This week I’m probably going to finish a series of what I call “dumb sword and sorcery fantasy”. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, just that it’s pretty formulaic, with lots of characters from central casting and locations from the Great Big Book of D&D Tropes. I’m actually enjoying it quite a bit; if I wasn’t, I… well, I suppose I’d keep reading it, hoping it got better, I guess.

In the fourth book, the author introduces a new character who is “one inch taller” than the main character, who is “about six-five”.

What?

The main character is a former baseball player (just go with it), and he’s described fairly well in the first book, except for his height. So I assumed he was about six feet tall — reasonably average height for an American man in his late 20s/early 30s. All of the interactions with the character, in my head, had him at six feet tall. To find out he’s five inches taller than that, especially in the fourth book, is quite a surprise.

Look, I don’t want writers to shoehorn in a D&D character sheet whenever a new character is introduced (looking at you, Laurell K. Hamilton), but this is the main character of a five-book series. Maybe don’t tell us his exact height, but make it clear that he’s taller than the average bear. It definitely would have influenced the way the character looked in my head, and how certain things that happened to him went in my imagination.

Height is an important character trait. At the very least, tell me what it is in the first book. Please.