Is a list of Characters a Spoiler?

[ali_kat]

It's a HUGH bug bear of mine

A book that lists the characters at the beginning.

I really, really, REALLY hate this!

IMHO, it's a huge spoiler to have a who is who & personality details are the start of a book.

Is it just me?

[ali_kat]

Examples

The most recent Jodi Taylor (which is what started this off)

Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

Roderick Alleyn Mysteries by Ngaio Marsh

[ali_kat]

Morf said:

I think a list of characters *could* be a spoiler, but I think it would be a fairly poor author who puts something at the beginning of the book like:

James Fortesque - dies on page 37
The Butler - the person everybody suspects did it
Lady Hamilton - turns out to be the murderer

[sorry, should I spoiler that?]

I don’t think any author would put something like that But introducing a Lord &B Lady of the Manor, and then the local Police from that Village tells you its the Lord or Lady that’s murdered…

Having Harry Fortesque listed as (James’s twin brother) when the 1st paragraph says he died in childhood tells you he didn’t die…

Morf said:

I can see the point of it in a book that is part of a series. The problem a series author has is that not everybody is OCD enough to insist on reading them in order, and if somebody is dipping into the series for the first time it's a convenient way of giving them some background without the tedious "previously...." sort of introduction.

I can’t. The only purpose I can think of for this is as an excel spreadsheet kept by the author to keep track of who is who & what they look like!

Any well written book (IMHO) should be able to introduce characters (even to someone that has picked a book up in the middle of a series) without needing an introductory piece.

Morf said:

In the particular case of the Jodi Taylor book we started off discussing, while it didn't annoy me at the time I do feel (looking back at it) that it came very close to including spoilers - certainly some parts of the characters mentioned there are only revealed *during* the book - and so I don't think it was very well done.

Fence? Sitting on? Me? Never!

You see, it pissed me off straight away as it told me that the Time Police were involved, that the Nurse was stopping smoking so lost the humour in that scene, And that there was a cat so I knew it wasn’t a baby in ‘that’ scene… and so on

[ali_kat]

Hamish Finn said:

Why don't you just, like, totally not read the list of characters?

Bit hard to avoid, especially on a kindle

[ali_kat]

DJRC said:

I like spoilers and regard those of you who get obsessive about such things as weirdos anyway.

I wouldn't say obsessive.

I just like there to be surprises in TV shows, films, books etc and object to other people spoiling that for the majority, thats just downright selfish IMHO

I'm not an extremeist by any means, I'm happy to watch trailers and for people to give reviews etc; but spoilers are a

You like spoilers? I bet you wouldn't have done if I'd told you who died before you'd read it

[ali_kat]

It's not me thats the weird one here then