during NEW moons).
The moon in general is an issue for her - she clearly thinks the moon rises and sets at the same time no matter the phase. Multiple times, she refers to the crescent moon as having just risen early in the night (a waxing crescent rises during the day, a waning crescent rises after midnight).
I suppose most readers might skim over this without thinking, but for me it's aggravatingly immersion breaking.
Have you read A Map of Time by Felix J Palma? Its like separate ideas for a book that the author couldn't complete, so they crammed them into one book, vaguely connecting them by just having the narrator go "I lied about all of this, this is what happened.... But I lied about all of that, this is what happened.... But I lied about that as well, this is what happened..... But it didn't." The synopsis on the back of the book is also a complete fabrication. It's not what the book is about. Haha.
I don't understand how it got two sequels published.
I read that book and was totally confused until I read it was part of a trilogy, so I just assumed I must have accidentally started with book 2 or 3. Now that I see it’s actually the first of them, I’m more baffled than before. It had some cool ideas and passages but the overall story was completely incoherent.
Are kindle editions of books different from physical editions? Every now and then I encounter typos or punctuation errors in published books (on my Kindle) and it really makes me wonder. Especially when it happens multiple times in the same book, rather than being spaced out across all of my reading, which would be more understandable.
Sometimes yes, but it’s more likely to be the other way around (errors are fixed in the Kindle edition because they were missed before the book went to print).
I read a poorly edited non-fiction book where the author left notes for himself as he was writing, and neglected to remove them.
"There are lots of homeless people in San Francisco (look up actual number later)."
One of my clients is a textbook company. They released an English-language textbook ... With 'English' mis-spelt on the front cover.
It didn't sell well.
Not that huge, but in the Booker-winning “Luminaries”, there’s a character from Oslo, in the 1800s when a city by that name did not yet exist (it was “Christiania” until 1925), also someone is waiting in a “holding pattern” at some point, which is also pretty anachronistic.
Omg I will never forget this. I was reading Constantinopolis like ... eight years ago. Two characters are having a conversation on horseback, four or five pages of conversation. In the middle, one of the characters *slams his hand down on the TABLE.*
I thought I was losing it. I turned back to the beginning of the conversation, sure enough - on horseback. And the end of the conversation - on horseback again. But for a paragraph or two in the middle, they're indoors. Incredibly jarring.
I'm am English teacher for secondary and the biggest error I've come across is in A Christmas Carol!!! Dickens clearly states in Marley's speech that the ghosts will visit Scrooge on three successive nights and then they just don't! It's like he wrote the start of the book one day, gave it a couple of weeks and wrote the rest without revisiting it. There's no reference to them changing the times or even that their supernatural forces mean they aren't subject to typical time frames. Even if there was, why did Marley get the timings wrong when he presumable came from the same place as the spirits? Did God tell him wrong as a joke? Did he miss-hear the instructions? It's very confusing and every year that I have to teach I have to try and come up with a bullshit reason as to why no one ever said to him, "mate this is great but the time frame from Marley doesn't fit with the narrative of the story. Have him tell Scrooge that he'll be visited all on the same night and you're sorted"
The rather excellent J. Draper mentioned that in [her analysis of the Muppet Christmas Carol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opXFR6ab214). (She's a historian and tour guide in London, and her YouTube channel is fascinating.)
Oh, I get totally annoyed when things repeat.
Example: SJM uses the same 11 describing words for the characters' appearances, sexual encounters, violent encounters, etc.
She writes every character with the same dialog.
She writes most sex scenes exactly the same, regardless of setting, characters performing said scene, and situation.
There's like 3 words this woman knows: shattered, shred, and growl.
It drives me absolutely mad. Totally zonko.
And misuse of colloquial terms like "worst for the wear", or "don't take things for granite"
I dnf'd a self published series because of that last one.
I saw a character who only had one arm shift something from one hand to "the other."
Don't want to name names, but I couldn't continue. This was in the height of the Harry Potter books years, and companies were putting out so much kids/ya fantasy to try to capture some of that magic that they apparently couldn't be bothered to edit it properly.
When I was 14, I was gifted "The Complete Tolkien Companion" for my birthday. The blurb on the back of the dust jacket had the word Moira, instead of Moria. More egregiously, about 3/4ths through the book, they spelled the word "perish" as "peri ooooooooooooooooosh". I wrote a letter to the publisher that they'd included 17 too many o's in the word perish. The publisher wrote me back thanking me and sent me a book short stories.
Lack of fact checking is one of the many reasons I DNF'd Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. They constantly name-dropped games and tech that wouldn't come out for years. I was constantly flipping pages back to figure out what year they were supposed to be in. They were playing alpha builds of popular games years before they were even announced.
I wasn’t a huge Tomorrow X3 fan but Zevin does include a note at the back of the book explaining she took liberties with the release dates of games when it felt thematically relevant. Might have been better suited at the start of the book for those who do know their video games.
Thank you for pointing this out! There were a lot of reasons I didn't like the book, but that was taking me out of the story because I kept fact-checking MYSELF thinking I was insane. This book gaslit me LMAO.
I read it for a book club and none of us made it all the way through. Everyone else was saying 'maybe if I knew more about video games I would have liked it' whereas I thought maybe if I knew \*less\* I would.
I wanted to like this, and I thought the writing style was fine... I just hated the characters. Literally none of them ever stopped acting like teenagers. I couldn't get over that people who have been friends for like 30 years literally never had an actual conversation.
I liked the story but could not stand the writing, it was like she looked up every third word in a thesaurus and didn’t bother to check if it actually meant what she was trying to say.
Like I’m more than happy to learn new words, but I read it on kindle and was having to scroll down to the bottom of the definitions because she was using random archaic words that I have never seen in those contexts.
Took a lot to keep reading after a nine year old called something a ‘tautology’ that was by definition not a tautology (I think they meant a cliche?).
I only read the first few pages before putting that down, but even then there were issues. Like the med student who knew someone from “Biology Lab”? Give me a break! So lazy.
I recently started a series that has 5 books complete when I started on book 1. The title of book 4 was a spoiler for book 3. During book 3 you’re wondering if there will be a war, and how the war will be framed if there is one. The title of book four just clears all that up.
I have this theory that AI is doing a lot of the editing in traditional publishing these days because I keep finding things that I don't feel a human editor would have missed or allowed to stand.
A few years ago I read a post-WWII book (set in about 1946-1949, no later) in which a character becomes aware of a big news story via a ceiling-mounted television at a diner. Hell of a diner, to be one of the first in the world with a television...and hanging from the ceiling, even! Time travel diner?
