[Kalimac]

I have a very hard time reading a character if I don't believe in them, but whether or not a character is realistic depends as much upon the world in which the book is set as it does on my own perceptions. Every author creates their own universe to some extent, and if they create it and its people well - and stay consistent - they will be realistic and believable to a reader even if nobody remotely similar ever existed on *this* particular earth. The trouble begins when an author is sloppy or inconsistent about their book-world (the story is set in a time we know something about - say, the French Revolution - and yet everyone uses 1980s style slang). Good characters can't really exist in an inconsistent world.

But different characters are believable in different worlds even you've never met anyone close to either one. I've never met anyone like Aragorn, and I doubt that many of his kind exist in the world (or ever did). But because of the way his world is drawn, it's plain how consistent his character is with the rules of that particular place, and so I believe in him. And by way of comparison, take a character in another book I've been reading recently - Sherman McCoy in Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities." This character is a rather troubled bond salesman in 1980s socialite New York, and he and his world are also very well and consistently described, and within the context of his world (which I have less experience of than of Middle Earth, frankly) he is a believable character. I have no more idea if anyone like him ever existed than I have about Aragorn. And if either of these characters wandered into each others' books - Aragorn popped up at the Bavardages' dinner party, or Sherman became the 10th member of the fellowship - they'd be rendered instantly and completely unbelievable. Why? Because they're in the wrong context. Simple as that.