What's the worst anachronism you've ever seen in a novel? Something completely out of place for the time setting of the book? Something that completely broke your suspension of disbelief? Something where you thought, "How on earth did that get past the editor?"
Historical fiction or any genre set in the past.
by kranools
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Pillars of the Earth is full of them
oh man this reminds me of reading some medieval fantasy novel where the main character kept saying “okay” every other page. like i get that authors need dialogue to flow naturally but that word didn’t exist back then and it was driving me absolutely insane
the worst part was it was supposed to be this super immersive world with detailed descriptions of feudal society and then boom – modern slang everywhere. felt like the author did all this research on castle architecture and social hierarchies but completely ignored how people actually spoke
i ended up dnf’ing it around page 150 because every time someone said “okay” or “no way” it just yanked me right out of the story. probably took the editor about 5 minutes to find examples if they’d actually looked for them
Not a book but Hamnet using “hello”
Absolutely anachronistic
It’s almost certainly not the worst one, but one that absolutely broke me was the presence of a porcelain flushing toilet in a fairy castle in A Court of Mist and Fury. I had a fine time hate reading A Court of Thorns and Roses but when that toilet showed up in the first chapter of the sequel I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to quit then and there.
A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I think that was on purpose. For example, it looks very much like early 1900’s and a character has a computer in a later book. Someone had asked Snicket about this and he said it was set in “The Year of the Rat.”
Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades, had Madame Pompadour acting as the official mistress to Louis five years too late and it absolutely took me out. Too much knowledge is a terrible thing when you’re just trying to enjoy a historical romance!