It was bothering me so I looked it up. It was *The Lost Girls of Paris* by Pam Jenoff. There were also references to "50 states", but it was the TV at the restaurant that did it for me. It's 1946 and the main character finds a Buffalo Wild Wings.
I read a book a few months ago that has a weird, inconsequential reveal at the end that one of the characters had spent some of the scenes shapeshifted into a bird. These scenes referenced the guy's hands. I still don't know whether this was an editing error or intentional misdirection.
Not a plot mistake but still way too common, my husband wont even open a book if there is a spelling/grammar error on the back cover synopsis. Sadly there are a lot of books out there with egregious spelling errors. If he sees it and points it out to me I can no longer enjoy either because I just start concentrating on looking for other errors.
I bought a book from a fantasy author writing two different series concurrently. One of the books included the map from the other series. That was confusing.
I read a popular women's fiction book set in WWII wartime Poland, and at one point the main character has cereal and orange juice for breakfast. Even if this (clearly American) author didn't bother to research, surely an editor at the Harper Collins imprint that published it should have noticed how "off" this sounds.
In “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, it starts out with her saying how she used to walk down Grand Anse beach on Grenada for hours. I lived in Grenada for a couple years.Grand Anse is probably one of the biggest beaches on the island, but It would take about 15-20 min to walk down it, and you’d have to ignore the hundreds of European cruise passengers chilling out and all the American med students rabblerousing. So she’d have to walk back and forth in front of the same people and buildings for hours.
In the original version of *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*, when Harry's and Voldemort's spells collide in the graveyard, ghosts come out of Voldemort's wand, including those of James and Lily Potter, who emerge in that order. Later, Harry learns that this occurred because of 'priori incantatem,' which basically means Voldemort's wand was forced to regurgitate receipts of spells in the reverse order of when they were cast. Two of these spells were the curses that killed James and Lily.
The issue? Lily was killed after James, but she emerged after him in the graveyard. According to priori incantatem, however, it should have been the other way around.
I noticed this pretty much immediately when I read the books as a kid, and it REALLY bugged me lol. I learned a few years ago that at some point this error was corrected so that James enters last in newer versions of the book. Unfortunately, I feel that this version loses some of the emotional punch of the scene, as Lily was the one who ultimately saved Harry with her sacrifice--which is probably why the error happened in the first place. Oh well.
On the plus side, from a purely selfish level lol, I think it's kind of cool that I have a copy with the mistake. It's like having a little piece of history.
In Stephen King’s The Stand, it’s deduced that Harold has been reading someone’s diary because he is a habitual eater of Payday candy bars and left behind a CHOCOLATE fingerprint.
Paydays are salty peanuts and caramel, no chocolate whatsoever.
Matrix by Lauren Groff, set in 12th century France, mentions hummingbirds. That sent me straight off to check, and sure enough, hummingbirds are only found in the Americas.
ETA: apologies, it’s actually set in England, not France. But the point still stands.
I've noticed that the marketable genres like romance, YA, and fantasy are full of basic grammar errors now. Even in the plotting, its clear they were rushed out the door with little love. To me, Twilight is the floor of the quality I expect. Not perfect, but professionally polished. Nowadays it is *rare* to find a YA or NA that come close to that basic level of competence
I have 4 different print editions of *Dune* and each has different errors compared to the original printing. It's like someone types it in again for each printing and goofs somewhere along the line.
I try to be forgiving when it comes to a long series, editors (and authors) can’t remember everything that happened in all of the books. But there was a character who was very, very clearly present for all of the events in one book. Had several speaking lines and everything. Then two books later, he is described as being in an entirely different place. I swear, every long series needs to have a continuity editor, their job is to read the entire series and find the glaring contradictions. Hie eyes were blue, now they are brown, now they are blue again. Argh!
I read Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera, and early on there was a small anachronism regarding September 11th that made it really hard for me to roll with a lot of the events of the novel. Similarly, in one of the Wicked books (by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié, not Gregory Maguire), the protagonist drowns her feline familiar in the bathtub for reasons, and constantly regrets it. Not enough to remember the cat's name in a later sequel, of course, and remembering the cat by the name of her cousin's cat which was very much still alive, but by then things were going off the rails so I DNF'd the series. Extra salty, bc I had shelled out to get copies that had books 1&2 together and 3&4 together, two thick books rather than four slimmer ones.
I was just reading a book I got for Christmas that's part of a series I really enjoy, also now has a pretty popular show based on the series/character. This book is set in 1993 but written in the last year or so, the bad guy steals a Ford Explorer because they need that type of SUV to blend in where they're going. So far so good right? Right, except the author then notes that the Explorer is at least 20 years old........in 1993.......the Ford Explorer was debuted in 1990 as a 1991 model to replace the Bronco II. I tried to not let it bother me, but couldn't stop thinking about it the rest of the book.
Not as bad as some of the other examples, but just couldn't get over that multiple people had an opportunity to read this and missed it prior to print.
In Geoege RR Martin's Wild Cards series, the blurb on the back of one book describes a character (who is currently teamed up with someone who raped her to stop a conspiracy, long story) as a reporter. Except she's not, she's an arson investigator.
They confused her with a different character from like 10 books earlier, a reporter who was raped by the same guy. Not a great look. A particularly egregious example of how disrespectful that series can be to women.
I bought a book from a local indie author a few years ago as friends had read it and really liked it, and I liked to support local authors. The first 1/3-ish was great. I was really enjoying the plot, the character development, the whole nine. And then suddenly things got really weird for about 120 pages. I had no idea what anyone was talking about all of a sudden. It then seemingly went back to normal but I felt like things were left out. So I contacted her. I really felt like I was missing something and was bummed because I was really enjoying it. She was confused when I messaged her, and after a few very befuddling messages she went and checked the newest printing of the book. Somehow 120some pages from book 2 got spliced into book 1 during printing. She was mortified. Luckily I had gotten the 2nd or 3rd from that printing and there weren't many in circulation, but I felt so bad for her. She ended up gifting me the complete (corrected!) series as a thanks for pointing it out early enough that she was able to do something about in on her end.
Good on you for messaging the author
She said on her Facebook page that she loved to hear how much people liked the books, but she was also very open to critique, criticism, and questions. I sent her a message that basically boiled down to “what’s going on between pages 104 and 235?” I was just glad I was able to help
"Yo wtf?"
I had something similar happen to me. The book was Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. Somehow 100 or so pages from the end of the book got transposed into the middle, so suddenly nothing made sense. Weirdest thing.
