A review from a book review site:

Every time an author freaks out about poor or unfavourable reviews of their book(s), and then comments publicly about the review and the reviewer, it blows up into a huge internet kerfuffle among the literary/reviewing/writing community. Every. Single. Time. 

The latest such author versus book blogger event is possibly more egregious than usual, and I’m not going to
link to it. There has been enough said already, and I don’t have anything to add.

Usually the end result of this kind of blow-up is that the author has to back down, either apologising, or simply learning to shut up.


And that is the way it should be. Yep, unless there is some kind of deliberate, proven vendetta going on which is demonstrably having a deleterious outcome, the author concerned should ignore a bad review.

Why? 

Firstly,  
because we authors write books to be read, and we have no say whatsoever about how it will be enjoyed — or hated. If any author thinks they can write a book everyone will enjoy, they’re off their rocker, or incredibly narcissistic. If you are going to be published, get used to the idea that not everybody will think your work has merit.

Secondly, 
remember this: EVERY SINGLE REVIEW YOU READ is a valid one. Yes, even the one that says your book sucks and you write like a sloth on valium. Yes, even the one where the reviewer hates it because you wrote a thriller (true, and it even said so on the cover) when they expected a romance. Or maybe they expected a thriller and got a romance. Every review is valid because that’s what that particular reviewer thought/felt/believed when they read the book. It’s their opinion and they are not only entitled to that opinion, but they are entitled to make it public. It is valid for them, pertaining to that particular book of yours. If it bothers you, go read a five star review to make you feel better, or never read another review of your own works, ever again.


Thirdly,  
as a continuance of that last sentence, I’m going to show you why pounding your computer keys into broken plastic bits over a one star review (or even many one star reviews) is ridiculous. The following extracts are all from reader reviews of one of my published books (and many thanks to every single one of those reviewers. I love you for reading it, and I’m sorry not all of you liked it.) Remember, these comments are all about the SAME book. Each comment is by a different reviewer, and I don’t think any of them are known to me.

• Buying the next one immediately. I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in a long time.
• This book reads more like a rough hewn, overlong indie than a professional, polished work. 
• I loved this book. It’s not short but it gripped me so much that I read
  it in less than a day. My only gripe was having to wait for the next
  book.  
•  My one major major gripe with this book is all the filler.
• While the plot and story line draw you in, you become attached to the
  characters, so attached that you cry when something goes wrong, laugh
  when something funny happens, and rejoice when there is a great victory.
  You just have to know what is going to happen next in this book.
• The characters left me absolutely indifferent.
• The characters are so detailed and alive, the background descriptions vivid! 
• The characters were incredibly unlikeable, I could not root for any of them.
• Glenda Larke has ticked all the boxes for me; she writes well, has a good story and plot, likeable and original characters.

And so on. I could fill several blog posts with similar contrasting snippets from reviews.


Fourthly, 
we authors should be grateful to reviewers. They are readers, and we write for readers. They tell others about our books. They advertise us. Sometimes even their bad reviews will say enough to convince a reader that they will actually like the book. 


Fifthly,  
we can learn from reviews, if that is what we want to do. When I started writing, there was no internet. If a reader wanted to let an author know what they thought of a book, they had to sit down and write a letter to the publisher and eventually it would get to the author. Or, they had to be a professional reviewer for a magazine or newspaper. So mostly a writer’s only real idea of whether a book was well-liked or otherwise were the sales figures. Worse, they had very little chance of finding out WHY. There was a huge barrier between reader and writer, especially from the author’s point of view, and it was hard to see on the other side of that divide.

Nowadays by contrast, reviews — whether they are from Amazon, Goodreads or book blogs — are an accessible insight into how our work is received, and I treasure that. Yes, I read the bad reviews. Sometimes I think a reader has misread the book and I shrug and move on; more often I learn from what they say, taking it on board, using the criticism to make my writing better. 

So, 
if you are a book blogger, whatever your forum, I love you. Keep it up. 
If you are an author and find a bad review, either learn something, or just be thankful someone is reading your work. Either way, DO NOT COMMENT.

My absolute favourite one-star review was for Stormlord’s Exile (the last book in a trilogy) at the Barnes and Noble page. Here it is, in its entirety:

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What a wastes

There’s been a bit of an internet discussion, sometimes quite heated, and some of it incredibly silly, about George R.R. Martin’s world as portrayed in his series that starts with Game of Thrones. You can read the main posts and comments  here and here if you feel so inclined.

But I am not getting into the discussion except to say a few general things that astonish me. In fact, I’m a bit taken aback that they need to be explained.

Firstly, don’t be a reader who confuses the story with the author in odd ways. For such readers, I have some news:  a writer who portrays a misogynist world in his story, is not necessarily a misogynist. In fact, s/he may be quite the contrary. Such a writer may be trying to say quite uncomplimentary things about misogynists, or about the society that allows them to have power.

