I’ve recently read two back-to-back bad books, written by experienced authors and issued by large publishers. Bit fed up, tbh.

The ultimate reason both books were bad was that they read like first drafts, with (as I said while ranting on Bluesky about this) good ideas not yet coagulated into a plot, elements that had been chucked in but weren't fully incorporated, and characters that were visibly acting according to the demands of the plot, rather than shaped so you felt their actions were natural.