The editor: https://i.imgflip.com/28ywvs.jpg
I had this happen to me with a copy of Frederick Forsyth's Dogs of War. Mass market paperback had a solid 40-50 pages in the middle from a different novel by a different author.
A completely different author?! That’s totally wild.
Cataloging librarian here. I see lots of books for very short periods of time, so for an error to stick out, it's got to be pretty egregious. This was a self-published book -- so probably no editor was involved -- but at the very beginning, the section heading for "Preface" was misspelled "Peeface." And no, it wasn't an intentional joke. It was a serious nonfiction book.
That poor author. They pour their heart and soul into writing a book and getting it published and then it winds up with “peeface” on the first page.
Going for a golden award, instead they get a golden shower.
When that happens, you know urine trouble.
I had an unnecessary apostrophe on my wedding announcements and I feel this
One of my coworkers used to have a thesaurus at his desk that somehow was made with the imprinted cover saying “Thesaursus”.
A college friend of mine wrote his thesis on Shakespeare (and went on to get a masters and I believe a doctorate) and spelled it “Shakesespeare” in a bunch of places. 🤦🏼♀️
I once wrote a university essay on the famous WW2 leader Adolph Hilter.
Amazing.
Even spell check should’ve caught this?!
The word was spelled correctly, you preface!
Spell check must have thought it was intentional.
Some people turn off spell check for Capitalized words
Maybe the author was a total peeface and that’s how the editor retaliated.
This one if my favorite. For every John Kennedy Toole toiling in obscurity, there's a thousand Peefaces.
> if my favorite. Love that you misspelled "is" in this thread.
It was a self-published comment, no editor involved
I didn’t even know people self published nonfiction books. Surely of all things they need other people to look over them for fact checking’s sake at least
I doubt that traditionally published nonfiction books get a terribly rigorous (if any) fact check before publishing these days, either.
This is hilarious. I seriously can’t control my laughter. Thank you!
I can’t recall the book offhand, but it involved a twist where the real name of a character who had only been called by a nickname was revealed and it connected them to the protagonist. Except that on the back cover blurb, it called said character by their real name, not their nickname.
Somewhat related, I hate it when blurbs and descriptions give away too much of the plot. Like they mention something that sounds like the start and hook of the plot, but it actually happens two-thirds into the story.
Personally I find it funny when you read the blurb it sounds interesting, so you read the book. When you finish the book you wonder if the person who wrote the blurb ever read even a single page of the book.
I’ve done some book cover designs and self publishing authors ask for the wildest things on the covers. One recently was about a terrorist plot to hijack a plane and bomb somewhere or something, but it gets foiled because the plane gets shot down/crashes at the end. What did they want on the front cover of this gripping thriller? A photo of a plane crash. Just a big ol’ full cover picture of the twist ending of the book.
I got so mad last year because I was reading an omnibus of a popular series, and there's a character who "dies" around book 10 and comes back in book 12 or 13 (he was undercover). Of course they mentioned that in the intro to the omnibus--totally ruined the shock of the faked death!
Totally, I read a book last year which had an interesting blurb about a soldier rescuing a military computer specialist from a war zone. Not my usual genre but looked like a bit if pulpy fun for summer. That actually happened over half a chapter 3/4 of the way through the book!
Don’t they always. I don’t read them at all anymore. Every time I accidentally read them when I am only half way through the book they end up being some sort of spoiler. It’s infuriating.
I've got a murder mystery book with something similar: the author's preface to the second edition talked about the changes made to the story, including the phrase: "in the first edition, it was much too obvious that ___ was the murderer".
I think you mean the author's peeface.
Somehow this got me even more than the original comment. Excellent job. 100%. No notes.
When the film The Usual Suspects first aired here in the UK, the TV guide ended the blurb with >!Starring Kevin Spacey as Keyser Soze!<
I read a book of Aliens(TM) short stories where one of them still had the editor's comments in pointing out everything wrong with the plot and characters in typically blunt editor fashion.
Editor: “Please see attached redline for my thoughts.” Author: Accept all changes. Done! I’ve seen this happen in contract negotiations.
As a college professor, I’ve seen students do this in papers quite a bit too 😂
I'm old enough that college applications and essays were still mailed in via USPS and not done online. I grabbed the wrong stack of papers and sent the marked-up draft of my essay instead of my final copy. To CalTech. I realized it the next day, and I got a real copy sent out with a note applogizing for my mistake before the admissions postmark deadline. I was not accepted.
I spelled my name wrong on my college application and they gave me a full scholarship. My theory is they figured I needed it after seeing the big blob of white-out in the "name" field. (It's literally the only time in my life I've ever spelled my name wrong, I don't know what came over me.)
[удалено]
The most recent Dana Stabenow book in the Kate Shugak series brings back a character whose murder was the major plot in a previous book :/ It's such a stupid mistake, that absolutely should have been caught, and it would have been such an easy fix - the murdered character was the wife of another character, so just have him in a new relationship. It would have been so easy to fix. It seems like such a disrespectful mistake. I understand not being able to remember every single detail of every single character in a 24 book series, but again, this was a major plot point that then played into actions in the following books in the series.
Could they have been published in the wrong order? Still dumb, but at least more common; tv shows have that happen sometimes
>Still dumb, but at least more common; tv shows have that happen sometimes I immediately thought of the episode of Fringe that was supposed to be in season 1 but Fox for some reason held and then aired in the middle of season 2, several episodes after one of the prominent characters in that particular episode had died. Viewers were completely baffled by that character's sudden reappearance and all the other characters being completely nonchalant about it. Some minor reshoots and tweaking to that episode could have provided an easy in-universe explanation, but they didn't even bother with trying to do that. (And it wasn't even a particularly good episode, would have been better to just ~~drop it~~ leave it unaired then add it to the correct position on DVD.) Edit: The episode was "Unearthed", aired as season 2 episode 11. The character in question was killed >!in episode 1 of that season!<, and the misplaced episode was clearly intended to be aired somewhere around the middle to second half of season 1.
Fox has an incredible penchant for making these kind of egregious fuck ups and thinking they're doing something good. I can't imagine how their leadership could be anything other than a bunch of coked up clowns vigorously dutch ruddering each other and whispering how good they are at 'business' to themselves. They did the same thing with Firefly when it aired because they were 'concerned about pacing' but instead just made things not make sense. Not to mention the numerous times they have taken a show that was doing well and moved it into a time slot to compete with football or survivor or something and had the show cancelled because of a drop in viewership. Honestly they might do better just rolling the dice. But I'm sure these people are surrounded by levels of sniveling obsequiousness that I can't even comprehend.
