i didn't find her books all that gritty (nor goodkinds, i have another word for his stuff altogether!) i just never thought that much of them really at all. i find her words a bit irratating, the culture a bit irratating, everything annoyed me really! it was just the abuse that i remember because i do tend to remember that in most books. i think i also remembered it because it was the first case of male rape, there's not a lot of that going around. *shrug* i think, ultimately, tho the subject matter was definetly interesting and it was dark in plces, i didn't like her writing style or the characters, and that is what put me off in the end. style has a lot to do with whether something becomes accessible.
and her characters, well, i never liked any of them. except the salamander dude, and even then i didn't like him, i just liked what he was (flamboaint elf bard) i didn't care when jill's lover went off with that elf woman, or jill left him or the old dude died or anything really! i just think that because she was showing us their past incarnations, she didn't have that much time/space, to build characters that we, or at least i, cared about. so much of the books were what they HAD been, not who they were, and it was hard to care about characters previous lives when you know they end up dead.
in fact, i think i only cared really about the rapist character and his brother! and only because i felt so bad for them that they were in that situation, controlled by that dark evil dude who made them rape that other dude (yes its been years. i can't remember names at all! just those events)
so yeah. for me, lack of good characters made me not care.
