I have a personal requirement that I'll finish 50 pages before I let myself abandon a book, and let me tell you, sometimes every one is an effort. Only exception is if it trips my torture squick, because experience has taught me that an attitude of reveling in cruelty is a thing that rarely gets better, and even when it's in character and relevant, I just can't stand it. (I was less than 2 pages into the first Game of Thrones book when it became obvious that it was Not For Me.)
I'll drop a book if there's no one who wants something that I really care about them getting, if there's too much exposition getting between me and the characters, if all I meet in the first 50 pages are whiny people with trivial problems. That literary fiction attitude where it's somehow distasteful if anything *happens* and classy if people drift without making choices.
Totally with you on the descriptions of scenery - or weather! A really good author can turn either of those into characterization, but a bad one will lose me very fast.
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I'll drop a book if there's no one who wants something that I really care about them getting, if there's too much exposition getting between me and the characters, if all I meet in the first 50 pages are whiny people with trivial problems. That literary fiction attitude where it's somehow distasteful if anything *happens* and classy if people drift without making choices.
Totally with you on the descriptions of scenery - or weather! A really good author can turn either of those into characterization, but a bad one will lose me very fast.