What Makes a Good Fantasy Story?

I've read many fantasy novels over the span of my 44 years. During that time I've developed some filters for what I like and don't like in fantasy novels.

I can tell within a page if the book is one I definitely won't like. Here are some of my personal first page killers.

• Character or location names that are not easy to pronounce. For example, if I see a character name Zyaloysi on page one I'm gone. I love fantasy stories, but hard to read names kill the immersion.

• If half the first page contains flowery description for the sun, sky, rain, trees, etc.  I fade fast. I understand the need to anchor a scene but if I wanted to read poetry, I'd pick up a book of poems.

• Excessive exposition. Please don't info dump me on page one. Mix it into the story. And writing the exposition in italics only makes it worse. The story is not moving and the characters are not changing while the exposition grinds everything to a halt. If you need to give me this information, wait until I can anchor it to the story and its characters. It will mean much more to me then.

If I make it past page one, the author has managed to avoid the items above. I'll stay for the first chapter and see where the story leads me. Some of my favorite fantasy tropes no matter how many times I read them are:

• The hero's journey. This is why we all love fantasy right? It's the embodiment of the genre.

• A cool magic system always grabs me.  Mix that in with the hero's journey and its as good as buttered popcorn.

• The mentor. Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, Kelsier from Mistborn, or even Moiraine Damodred from Wheel of Time.

• The "quest". I love a group of characters working together to attain an epic goal of some kind.

• I like fantasy books where the author forgets he's writing a fantasy story. The way Jim Butcher writes the Harry Dresden books, Patrick Rothfuss,  or pretty much anything from Brandon Sanderson fit this category.

What turns me off in story lines:

• A passive hero. The world happens to this guy not the other way around. It's okay to start out this way but please don't leave him there the whole book. That's boring.

• A hero that has little to no change. Stories where the author, for whatever reason, wants to leave the main character in a position of stasis for 400 pages frustrate me. Sometimes it seems the author's intends to write a series of books and wants to drag the characters evolution over 6 books.

• A hero that becomes powerful only during the very end of the book.  He gets his ass kicked for 90% of the book, gets his power at the end, and defeats the villain in a blaze of glory. We see little to none of his powers in action throughout the story. All the magic flying around from characters other than the hero make for a passive hero. Let the main character get enough power to be active in the plot line early on.

Lots of people don't like elves, dwarves, or dragons and I get that. They are over used tropes loaded with assumptions the reader will make that may be impossible to overcome. I don't have a problem with them if the story and the characters are good. If  we find out 20 pages in that the main character is an elf that's okay if I'm already hooked on a good plot line.

P.S. - I'm 22,000 words into my first draft of my yet to be titled book. I'm hoping to avoid the bad things listed above.