I love descriptions, but like everything in life, too much description gets to slow down your reading, and as a reader, as well as a writer gets annoying. I just finish reading The Marching Season by Daniel Silva. This is the second book on his Michael Osbourne Series. This book had the same problem I found with the first one, it takes forever to get to the action, after you get to the action the book is incredible. The problem is not research, the book has plenty of research. I like to get into the story, tell me the info, but help me get sooner into the adventure I am going to embark, and in the case of the two books on the series takes a long time. I was hoping, because this was the second book, this was going to be different, but wasn’t.
Aside of that, of if you enjoy extensive descriptions, is a great book, especially after you get in the middle of the story, and the story begins to move.
I know first hand, how hard is sometime to let the story goes, I am living it right now, as I am working on my next book. I will love to spend days telling you about the character, Hannah, but after a lot of consideration I took the same route I took on the previous book, let me bring you a little into the story, and later on I will tell you more.
Mr. Silva, gives you all the detail and more, he shows how much research the book had. The problem, with this is the risk you take, the risk of loosing the reader. Giving long descriptions is an art, I am an adventurer writer, I want you to embark in the journey, I want you to discover more as we move along, and I will provide you with the information you need in order to enjoy the journey, but I try to avoid spend pages of pages describing something that will be cool to know in 100 more pages, I am a believer as a reader, and therefore as a writer that the faster you get my heart in the story, the more I want to know, give me the details, but capture my heart first. This book, works the other way around, gives you all the data, and later on capture your heart, but in general unless you are aware that it will capture your heart later on, most likely you will run before.