Depends on how it’s done. “Instructional” fights can be interesting if they’re written in a way that allows readers to quickly digest and follow the logic of how the fight plays out.
I think it's important to keep in mind what your readers expect, in terms of follow-through. If you've been building a romantic or sexual relationship throughout a good portion of the book, getting the door slammed in the face when it all finally comes together seems a bit ...insulting, really? How people handle their sexual relationships in bed can be crucial to understanding the characters and how they relate to one another. No, of course, we don't need a manual. But how they interact? Yep, I do think we need that, to complete the picture. The reader is (usually) supposed to be identifying with one or more of the characters in a sex scene, so it's not the same as 'watching a friend' have sex. It's as if YOU are having it, in the persona of that character. While it's possible to portray the character's/your feelings via memory later on, etc, it's still an important—and probably detailed—memory. Skipping it altogether leaves a bit of a gap. Old-fashioned Romances never did sex scenes, because the implication was that the participants didn't HAVE sex till after marriage. And the stories often ended with the happy-ever-after marriage ceremony. So it made sense. However, times have changed.... Think about a fight scene. You've been building up the antagonism between two individuals or two armies for chapters. We're watching them learning to fight, practicing with their weapons, etc. Then it comes to the confrontation itself—we're on the edge of our chairs, wondering what it's going to be like. Nope. Instead, the fight gets entirely skipped and we move straight to the aftermath. The winner is sitting in a pub, glugging down a celebratory beer. The loser is off nursing grudges and broken bones. But what HAPPENED during the fight? I reckon the readers of action books want to see that climax played out. They will feel let down if they don't get the payoff. Who won obviously matters, but HOW they won is also important. Right? Same with stories involving relationships. The sex scene is often the payoff. It's certainly important. The automatic door-shutting really REALLY annoys me. It comes across as coy and prudish—and I feel quite let down. Why skip the sex scene, when it's an important outcome of the characters' relationship? Because you think all sexual encounters are the same, boring boring? (I can assure you, they're not.) Why not do the same for battle/fight scenes, then. Just skip the gory details and just let us know who won? We don't need to actually see the fight. All fights are the same anyway, boring boring....
I don't skip anything of the kind. I might read very fast some parts of the book I find boring, especially when it comes to long, over-extended descriptions of things that serve nothing in the plot, but still, I even read those just not so intensely. I don't imprint them in my memory. Might even be cringeworthy or badly written, even disappointing but I never skip fight or love scenes. How can I judge something if I don't read it first? In case I'm disappointed I just move on like this scene never happened. Easy. I'll just drop reading a book all together if it's plain boring or overly disappointing.
Me skipping scenes is not so much because of the subject matter as it is about the tone and how it makes me feel. Specifically, I'm most likely to skip anything that makes me cringe or feel embarrassed on behalf of the characters. So, very awkward or humiliating stuff, basically. I guess technically violent scenes are less likely to affect me that way compared to sexual or romantic ones, but again, the topic itself isn't what I find off-putting.
Well, I am not the reader for that. We all have our differing allowances and proscriptions. Like the historical novel reader who will forgive cheesy soap opera melodrama in a novel, but if it takes place in Year X and that tapestry you just casually described in passing doesn't come into vogue for another five years, well, now the book is garbage. The kind of fight scene you describe always reads a little condescendingly to me. Again, right for someone else, not for me.