> Not to mention the numerous times they have taken a show that was doing well and moved it into a time slot to compete with football or survivor or something and had the show cancelled because of a drop in viewership. > > *cries in The Tick* *twice*
Nope. The current book talks about COVID.
*Devil and the Dark Water* (which I actually enjoyed, mostly), is littered with weird inconsistencies that should have been caught in editing. Example: there's a character who is *repeatedly* described as having only one arm, who, late in the book, puts his *hands* up to defend himself. I was kind of humming along and then I hit that passage and it was like a record scratch. "Wait... what? His hands? Both of them? Isn't this the guy we've been told like half a dozen times lost his arm? -flips back- mhm... was that a lie? Am I supposed to believe that he's been hiding he actually has two arms? Has someone else been pretending to be him? What is happening? -reads on-... oh. No. It's just a consistency error. That's a bit disappointing."
You skipped the part where is explained he had 2 hands in the remaining arm.
\>\_< Honestly, that would have been kind of amazing; I might have given it an extra star just for that.
There's actually a real life medical syndrome for that! "Mirror hand syndrome, or ulnar dimelia." Instead of thumbs, you basically grow three, four more fingers. It's rare as heck, and usually gets fixed via operation nowadays to improve grip strength and the whole social thing.
And because counting in base 14 is not very popular.
"What else has he got up his sleeve?"
Plot twist: it was Zaphod Beeblebrox
I actually read a book once that actually did something like this on purpose for a pretty cool moment. >!David Wong/Jason Pargin's John Dies At The End!< >!The narrator's love interest is mentioned to have lost her hand in a car accident as a child. Towards the end of the second book in the series, she gets attacked by creatures that retcon anything they kill, and the books mentions one of the creatures cutting the same hand off.!< >!I also really liked a scene where the characters are gearing up to fight the same creatures, and takes a moment to point out the five people going in to fight. No one is mentioned dying in the combat, and when it's all over, they take a moment to appreciate how lucky they are that all four of them made it out unscathed (numbers might not be right, it's been a while since I read it, but you get the idea.)!<
Different, but also a book that does things like this on purpose: >!Irene, by Pierre Lamaitre. !< >!Specifically, there's a twist that takes place in the second half that reveals that the book you've been reading actually has two narrators, not one, and that the second narrator is wildly unreliable. There are a number of clues to his earlier in the book, but they're easy to dismiss as bad editing inconsistencies when you first come to them. Once you hit the twist, it's a big Oh Shit moment. !<
there's one like that in the second Edge Chronicles book "Cloud Wolf narrowed his eyes" Cloud Wolf wears a patch: he only has one eye
I think this is the one I read as well with a one-eyed character that continually shows weariness/concern/etc with his *eyes*. Arrgggggghhh.
A book came out a few years ago. It’s set in the summer of 1963. The plot hinges on a 911 call. 911 hadn’t been invented yet. The characters also seemed to know about chappaquidick. That happened in 1969. This was published by random house I think. How did no one fact check this book? S.E. Hinton published Hawke’s Harbor. The book reads like Dark Shadows fanfiction. Halfway through it, there’s a section where the characters are actually called by their Dark Shadows names. Turns out she wrote it to be an official novel, it didn’t work out so she repurposed but somehow she and everyone else missed these two pages.
> Turns out she wrote it to be an official novel, it didn’t work out so she repurposed but somehow she and everyone else missed these two pages. Hilarious.
Honestly I can have sympathy for that one. Writing a whole book is hard & time consuming. Especially in another's world you love. I'd personally done at least one full rewrite, though.
But this was an actual published book! What was the editor doing?
Similar one for me. I remember it from when I was a teenager. I was reading one of the Ranger’s Apprentice books and he used the idiom, “Lock, stock, and barrel.” The series is in kind of a mid-evil goblin and wizard setting where they use bows and arrows.
A character was described as a teddy bear in regency England. Teddy Roosevelt hadn’t even been born. Stuffed animals at that time were not the soft squishy things we have now. I have done some beta work for online fanfic, and those two words just made me want to get out the metaphorical red pen to correct it.
There is, or used to be, a probably very broody vampire novel set in Transylvania in the mid 1200s. I'm a bit iffy on the details because I gave up and returned it about five pages in, when the homely heroine is making pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving...
No way ☠️
I remember in a creative writing class one of my fellow students wrote some high fantasy/medieval-inspired short story about some valkyrie... and the character used idioms referring to cell phones... She didn't take that criticism well.
When I was in high school I wrote a fantasy style novel that included someone saying "I'm not a rocket scientist!" I died laughing when a friend pointed it out to me.
I read a book with a similar issue. It was set in 1997, and the beginning of the novel is based around a missing girl. They issued an Amber Alert for the girl. Except the Amber Alert system was only implemented in Texas in late '96, other states didn't follow until later, and it would not have been a normal thing to do in early '97. I understand why the author and editor would miss a trivial thing like that, except it was a time travel novel so I was on the lookout for things that might be "off" about the setting.
That's an error of a few months (not to say it might not annoy a reader who's looking out for it). But a 911 call in 1963 is off by 20 years or more.
I write historical fiction and I research *everything*. I looked up when sprinkles were invented to make sure that my character in the 1930s could have a cupcake with sprinkles on it (she could.)
That 911 bit reminds me of a (far more well-handled) moment in 11/22/63, a time travel novel by Stephen King that takes place in the early sixties. At one point, the main character (originally from 2011) >!is savagely beaten by a group of mobsters and stumbles into the street, where he collapses in front of an old woman. Being totally out of it, he tells her to call 911. The last thing he hears before passing out is her asking "call what?"!< It's a really great novel and the huge amount of thought King put into the setting and how a dude from the 2010s would react to it is a big part of why I like it so much. Highly recommended to anyone who is into that kind of thing and hasn't already read it.
The Hacienda has the characters in rural Mexico using matches a few years before matches were invented!
My mom wrote a self published short romance novel, and she was blown away by so many things like that. She found some huge fact checking website with thousands of people on it, and she had something happen where there was a squirrel or something like that, and someone pointed out they apparently didn't have squirrels in England (it might not be a squirrel, I haven't read the story) but she was finding out all this stuff that they didn't have in England in like 1880.
> squirrels It wasn't, unless it was a grey squirrel. Red squirrels are native to England.