The selection of the setting for a story says nothing whatsoever about the writer’s beliefs in his or her own life. Really. If I set a book in France, I’m not necessarily Francophile. If I write a story that is set entirely within an army at war, it doesn’t mean I am pro-military. Or pro-war. If I set a book in a matriarchal society, it doesn’t necessarily mean I think a matriarchal society is a good thing.

Secondly, do not confuse a reader’s desire to read certain types of books with their desire to visit the setting — or to hanker after a past that is no more, or to think it was a better world, or to live on the other side of the world. I am jaw-droppingly astonished that anyone has to actually SAY that.

If a reader likes reading war stories — do you REALLY think that says they want to be dropped into a war setting? Let alone one with swords and no modern medics? Do I hanker after medieval Europe because I like reading fantasies set in that world? I’d run a mile rather than be dumped in the middle of the real Wars of the Roses, even if I had a stack of magic at my disposal!

Nor do I want to work in a morgue/police station/hospital/space ship because I watch TV programmes about pathologists/detectives/doctors/spacemen, ok?

Thirdly, this icky question of rape. Believe me, I understand if you don’t want to read a book which has rape inside the pages, let alone several rapes. But please, don’t tell a writer what s/he should and should not write about. Rape and sexual assault is part of — probably — every society on the planet right NOW*. To write a book about war, or about medieval times, and leave sexual assault out of the scenario, and you might just be viewing a story through rosy glasses… My Stormlord Rising was criticised because it portrayed quite a bit of sexual assault (most of it during war and invasion) against both men and women. If you don’t want to read about it, put the book down. Don’t blame the author for being realistic.

Fourthly, don’t assume a medieval society has the same mores as your own, and is only different because they use swords and horses instead of bombs and cars. Some folk were saying Martin was writing about rape and paedophilia. By our standards, yes, he did. But – and it’s a big but – transpose a 13-year old bride to another society, forced to oblige her husband whether she likes it or not, and it is neither paedophilia nor rape. In fact, there are societies right here in the present day (even in Malaysia) where people think of this as normal. Sorry to disallusion those critics who want to think they have a handle on what’s morally right and wrong. It’s not so easy. And be careful about you own sins before you jump down my throat on this one.

Yes, to us, the handing over of a 13-year-old girl to a mature man as his bride is horrific. But for most of history, including YOUR own, children were adults long before we nowadays think of them as adults today. A boy of eleven or even younger was expected to work the same length of day as his father, doing the same sort of physical work, and he didn’t get paid for it, moreover.

A boy milked cows for a neighbour, starting at 5 a.m., before he walked the long distance to school. He was eleven and the year was 1901. At 12 he left school altogether (he had no choice in the matter, even though the legal age to leave was 14 in Australia at the time) and he started farmwork in earnest, all day, every day of the week, every week of the year. No holidays. Cows and harvests and farmers don’t take holidays. That was the 20th century — and he was my dad.

Back to medieval times. A woman became marriageable the moment she had her menses. And once married, there was no question of EVER legally refusing her husband his conjugal rights. Of course, one hopes most men are a lot nicer than that, even back in 1135, but legally? He had the right. And this is still so in many societies today. You can close your eyes to it, if you like, but don’t tell a writer s/he’s being crappy to write those sort of things into his/her story. They are real.

Fifthly, don’t think that if a writer portrays a dark skinned people as having a different culture from that of white Westerners, they are portraying them as barbaric. In actual fact, the commentator is identifying themselves as an arrogant Westerner who believes that any culture — other than their own, of course — is barbaric.

I’ve got news for that kind of reader too. Every culture is barbaric. In the wonderful enlightened West, we hound gay kids to suicide, murder transwomen, sell our teenagers drugs that will kill them, and drop bombs on civilians and call it collateral damage, refuse medical treatment to the poor because they can’t afford to pay.

So dark-skinned “barbarian” metes out some horrible punishment to another he perceives as a threat. No lawyer, no trial, no regular sentence, no chance of appeal. And in the West we stick them in Guantanamo. No lawyer, no trial, no regular sentence, no chance of appeal.

Many of George R.R. Martin’s main characters are white-skinned and sort of Western in a Middle Ages sort of way. They are also — by our present Western standards — brutal, undemocratic, living in a world lacking any legal recourse for the wronged (especially if they are poor or don’t have a sword).

In Martin’s world, the dark-skinned are … brutal, undemocratic, living in a world lacking any legal recourse for the wronged.  So tell me, just which were the barbarians again?

