Some characters are awesome - actually, lots of characters are awesome in the literal sense of the word, as in awe-inspiring, but not all of those are that cool or fun - but there are SO many characters (as in, the combined Dramatis Personae pages of the ten books likely add up to 300 or so even when counting each character only once) that a lot of them end up being similar. And a lot of people get irritated by the way some books barely have any characters of the previous book in them. As in, only a few characters of book one have prominent roles in book two, while for the rest you have to wait until book three. Then in book four you go back to the characters of book two, book five starts with an *entirely* new cast of characters with one single exception, and then the last five are continuations of one or more of those three storylines.