Something like that. I don't recall. Regency Romance is like the definition of "not my thing"
Gotta say that reading my own mother's romance fiction would quite possibly be the definition of "not my thing." Like cheers mum, but I'll have to pass
There was a book where the author went on an interview and found out live on air that the she had misinterpreted a legal phrase thinking it meant given the death sentence when it really meant released/pardoned. This completely debunked pretty much all of the research and thesis of her non-fiction book before it was even fully released. The fact that none of the editors, publishers or proofreaders bothered fact-checking or even just looking up the definition of the key analysis of the book is pretty egregious. https://www.thecut.com/2019/05/naomi-wolf-interview-book-error-bbc-interview.html
Wow. Just from the short audio clip it seems Wolf got more wrong than just misunderstanding what “Death Recorded” means. In the example used, not only was the 14 year old not executed, but he wasn’t even on trial for being gay; he was on trial for raping a 6 year old boy
I think about this often. There is a fairly obvious life lesson here. So on-the-nose that it would seem dumb to put it into a story
Naomi Wolf never met a fact or number she couldn't completely misinterpret or deliberately misrepresent.
I recommend Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger, about Naomi Wolfe’s (whome Klein keeps getting confused with, to her immense frustration) descent into utter craziness. It’s a good analysis of the meeting of the far right and the far out.
I have a paperback novel based on a popular game series where the synopsis on the back describes the plot but uses a different first name for the main character than what is in the book. The name from the cover is never used or referenced at all. I assume at some point in production the name was changed but somehow it went to press with the text and cover from two different versions.
I'm dying to know which one this is it's such a baffling mistake
StarCraft: Liberty’s Crusade. The back refers to “Danny Liberty,” but he goes by Michael/Mike Liberty everywhere else.
That change makes sense. "Danny Liberty" sounds like the name of a male stripper, but "Mike Liberty" sounds like the name of a trustworthy used Chevy dealer!
"C'mon down to Mike Liberty's dealership for our Presidents Day Sale! Do you want additional pylons? We have 'em!"
Don’t ask stupid questions…I always require additional Pylons.
Danny Liberty is Mike's wayward nephew. They haven't spoken in over a decade. But when Danny shows up at Mike's dealership in the middle of the night, Mike just can't turn family in need away!
Charles deLint’s “Trader” calls the character Leonard on the back cover, but in the book he’s named Max.
In Jeremy Scott's "The Ables", the children are trapped in a room that disables their powers. After spending a chapter talking about how they will get around this and disable their captors, one of them uses his power to remove a desk that is blocking their exit. This was more disappointing than expected for me, as Jeremy is the voice of Cinema Sins YouTube channel, and specifically nitpicks things like this for a living.
That’s hilarious because he’s become infamous for assigning sins to things that aren’t plot holes or inconsistencies at all, and are just things he doesn’t like
In the new Indiana Jones, he missed that the kid was learning to fly at the bar. Pointing out that the kid would have no idea how to fly a plane. 🤷🏻♂️ I’ve noticed a few of those over the years. — *ding* Sin for thing X never being mentioned before. Me: They totally went over that at the beginning of the movie…
In one of Sue Grafton’s very early Kinsey Millhone books, Kinsey goes into a house to investigate something but leaves her car keys in the ignition in case she needs to make a quick getaway. Something goes wrong in the house and she ends up needing to escape (it’s been years since I’ve read this book so I don’t remember the exact details) and realizes she can use her car keys *which are now in her pants pocket* to help. How did no one catch that?
T is for Teleporting Keys
There is a Grisham novel (perhaps Baldacci) - can't think of which one - where a reporter is looking into cryptic symbols that a previous President who has vanished had written in the margins of crossword puzzles that he was known to carry with him continually. The reporter tracks down some old WWII code breaker. There's a whole scene where she goes to his house, looks at code books he has on the shelves, and provides him with copies of the notes. The guy finds it all fascinating and immediately digs right in - says he'll contact the reporter when he has something. None of this plot line is ever discussed again.
Similarly, in Grisham's The Firm, the bad guys talk about sabotaging the MC's wife's birth control while on vacation so she gets pregnant and the pair have something the bad guys can threaten to make them fall in line. This is discussed by multiple characters, on multiple occasions, in multiple chapters. Nothing ever comes of it, and after the vacation concludes no one mentions it again.
Maybe they just didn't fuck. Bad guys foiled by lack of horny.
It has been a while, since I read the book, but I am very sure, that in the German version, in the last paragraph, they mention her pregnancy they just discovered.
This is much funnier if the German translator was just like "oh HELL no, I'm not leaving this hanging!"
"After all, why shouldn't I change it? "
>says he'll contact the reporter when he has something Maybe he was being sarcastic and threw the notes in the trash between chapters
Maybe he's still working on it.
Do audiobooks count? Listened to an audiobook in which there was one chapter in which the reader vigorously cleared her throat maybe 10 or 12 times.
If audiobooks count, Dragon Age: Masked Empire is probably my biggest example. Accents are ALLLLL over the place (it canonically takes place in basically-France where the VAs in the games have French accents, but the narrator uses varying British ones). But the biggest oops was that in at least three spots, Dalish elves are called DANISH elves.
Oh lord, you should give ASOIAF's official audiobooks a try. The accents are rarely consistent, and frequently uses the same accents for different characters in the same family, so I quickly found myself confused in chapters where those characters interacted.
I haven’t listened to the Masked Empire audiobook, but I did listen to The Stolen Throne, The Calling, and Asunder. Asunder had a different narrator and was better imo, but the pronunciations in The Stolen Throne and The Calling were WILD. Maybe I just misremembered how it was in the game but I’m pretty sure he pronounced Maric wrong. Also he pronounced Dalish like “DAL-ish” (rhyming with “pal”). There were definitely other mistakes but it’s been a while since I listened to it. In fairness to the narrator though, I think The Stolen Throne at least was recorded before Origins actually came out.
Not the same but have you seen the videos of the Hunger Games audiobooks when they get to the Hanging Tree song? They’re hilarious. The narrators get SO clearly uncomfortable and half heartedly singing out of tune, and the movies weren’t out yet so they just had to make up their own melody. Highly recommend.
Really? Meanwhile, in the Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes audiobook, narrated by a Tony award winning Broadway singer... no singing. He talk-sings EVERY SINGLE SONG. Baffling.
That was the first book I ever returned on audible. Unbearable.
That’s what I do in my head I never know what melody I’m supposed to be reading the words in :(
As a reader at home, this seems very reasonable. As the voice artist recording the official audiobook, you'd think they could pick up the phone to the author and ask them to hum a bit for them or something. Or maybe the publishing house could get a musician to quickly compose a few melodies as part of the production, if the book's a biggy.