My point?
If you don’t like a book, any book, then criticise the writing or simply say, it’s not my kind of story. Don’t attack it by attacking the author because s/he must be like the characters. Don’t attack it because the world doesn’t match up to the one you think it ought to be (unless it’s supposed to be a historical novel). If you think a book promotes sexism/racism/monarchism/homophobia or whatever then be careful of how you illustrate your case.

Otherwise you end up saying more about yourself, than about the book and the writer you wanted to condemn.

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*I think decent men have a hard time understanding how prevalent it is. I’ve never been raped, but I have been physically assaulted in a sexual way, twice, by complete strangers. Once when I was fifteen, once after I was married. Both times I immediately launched an attack on the attacker, they skedadled and nothing much really happened. (The second time, I clobbered the guy with a heavy pair of Zeiss binoculars … threaten a birder when they are biridng, and that’s what happens!)

I’ve never had a Publishers’ Weekly review — until this week.  For those of you who don’t know much about these reviews, it’s the one that is sometimes featured on the Amazon.com page for a book. They are often critical or a bit tongue in the cheek, hinting at — rather than stating outright — that the reviewer really didn’t like the book. Most authors desire a PW review, at the same time as dreading getting one…

The ultimate accolade is to get a “starred” review. Just the one star, but you can’t get better than that. And no, my review was not starred, but as my publicity manager said: “Any review that repeats the word “exciting” twice in one paragraph is definitely going to be a good one…”

Here’s the whole thing:

“Families are divided, heroes are made, and the fate of the world is decided in the exciting conclusion to Australian conservationist Larke’s Watergiver trilogy (after 2010’s Stormlord Rising). In the desert-dry Quartern nation, only a cloudmaster can keep people alive by calling the rains. Lord Jasper Bloodstone, once a commoner, is the last surviving cloudmaster, but he is unable to manipulate salt water. His waterpainter lover, Terelle, wants to help, but a magical compulsion draws her away. Jasper’s brother, Sandmaster Ravard, is killing every rainlord he can find–even targeting Jasper–in hopes of bringing back the Time of Random Rain. In poignant counterpoint, transgender warrior Rubric Verdigris struggles with his conscience and what it means to be a man. Themes of family and identity dominate a story line that is both intimate and world-spanning. Series fans will love the exciting action and well-developed characters; new readers will want to seek out the earlier books.”

UK Orbit cover

Australian Voyager cover

US Orbit cover

What with Worldcon, followed by a holiday in Tasmania and then plunging straight back to fieldwork and reports the moment I returned, I managed to get way, way behind in my blogging. I never really reported on Worldcon at all.

Suffice it to say that one of the best things about the con was catching up with folk. Writers, readers, people in the industry, my editors…all people who mean a lot to me. It was fabulous to meet people I only knew through the internet – and to find out I like them just as much in real life as I did in the cyber world.

I’m sure there were a ton of people at the con that I didn’t get to see and should have – and I ask your pardon if I marched on by when we passed in the hall or something; sometimes I forget what people look like when I only see them once every couple of years.

One of the people I always love seeing again is Cheryl Morgan. I have learned a great deal from her and I always enjoy her sharp mind and her intelligent, no-nonsense way of looking at things. Even when she reviews my books. Or maybe, especially when she reviews my books. I like knowing that I am getting an honest opinion.

Anyway, I want to mention Salon Futura, in its own words: “an online magazine devoted to the discussion of science fiction, fantasy and other forms of speculative literature, available for free online.“*  Cheryl is the editor of Salon Futura. She’s also the owner of its publisher, Wizard’s Tower Press. She’s the non-fiction editor for Clarkesworld Magazine, a winner of three well-deserved Hugo Awards in three different categories: Best Fanzine, Best Fan Writer and Best Semiprozine. Pretty impressive.

Read Salon Futura. There are two issues out now and there are some wonderful articles there by a variety of people – on, for example,  or what constitutes YA, and podcasts (one on writing LGBT characters) and there are interviews: China Mieville, Lauren Beukes, Jay Lake, Pat Cardigan.

In the first issue of Salon Futura, Cheryl wrote an article about writing in the real world, even if the story is placed in an entirely different one, and one of the books she drew attention to was The Last Stormlord. Among other things, she says:

“The Last Stormlord is a book about a culture whose advanced technology (sorry, “magic”) is capable of controlling the weather and bringing rain to a parched landscape. This technology is reliant on certain individuals whose genetic make-up allows them to exercise weather control powers. When the supply of appropriately skilled youngsters begins to dry up, the future of the culture is threatened.
“The politics doesn’t stop there: possession of weather-controlling technology has brought significant wealth to the dominant culture. But there are barbarians at the gates, people who live hard lives in the desert and scorn the soft city dwellers. Furthermore, when water becomes short, the ruling classes have difficult choices to make about whether to ration supplies fairly and cause suffering all round, or to deliberately withdraw supplies from country areas to keep the city folks (including themselves) happy. 

