Great characters you might not want to actually hang out with

So, this post by Maddie Rodriguez at BookRiot set me to thinking.

It’s a post about “Seven characters you would try not to meet at parties,” which I thought was a fun topic, but they’re not fantasy characters AND they’re also not the KIND of character that leaped to mind when I saw that heading.

What *I* thought was: scary protagonists. What Maddie Rodriguez was thinking of was: killjoy protagonists. A guy who’s always talking about his ex. The Pedantic Dude. (I can actually enjoy hanging out with Pedantic Dudes. It’s pretty easy for me to slide into Pedant Mode myself.)

I also thought: Nope, I’d probably like hanging out with Darcy from P & P. None-too-subtle sarcastic comments about the other guests? Go for it!

So here is the list I thought I was going to get:

Five Scary Protagonists You LOVE In Books But Might Not Want At Your Party

1. Kaoren Ruuol from the Touchstone trilogy by Andrea K Höst. (Did I spell that right? I didn’t look it up.) I’m talking here about the Kaoren before Cassandra softened his hard edges. The Kaoren who would stand around at a party, his arms crossed over his chest, watching expressionlessly as everyone wasted time they ought to spend training or fighting monsters. The Kaoren who would make you feel guilty for every minute you spent just hanging out. That guy.

2. Nick from The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan. I know he’s super-loyal to Alan and that’s great, but he would be seriously scary at a party. You know, I really want to re-read that whole trilogy now that I’ve thought of it.

3. Janus bet Vhalnich from The Thousand Names by Django Wexler. He would see absolutely everything about everyone, including you, and you would never, ever know what he was thinking. I mean, he’s one of the good guys . . . probably . . . but honestly, he’s a good guy in the scariest possible way. You’re glad he’s on your side, but you aren’t going to be *friends* with this guy and you could not possibly relax with him in the room.

4. Sarkon, The Dragon, from Uprooted by Naomi Novik. I just finished this book, which is amazing and wonderful and I loved it, but you know, The Dragon didn’t say a nice thing to anybody until about a third of the way through? Even at the end, he is hardly the life of the party. Nieshka can see through his little mannerisms by then, but he is going to come across as supercilious, sarcastic, arrogant, and possibly even cruel to almost everybody else.

5. Ezekiel Korte. I’m just saying.