What do you look for in a medieval fantasy novel?

I'll read most any genre if the story's good. That old saw, "Don't judge a book by its cover"? Well usually people use that to apply to other people but I live that ethos in music and my reading as well. If the music's good, it doesn't matter if it's rap, rock, country, jazz, or classical. It's good music. If a book is written well, has a beleivable storyline and characters, engaging charactes that the author makes me care about, keeps me engrossed in the story, and makes me want to know what happens next, and next and next... That's what I look for. I don't care if it's romance, thriller, myster, fantasy, or whatever. Write a good story and that's what I'm looking for.

Now, as to what constitutes a 'good' story? Basically, it's what you've already heard here, in my post, and in others' posts as well.
Give us a believable story, believable characters, make us care about them and what happens to them. Make us care about whether they succeed at their quest. And it doesn't matter if you are writing about Chicago, Moscow, or some otherworld we've never known before; let us SEE the world in which they live. Make that world as real to us as it is to your characters. that means you have to go beyond what you see and know about your characters and their world to a deeper level where we, the readers, can see and know as keenly as you do.

THAT'S the tough part, regardless of the genre.

 

I look for plot holes like modern flushable toilets and guys who shave too much and buy their armor at cheap costume stores. If I don't smell "horse crap" in the description, and see at least one guy with a missing leg, I find the story unbelievable. Mostly, I don't want to see many teeth or very few characters over the age of 39.

 

Blood, gore and hand to hand combat. Dark humor is always welcome. I don't mind magic, if it's in small quantities. Very small. Oh, oh... I think I've just described Joe Abercrombie.

What I do dislike are the plethora of other races besides the humans: elves, dwarves, hobbits and whatnot. Some of these fantasy worlds are usually described as having had tens of thousands of years of history already. You'd think that one race would have driven all of the others to extinction already.

 

I love fantasy and its basically what i mostly read,but i'm very picky what i do finish reading.

I love fantasy because i love to see how much a human mind can imagine and explore that imagination,but it has to have a grip of reality to it,the reader has to believe his in that world and with time starts to feel it ,so anything that breaks up that illusion is a big no no for me.

Like meaningless killing of side characters without any explanation or reason other than to make room for new characters to show up.
One book i stopped reading after i reached book 5 cause of similar reasons, one character was like best friend of the queen from childhood and started to look like one of the important ones in the story,so after the war broke out and bla bla, the queen sends her far away from danger cause her husband was killed and she is pregnant,there she gets couple of scenes and meets a new guy who would marry her,than she decides to go to some other castle (still far from the war) and lend any help she can to her king from there,and that is the last we see from her. So the bad guys are defeated and end of book, in the next book nine years of peace pass and new bad guys show up were the queen is and start torchering people in front of the gate and among them her childhood friend and kill her slowly, and the queen was like "oh look they have her,how did they find her and bring her here,how sad. OK now let's run away" well not exactly how she said it but was the reaction i got from her.
There was no follow up story as to how she got there or what happened to the child she was carrying.

That kind of ruined the book for me,it had a great idea and very unique world and so many possibilities and even the main plot was good,but for me the writer failed in so many other things like character development and writing skills. That scene was just the last thing i could take as it had lots of characters who talked in bad and broken English and was so annoying to read all that.

So guess what i'm saying here is it takes more than a great idea and a good plot to make a good book, it's like a good meal if it's missing one key ingredient you know it's not gonna be a great meal, if it's missing more than one then you know you need to change the cook.