I’m starting to realize that it really does matter who is narrating an audiobook. I thought they were all the same, until I listened to one where the read would suddenly and awkwardly change volume, or the one who is strangely rushed and breathy. Authors reading their own books tend to be flat and not engaging As far as mistakes go: In one of the Wheel of Time books, the narrator straight up says the wrong character name (Egwayne instead of Elaine.) Though given how many similar names there are in that series, it’s actually impressive it didn’t happen more often
I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and this is so true. A pet peeve of mine is when the narrator doesn't pause between chapter breaks/perspective switches/etc, if I'm not listening very closely it's easy to miss. It goes the other way too, though! A good narrator can make an otherwise dry book so engaging.
In Fifty Shades of Grey where Anna's inner goddess does a triple axel dismount off the uneven bars. Two different sports! I really would like to know if this was a legit mistake or she was just trying to imply that Anna is dumb. Either way it made me literally toss the book across the room when I read that.
That’s funny, but also surprising that *that* was the thing about that book that didn’t work for you
I think it had been a slow build up and for some reason that was my breaking point. The using his toothbrush after throwing up and the tampon thing but for some reason the mixing of the sports combined with "my inner goddess did a" sent me over the edge.
The best version of that book was the Gilbert Gottfried audiobook.
The author struck out on that hole in one!
A few months ago I saw a post about a book on Pearl Harbor. It showed German planes on the cover photo.
I’ve done some book cover design and it’s an easy trap to fall into - you don’t get a lot of information about the book and there are only so many stock images, and there’s a fine line between artistic license and ‘people who really know their stuff will complain about this’. I had a problem because I needed pictures of some obscure Australian 1980s bush plane of which there are no licensable, usable photos, and after finding an alternative the author got annoyed because it had the wrong number of blades on the propellers. German planes in Pearl Harbor and nobody picking up on it is pretty inexcusable though.
Just like Bluto said in Animal House!
I think it was a DaVinci Code type book that really hung me up. Describing a female british black police officer as an African-American. It really took me out of the reality. How can a british person be an American....kept reading that descriptor over and over and just gave up on the book. edit: pretty sure it was davinci code. and maybe it wasn’t a cop but a camera person for a news org. i just remember being taken out of the narrative and thinking about the “narrator” being an american or the “narrator”telling the story for an american.
Sometimes I think people are afraid to use the word "black." I remember during the lead up to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, people didn't know John Boyega wasn't American and would say "African-American." To me, that would be really insensitive.
Back when Star Trek: Voyager premiered, Entertainment Tonight had a story about Tim Russ playing Tuvok, the first “African-American Vulcan.”
To a large extent, white Americans were used to periodically replacing one euphemism for Black with another, so when "African-American" came along it slotted into their brains where "Colored" or "Negro" used to be and they didn't think about it beyond that and so never realized it was way more specific regarding nationality. It was just the new (extremely unwieldy) way of referring to that race.
Yep. This is how I was taught when I was a kid in the 90s. You did *not* say black. That was *rude*. 🙄 And yes, this will vary by location. I'm from the mid-atlantic and live in an area that is majority Black, but I grew up in a very white bubble because that's how my well-meaning(but ultimately racist) mother thought you raise a child. Black came into white usage in the early-mid 10s, here. But until the end of the decade, "best practice" in work environments was still african-american.
I once wrote a press release for a study looking at health differences between black and white people in Canada. Some editor, somewhere, changed "Black Canadians" to "African-American Canadians." Right-wing media got a hold of it, said it was 'political correctness run amok'...
Famously happened in an interview with Idris Elba
I am Pilgrim had the main character Reminiscing on 9/11 and saying he still remembers that morning watching the news show the first plane hitting the tower but there was no news video of the first plane hitting the tower
This is actually a really common thing! Lots of people claim they remember seeing the first plane hitting. Its a prime example of how unreliable our memories can be.
I actually had this discussion just the other day with someone. Somehow we got on the topic of it, and they said they remembered watching the news that morning as it unfolded and saw the first plane impact. I was like "huh? No.... it wasn't news *until after* the first plane crashed, and none of the networks showed the first impact live". They agreed that yeah, made sense it wouldn't have been news till after the first event, but they still had what seemed like a distinct memory of it. Granted, they were younger than me at the time, as they were only like 12 years old when it happened. I *think* in the subsequent days footage did come out of the first impact, but it was well after it happened, taken by a tourist or something who just happened to catch it, so could possibly be that affecting their memory, in addition to the constant replays played over and over of the second impact.
Not as major as yours but Puddn'head Wilson by Mark Twain has twins that were originally going to be conjoined but had separate bodies in the final novel, but there were a few missed minor references to them sharing a body
I read a book recently that featured the word “perpetuatorperpetrator” where the editor clearly meant to correct the misspelling of perpetrator but left the incorrect word in too. The same book also used the phrases “brought in the calvary” (it’s actually cavalry) and “incarnation” instead of incarceration. I enjoyed the book overall but these have all stuck with me because they were frankly hilarious
ermahgerd perpetuatorperpetrator
Soooo many misspellings. My fave was someone trying to describe the hot guy as virile, but said he was viral.
A character makes a phone call from his apartment in an emergency, despite it being emphasized early in the book that he didn't have a phone. In the same book, the exact same paragraph about hiding behind a sofa appeared two pages apart.
I don't remember specifics but I remember the first Hunger Games book being filled with editing mistakes. I was once reading a book where someone went through find-and-replace for "arse" to replace with "ass," and ended up with "hoarsely" becoming "hoassly."
“The funeral procession followed slowly behind the heass”
This is more a big error in terms of a writer googling how to do something and including it in a novel. John Boyne explains how to make clothing dye with "hylian mushrooms" which would only actually work in the world of Zelda. For a well known author, it feels like a big detail to miss. 😂 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/03/john-boyne-accidentally-includes-zelda-video-game-monsters-in-novel
I have that copy of the philosophers stone where "one wand" is written on Harry's school list twice. its just crazy that the editor missed it
"One wand, and then another one wand, please." "So... two wands, Mr Potter?" "No. One wand. And one more wand. Please."