“The Last Stormlord is a book about a technologically advanced culture moving into an era of resource shortages. There are plenty of parallels there with our world.”

One of the really interesting comments from that same article: “My colleague at Salon Futura, Sam Jordison, has been following both the Hugo Awards and the Booker Prize for The Guardian. He tells me that he is much more likely to find a book apparently addressing the issues of the day in the list of Hugo winners than in the list of Booker winners.”  Food for thought there.

Salon Futura has something for everyone. 

*It pays its contributors, and is supported by donations, advertising and buying books through the site.
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Buy Stormlord Rising

Read the whole thing here at the Rob Will Review blog.

Oh, sands. My intermittent medical condition –  a swelled head – has returned. Maybe I should pop over to Good Reads for a cure, and re-read the reviewer who said (of The Last Stormlord): “600+ pages of boring world-building without a plot with a resolution.”

Buy The Last Stormlord
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“The characters were cardboard.” (Good Reads reviewer)
“full of interesting characters and the central characters are likable…” (Amazon reviewer)
“the characters are predictably clichéd, the villain more so than the heroes, and the supporting cast worst of all.” (Amazon reviewer)
“Larke calibrates conflicts and tensions between characters remarkably well and with subtlety.” (Online Review site)
“A lovely job is done here in showing him (Shale) growing up…” (another Online Review site)

Pacing and Plot
“A nice tight story line with no inconsistencies” (Amazon reviewer)

The photo, taken in Cardiff yeseterday, is just to show you that Spring weather – yep, bare arms and sunshine in mid-April. Who says UK has lousy weather?
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Two lovely reviews for Stormlord Rising, the second book of the trilogy, this week.

The first is from Crisetta MacLeod (who like me at the moment is wondering if she is going to be able to get home from UK!) at AurealisExpress, April 2010. The review ends:

The second review is from Helen Venn, over at Specusphere.

She says some lovely things about the character and setting and concludes by saying:

“Larke’s many fans will be delighted by the complex plot and intriguing twists that augur well for the next book. In fact, Stormlord Rising will appeal to anyone who enjoys a well written fantasy. There are very few books that I find literally impossible to put down, but like its predecessor, The Last Stormlord, Stormlord Rising was one. I read them in single marathon sessions and I do not look forward to the wait before Stormlord’s Exile, the final book in the trilogy, comes out and all the threads of the story are brought to a conclusion.

“One of the outstanding Australian fantasy writers currently in print, Glenda Larke was deservedly shortlisted for the 2009 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel for The Last Stormlord and she has maintained the quality in Stormlord Rising. I will be surprised if this book does not figure in the 2010 Aurealis Awards.”

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One of the best and worst things about having a new book out is waiting for, and then reading, reviews. No matter how phlegmatic a writer is, I suspect they end up bouncing between despair and elation, not to mention all the prior nail-biting anticipation … and mind-numbing terror that nobody will say anything.

It is interesting therefore to see things from the reviewer’s point of view, such as this post at NextRead or here at Speculative Horizons. The comments are also worth looking at if the topic interests you.

From a reader’s point of view, I like a review that tells me only very briefly what the book is about (quite different from telling me what the story is); I like it to tell me why it worked for the reviewer – or why it didn’t. Remarks like “The beginning was a slog” mean nothing until they are followed by “because…”

As a writer I try to learn from well-conceived not-so-good reviews, as well as the good reviews. The reviews I really, really hate are the ones that dislike a book for what it sets out to be. There can be no more pointless review than that!

What do I mean?

A SF writer friend once received a snide, sarcastic review from a book reviewer in a national newspaper. The whole review was just a let’s-poke-fun-at-fantasy- to-make-us-literary-types-feel-better review (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) . That’s probably the most extreme version of what I mean. But there are lesser kinds of irritating that have the same fundamental silliness.

Don’t criticize a paranormal romance for containing romance because all you’re interested in is vampires. Don’t attack volume 1 of an epic fantasy of 800 pages for being long, having too many characters and an unresolved ending. Don’t attack a SF novel for containing some scientific explanation. Don’t attack a writer with a reputation for writing blood and gore when he does exactly that in his next book.

What did you expect, for crying out loud?

If the romance is badly managed, if the epic storyline is dull, if the science is ridiculously wrong or poorly explained or dealt with in massive info-dumps, if the blood and gore is tediously repetitive – and you discuss that, or give examples, then you are writing a proper review.

As a writer, one of the nicest comments are the unexpected ones out of the blue from fellow writers – especially when it’s a writer like Alma Alexander whose writing I admire and whose books I love.

So, readers and writers out there: what kind of reviews and reviewers do you like or hate? And for those of you who don’t read reviews, why not?
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