I don’t mind books where “nothing happens” or more specifically a book in which the plot is not advancing. That said though, when a book focuses on the “wrong” thing, it can extremely boring extremely fast. The best example i have for this is ‘The blade itself’ by Joe abercrombie. Basically the its the first book in a trilogy that serves as a character introduction more as anything else. We don’t follow any plot, there is almost 0 worldbuilding, almost 0 magic, almost 0 anything except like i said, character work. If you are a character driven reader, im sure that can be very entertaining for you, but for someone like me who really does not care about characters, it was the most boring, painful book to get through. Every time i would sit down for an hour to read, i asked myself how i just read dozens of pages filled with writing, but still felt like i read nothing at the same time.
I think for most people who complain about nothing happening, its just that the book focuses on something they don’t care about. If you go into a murder mystery, you expect there to be a murder mystery. If the book focuses on something else and maybe even has a relatively fast moving plot etc., it could still feel like nothing is happening because you are focusing on the murder mystery plot that’s not advancing, so it feels like the whole book isn’t advancing. Another polar opposite example of the blade itself, is “Rhythm of war” by Brandon sanderson. I love that book to death. We get really in-depth about the magic system and get to explore more of the world that sanderson has created. Some of the reviews on the other hand complain about “nothing happening”, the same way i was when reading the first law. And its not necessarily that there wasn’t anything happening in rhythm of war, its just the the reviewers probably didn’t like on what the book focused on.
I think meeting expectations is a big thing in liking a book. If you go in expecting something that isn’t the case, it can very easily feel like nothing is happening.
I have been part of r/fantasy and follow fantasy “booktubers” etc. actively for a couple of years now. Its insane that even though we all seem to share the love for the same genre (Even subgenre most of the time), the difference in enjoyment can very drastically. I can agree with 1 person on many series (Rating / enjoyment vise), but can also massively disagree on other books. Sometimes i can’t fathom how a book got a good rating by someone i usually agree with, or can’t understand how someone gave such a bad rating to a book i thought was wonderfull.
There is 1 person in particular that is the biggest mystery to me. We share the same favourite author and seem to like the same kinds of books outside of fantasy. But besides that, we very drastically. Like i can’t agree with 85% of the reviews he makes, but again, we share the same favourite author. So sometimes i can see how 2 people can love the same book, but for 2 completely different reasons. I often notice that when someone criticizes something in a book i just read and i think to myself “Huh, didn’t even notice that”. Or when someone raves about something in a book, and to me that thing they are raving about is so unimportant, i didn’t even notice its “brilliance”.
Yes tastes and preferences. Very weird things that seem to change from person to person, even from time to time.