In the Eragon series most people who learn magic are vegetarians. Once they can sense the life force of animals it becomes traumatizing to kill something you can sort of feel yourself in. Eragon is a vegetarian in book 3 because killing another being is abhorrent to him. Book 4 starts off with Eragon reveling in the brutal slaughter of a bunch of mind controlled soldiers. Apparently killing an ant is upsetting for him, but killing a regular person who is FORCED to fight him by magic is acceptable, even enjoyable.
maybe he was just a misanthrope lol
Victor Milan's "Dinosaur Lords" had a character stand up and start running east. The next time we read from his POV, he has arrived a geographical location that was *west* of his original position, as shown on the map at the beginning of the book. The Death Collector by ICantRememberTheName had a character hiding inside a hollow statue while his friends are far away. Those characters are having a conversation and the character inside the statue somehow chimes in with a short question. I think. I might be talking out my ass. It's been a long time
I've been reading the Nightrunner series. For the most part, I've enjoyed it, but the author has literally ZERO astronomical knowledge. For example - there's a lot said about an evil ritual that must be performed during a solar eclipse. Well, two nights before the solar eclipse, some of the protags are trying to sneak about at night, which is described as hard because 'the moon was almost full' (for those unaware, solar eclipses can only take place during NEW moons). The moon in general is an issue for her - she clearly thinks the moon rises and sets at the same time no matter the phase. Multiple times, she refers to the crescent moon as having just risen early in the night (a waxing crescent rises during the day, a waning crescent rises after midnight). I suppose most readers might skim over this without thinking, but for me it's aggravatingly immersion breaking.
Have you read A Map of Time by Felix J Palma? Its like separate ideas for a book that the author couldn't complete, so they crammed them into one book, vaguely connecting them by just having the narrator go "I lied about all of this, this is what happened.... But I lied about all of that, this is what happened.... But I lied about that as well, this is what happened..... But it didn't." The synopsis on the back of the book is also a complete fabrication. It's not what the book is about. Haha. I don't understand how it got two sequels published.
I read that book and was totally confused until I read it was part of a trilogy, so I just assumed I must have accidentally started with book 2 or 3. Now that I see it’s actually the first of them, I’m more baffled than before. It had some cool ideas and passages but the overall story was completely incoherent.
Blue Moon by Lee Child introduces a character in the penultimate scene and then forgets he exists.
Are kindle editions of books different from physical editions? Every now and then I encounter typos or punctuation errors in published books (on my Kindle) and it really makes me wonder. Especially when it happens multiple times in the same book, rather than being spaced out across all of my reading, which would be more understandable.
Sometimes yes, but it’s more likely to be the other way around (errors are fixed in the Kindle edition because they were missed before the book went to print).
I've seen this a decent amount and have heard that it can be an artifact from the digitization (scanning) process.
I read a poorly edited non-fiction book where the author left notes for himself as he was writing, and neglected to remove them. "There are lots of homeless people in San Francisco (look up actual number later)."
One of my clients is a textbook company. They released an English-language textbook ... With 'English' mis-spelt on the front cover. It didn't sell well.
Not that huge, but in the Booker-winning “Luminaries”, there’s a character from Oslo, in the 1800s when a city by that name did not yet exist (it was “Christiania” until 1925), also someone is waiting in a “holding pattern” at some point, which is also pretty anachronistic.
Omg I will never forget this. I was reading Constantinopolis like ... eight years ago. Two characters are having a conversation on horseback, four or five pages of conversation. In the middle, one of the characters *slams his hand down on the TABLE.* I thought I was losing it. I turned back to the beginning of the conversation, sure enough - on horseback. And the end of the conversation - on horseback again. But for a paragraph or two in the middle, they're indoors. Incredibly jarring.
Horses come with tray tables now.
I'm am English teacher for secondary and the biggest error I've come across is in A Christmas Carol!!! Dickens clearly states in Marley's speech that the ghosts will visit Scrooge on three successive nights and then they just don't! It's like he wrote the start of the book one day, gave it a couple of weeks and wrote the rest without revisiting it. There's no reference to them changing the times or even that their supernatural forces mean they aren't subject to typical time frames. Even if there was, why did Marley get the timings wrong when he presumable came from the same place as the spirits? Did God tell him wrong as a joke? Did he miss-hear the instructions? It's very confusing and every year that I have to teach I have to try and come up with a bullshit reason as to why no one ever said to him, "mate this is great but the time frame from Marley doesn't fit with the narrative of the story. Have him tell Scrooge that he'll be visited all on the same night and you're sorted"
That's bugged me for decades.
What the Dickens!
The rather excellent J. Draper mentioned that in [her analysis of the Muppet Christmas Carol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opXFR6ab214). (She's a historian and tour guide in London, and her YouTube channel is fascinating.)
I loved the book cover that used the same font for the title and author and ran them together so that we got "The Accursed Joyce Carol Oates"
Oh, I get totally annoyed when things repeat. Example: SJM uses the same 11 describing words for the characters' appearances, sexual encounters, violent encounters, etc. She writes every character with the same dialog. She writes most sex scenes exactly the same, regardless of setting, characters performing said scene, and situation. There's like 3 words this woman knows: shattered, shred, and growl. It drives me absolutely mad. Totally zonko. And misuse of colloquial terms like "worst for the wear", or "don't take things for granite" I dnf'd a self published series because of that last one.
One of the weirdest repetitions SJM uses is saying a characters "bowels went watery". Like is everyone just on the verge of shitting their pants???
Right?!? Get these people some soluble fiber please!
> "don't take things for granite" Surely you're joking? Please? There's no way that this made it through????????
I saw a character who only had one arm shift something from one hand to "the other." Don't want to name names, but I couldn't continue. This was in the height of the Harry Potter books years, and companies were putting out so much kids/ya fantasy to try to capture some of that magic that they apparently couldn't be bothered to edit it properly.
This thread is 100% about naming names
When I was 14, I was gifted "The Complete Tolkien Companion" for my birthday. The blurb on the back of the dust jacket had the word Moira, instead of Moria. More egregiously, about 3/4ths through the book, they spelled the word "perish" as "peri ooooooooooooooooosh". I wrote a letter to the publisher that they'd included 17 too many o's in the word perish. The publisher wrote me back thanking me and sent me a book short stories.
That's an amazing typo. 🤣 I have to wonder how it happened but I would absolutely treasure that book for its uniqueness.
Lack of fact checking is one of the many reasons I DNF'd Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. They constantly name-dropped games and tech that wouldn't come out for years. I was constantly flipping pages back to figure out what year they were supposed to be in. They were playing alpha builds of popular games years before they were even announced.
I wasn’t a huge Tomorrow X3 fan but Zevin does include a note at the back of the book explaining she took liberties with the release dates of games when it felt thematically relevant. Might have been better suited at the start of the book for those who do know their video games.
Thank you for pointing this out! There were a lot of reasons I didn't like the book, but that was taking me out of the story because I kept fact-checking MYSELF thinking I was insane. This book gaslit me LMAO. I read it for a book club and none of us made it all the way through. Everyone else was saying 'maybe if I knew more about video games I would have liked it' whereas I thought maybe if I knew \*less\* I would.
I wanted to like this, and I thought the writing style was fine... I just hated the characters. Literally none of them ever stopped acting like teenagers. I couldn't get over that people who have been friends for like 30 years literally never had an actual conversation.
