Rob B Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 When a "review" begins with such anger and contempt, I find it difficult to continue reading the "review." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmail Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 You mean this? http://www.strangeho....shtml#commentsFairly terrible biase revealed in the review. Even starting with the moderately successful line was a throw away attack. From what i understand, the guy was selling roughly a 1000 books a month, which is pretty decent without any backing for marketing.I thought the book was above standard in its attempt to go retro-fantasy. I mean, it follows certain lines, but there is a likablity to it. Perhaps because of how the author got published, or perhaps in that he simply approaches his work very simply and goes about his business. I mean, every blacksmith in the fantasy world can't produce Excalibur, right? There needs to be guys that make horseshoes, and i think he's very effective at making sure the horse runs properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nearly Headless Ned Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Doesn't really appeal to me but I found some of the comments criticisng to be rather childish. Christ , I even found myself in agreement with that lady from the blog 'requires that you hate.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Procrastimancer Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Even though I enjoyed the book when I read it a couple years ago, I only managed to come up with one positive thing to say about it and even that was a minor point. I agree with the SH review, have to, because my review mirrors many of the same negative points brought up by the reviewer. In the last few lines of my review, I suggested that my enjoyment of the book was rooted in nostalgia. Can't think of any reason to disagree with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdiddyesquire Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Even though I enjoyed the book when I read it a couple years ago, I only managed to come up with one positive thing to say about it and even that was a minor point. I agree with the SH review, have to, because my review mirrors many of the same negative points brought up by the reviewer. In the last few lines of my review, I suggested that my enjoyment of the book was rooted in nostalgia. Can't think of any reason to disagree with that.Is that so bad though? It seems like sometimes genre reader self-flagellate to make us feel better about what we read. Screw it. It's a fun book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Procrastimancer Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Being able to admit that a book you enjoy is a bad book goes a long way toward keeping you from attacking reviewers in comment threads because they dare to write a negative review. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmail Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Thats dishonest. It is not a bad book. It is also not a great book. It is middle of the ground. But people were responding to the vitriol involved in the review. It was there from the begining with the comments made about sales before he was picked up.There is a negative review, and there is a bad review. Spewing screed for the sake of it does nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdiddyesquire Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Being able to admit that a book you enjoy is a bad book goes a long way toward keeping you from attacking reviewers in comment threads because they dare to write a negative review.Fair point. I often find the difference between reviews is more about 'this bothered them more than me' than an actual difference of opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Procrastimancer Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Thats dishonest. It is not a bad book. It is also not a great book. It is middle of the ground. But people were responding to the vitriol involved in the review. It was there from the begining with the comments made about sales before he was picked up.There is a negative review, and there is a bad review. Spewing screed for the sake of it does nothing.We are going to have agree to disagree here because arguing about tone isn't going to get us anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmail Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 But the thrust of the argument is that it is not a bad book. It is not a good book. It is safe and easy and probably closer to young adult than anything else, though it does have some adult moments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulineMRoss Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 But the thrust of the argument is that it is not a bad book. It is not a good book. It is safe and easy and probably closer to young adult than anything else, though it does have some adult moments.Yes, nicely put. I don't think anyone would regard the books as great literature, but they're entertaining to read and have some nice moments. The first is probably the weakest, and after that they get better with each one. [Caveat: I've only read two thirds of the series so far.] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QuickTidal Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Having read an ARC of the final book I can honestly say that it really is a solid complete series, and a few notions that are the "point" of it won't become apparent till you can look back at it as a complete story.It is one of the more enjoyable, classic, lite fare fantasy out there rigth now. It's not meaty by any stretch, but it certainly makes up for that in entertainment value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
False Alarm Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 i read the crown conspiracy a couple years ago. i got sold on the nothing-groundbreaking-but-just-really-well-done-traditional-stuff line. looked fun though and it's in a subgenre i really enjoy, so i took a flyer on it. true, it wasn't groundbreaking. but it was also poorly done--writing that was mediocre in its best moments, soporific dialogue, stock everything. i don't think it was offensively bad, but every single thing about it just struck me as bland and undistinguished, too much so to be entertaining. insipid is the word i'd use to describe it.the SH review was impolite and too vehement for my tastes, but i don't think that invalidates it. politeness doesn't = professionalism. as some others have mentioned, there's a long history of such vitriolic reviews in reputable publications. i feel slightly bad for sullivan, but the near-universal props these books had received had perplexed me, so it made me feel somewhat sane again to see an assenting opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjgambino Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Honestly, a review like the one in SH may make some people interested in checking the book out to see if it's really that bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmail Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 No, i like to think that there is a possibility of living in an age of reason. Civil discourse costs little, and there is no reason why we should expect less from critics. Teachers don't grade reports like that, professionals don't treat each other like that, and i see no reason why critics should be able to get away with it.The reason i always respected Ebert, even if i didn't agree with him, was because he didn't resort to bullshit grandstanding to raise his profile or belittle someone for their work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
False Alarm Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 No, i like to think that there is a possibility of living in an age of reason. Civil discourse costs little, and there is no reason why we should expect less from critics. Teachers don't grade reports like that, professionals don't treat each other like that, and i see no reason why critics should be able to get away with it.The reason i always respected Ebert, even if i didn't agree with him, was because he didn't resort to bullshit grandstanding to raise his profile or belittle someone for their work.ebert has a book titled Your Movie Sucks, and the title is a direct quotation from one of the reviews in the book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galleymac Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 As far as bloodthirsty reviews go, nobody can touch Mark Twain. I think it's a genre, one that folks had more tolerance for back when there were far fewer media, just as they had higher tolerance for five-hour outdoor speeches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 Compared to a lot of reviews I've seen in my time, the Strange Horizons one was very tame indeed. I'm surprised at the level of controversy it's raised.The first Sullivan book was okay, but it had some significant problems in prose and characterisation (not to mention the plausability of all of these multiple kingdoms and big cities existing in an area you can travel across in like five days max). I'd go as far to say that it's definitely been dramatically overhyped in some quarters, possibly due to the, "Hey, it's not totally shit despite being self-published!" angle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael J Sullivan Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Hello all,Just wanted to stop by and thank you all for reading and commenting on my books. For those that have read and enjoyed, I’m glad to have provided you some entertainment…as that is first and foremost my goal. For those that didn’t like them…I don’t take offense, that’s one of the great things about books is they are not all the same, and I’ve read enough reviews and emails to know that what one person likes another hates. I try not to think of books as “good” or “bad” but more from a standpoint of what suits a particular person’s preferences. For those that don’t know…I really had no intention on publishing these books when I wrote them. When I first started getting serious about writing for a living, I spent ten years (writing thirteen novels in the process) perfecting my style and voice. While I learned a lot, I also found most of the joy had gone out of the creation process. After several years riding the query-go-round I finally quit writing altogether, figuring I was just wasting my time. What would became the Riyria Revelations actually kept nagging at me even during my self-imposed hiatus. I had a daughter who was struggling with reading (she’s dyslexic), and I bought her Harry Potter to read. I ended up reading it myself and rediscovered the joy, of a fast fun read with likeable characters. This made me go back to writing, but this time my only goal was to write something that I wanted to read, and that I could share with a few friends and family. I actually wrote all six books at once…and while the books will initially look simple and the characters shallowly defined, that is actually (believe it or not) by design. As I was writing to an audience I knew would read to the end, it allowed me to expose the world and the character’s backgrounds in layers and spread the discovery process over the entire series. My goal was to make each successive book better than the one before so that the series would end strong…by definition this means the first books are the weak links. When the books were eventually picked up for publication, I considered restructuring by using a more conventional approach…front loading a lot of the stuff that I had previously doled out sparingly. I knew I risked people dropping out early as they will conclude, with some valid reasons, that there’s not much “there.” Eventually I decided to keep the books as originally designed. The “simple story” is actually deceptively so. The overall story is quite complex and people who do a re-read after finishing the whole series will see things in a different light once they know the full context. This may be more than you ever wanted to know…a kind of a “behind the scenes” bit of bonus material usually found on a DVD. But based on some of the comments I thought it might shed some light. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dornish prince Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 i just downloaded what appears to be a prequel from amazon. i need to see what all the fuss is about. welcome to the board, MJS! :cheers: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.