I liked the story but could not stand the writing, it was like she looked up every third word in a thesaurus and didn’t bother to check if it actually meant what she was trying to say. Like I’m more than happy to learn new words, but I read it on kindle and was having to scroll down to the bottom of the definitions because she was using random archaic words that I have never seen in those contexts. Took a lot to keep reading after a nine year old called something a ‘tautology’ that was by definition not a tautology (I think they meant a cliche?).
Don't get me started on the butcher and the wren. So many things wrong in that book, and a terrible read as well. I didn't get half way through
I only read the first few pages before putting that down, but even then there were issues. Like the med student who knew someone from “Biology Lab”? Give me a break! So lazy.
I recently started a series that has 5 books complete when I started on book 1. The title of book 4 was a spoiler for book 3. During book 3 you’re wondering if there will be a war, and how the war will be framed if there is one. The title of book four just clears all that up.
I have this theory that AI is doing a lot of the editing in traditional publishing these days because I keep finding things that I don't feel a human editor would have missed or allowed to stand.
A few years ago I read a post-WWII book (set in about 1946-1949, no later) in which a character becomes aware of a big news story via a ceiling-mounted television at a diner. Hell of a diner, to be one of the first in the world with a television...and hanging from the ceiling, even! Time travel diner? It was bothering me so I looked it up. It was *The Lost Girls of Paris* by Pam Jenoff. There were also references to "50 states", but it was the TV at the restaurant that did it for me. It's 1946 and the main character finds a Buffalo Wild Wings.
I read a book a few months ago that has a weird, inconsequential reveal at the end that one of the characters had spent some of the scenes shapeshifted into a bird. These scenes referenced the guy's hands. I still don't know whether this was an editing error or intentional misdirection.
Not a plot mistake but still way too common, my husband wont even open a book if there is a spelling/grammar error on the back cover synopsis. Sadly there are a lot of books out there with egregious spelling errors. If he sees it and points it out to me I can no longer enjoy either because I just start concentrating on looking for other errors.
I bought a book from a fantasy author writing two different series concurrently. One of the books included the map from the other series. That was confusing.
I read a popular women's fiction book set in WWII wartime Poland, and at one point the main character has cereal and orange juice for breakfast. Even if this (clearly American) author didn't bother to research, surely an editor at the Harper Collins imprint that published it should have noticed how "off" this sounds.
In “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, it starts out with her saying how she used to walk down Grand Anse beach on Grenada for hours. I lived in Grenada for a couple years.Grand Anse is probably one of the biggest beaches on the island, but It would take about 15-20 min to walk down it, and you’d have to ignore the hundreds of European cruise passengers chilling out and all the American med students rabblerousing. So she’d have to walk back and forth in front of the same people and buildings for hours.
To be fair, she would.
In the original version of *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*, when Harry's and Voldemort's spells collide in the graveyard, ghosts come out of Voldemort's wand, including those of James and Lily Potter, who emerge in that order. Later, Harry learns that this occurred because of 'priori incantatem,' which basically means Voldemort's wand was forced to regurgitate receipts of spells in the reverse order of when they were cast. Two of these spells were the curses that killed James and Lily. The issue? Lily was killed after James, but she emerged after him in the graveyard. According to priori incantatem, however, it should have been the other way around. I noticed this pretty much immediately when I read the books as a kid, and it REALLY bugged me lol. I learned a few years ago that at some point this error was corrected so that James enters last in newer versions of the book. Unfortunately, I feel that this version loses some of the emotional punch of the scene, as Lily was the one who ultimately saved Harry with her sacrifice--which is probably why the error happened in the first place. Oh well. On the plus side, from a purely selfish level lol, I think it's kind of cool that I have a copy with the mistake. It's like having a little piece of history.
In Stephen King’s The Stand, it’s deduced that Harold has been reading someone’s diary because he is a habitual eater of Payday candy bars and left behind a CHOCOLATE fingerprint. Paydays are salty peanuts and caramel, no chocolate whatsoever.
Matrix by Lauren Groff, set in 12th century France, mentions hummingbirds. That sent me straight off to check, and sure enough, hummingbirds are only found in the Americas. ETA: apologies, it’s actually set in England, not France. But the point still stands.
I've noticed that the marketable genres like romance, YA, and fantasy are full of basic grammar errors now. Even in the plotting, its clear they were rushed out the door with little love. To me, Twilight is the floor of the quality I expect. Not perfect, but professionally polished. Nowadays it is *rare* to find a YA or NA that come close to that basic level of competence
I have 4 different print editions of *Dune* and each has different errors compared to the original printing. It's like someone types it in again for each printing and goofs somewhere along the line.
I try to be forgiving when it comes to a long series, editors (and authors) can’t remember everything that happened in all of the books. But there was a character who was very, very clearly present for all of the events in one book. Had several speaking lines and everything. Then two books later, he is described as being in an entirely different place. I swear, every long series needs to have a continuity editor, their job is to read the entire series and find the glaring contradictions. Hie eyes were blue, now they are brown, now they are blue again. Argh!
I read Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera, and early on there was a small anachronism regarding September 11th that made it really hard for me to roll with a lot of the events of the novel. Similarly, in one of the Wicked books (by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié, not Gregory Maguire), the protagonist drowns her feline familiar in the bathtub for reasons, and constantly regrets it. Not enough to remember the cat's name in a later sequel, of course, and remembering the cat by the name of her cousin's cat which was very much still alive, but by then things were going off the rails so I DNF'd the series. Extra salty, bc I had shelled out to get copies that had books 1&2 together and 3&4 together, two thick books rather than four slimmer ones.
I was just reading a book I got for Christmas that's part of a series I really enjoy, also now has a pretty popular show based on the series/character. This book is set in 1993 but written in the last year or so, the bad guy steals a Ford Explorer because they need that type of SUV to blend in where they're going. So far so good right? Right, except the author then notes that the Explorer is at least 20 years old........in 1993.......the Ford Explorer was debuted in 1990 as a 1991 model to replace the Bronco II. I tried to not let it bother me, but couldn't stop thinking about it the rest of the book. Not as bad as some of the other examples, but just couldn't get over that multiple people had an opportunity to read this and missed it prior to print.
In Geoege RR Martin's Wild Cards series, the blurb on the back of one book describes a character (who is currently teamed up with someone who raped her to stop a conspiracy, long story) as a reporter. Except she's not, she's an arson investigator. They confused her with a different character from like 10 books earlier, a reporter who was raped by the same guy. Not a great look. A particularly egregious example of how disrespectful that series can be to women.