Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of other’s works.

Getting It — And no, Not That “It”

Posted on by

I got a good review not too long ago that made me very happy. Those who recall any previous rants on this subject may be right to wonder why I’m in such a good mood after a thing so inconsequential in the Great Scheme of Things as a favorable review. “We don’t need no steenkin’ validation” and like that, and aren’t I being just a tad hypocritical?

First, my answer is the same as Emerson’s, namely: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” so get over it. Second, I’m not actually talking validation here, or at least not of the stroke kind. Human nature naturally prefers praise but whether the review was a praise or a pan really is beside the point. The reason I’m feeling all chuffed and preening is that the reviewer understood what I was doing.

That is a lot rarer than it should be. Fess up time: haven’t you ever finished a review, good or bad, and wondered just what bloody story they were reading, cause it sure as hell wasn’t the one you wrote? Happens to me all the time. Of the current crop of reviewers, Rich Horton and Lois Tilton are seldom guilty of this, but they’re the exceptions, not the rule.

I’m not going to repeat the “rose petals into the Grand Canyon” analogy. Too tired and obvious. Still, you other writers out there know it’s true. Few things will grind your soul more than realizing that the people who, at least in theory, are your intended readership simply cannot parse your work. “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge” is, in my not so humble opinion, one of the best stories I’ve ever done, and yet the early reader reaction wasn’t much better than a sort of vague puzzlement, and a great deal of: “but I figured out the ending!” Which I never did figure out the polite response to, though the appropriate response was “Then you were paying attention and have decent reading comprehension skills. Congrats.”

Yeah, yeah. He got a good review and he’s a happy guy. So what and why should we care? Why? Because reader reaction — and a reviewer is above all a reader — is one more bit of information that helps us judge whether we accomplished what we set out to do in any given story. While praise is always nice enough, if a reviewer pans OR praises a story of yours in terms that prove he or she didn’t have the vaguest clue what it was about, exactly how inclined are you to pay attention? You may allow yourself a few minutes of annoyed or bemused bafflement at why they could not see what was plainly there, but probably not much more than that. Now, what about a review that is clearly a pan but nevertheless explains the story’s shortcomings in terms that make sense to you? Was your narrative a little unfocused? Did you really indulge in a fun little digression that undercut your theme? Are they right? You can say they’re being too picky if you want, but deep down you know that, in fact, they are right. Chances are you knew the flaws were there and just didn’t want to see them, or knew something wasn’t quite right but couldn’t quite pin it down. When those flaws are exposed to you by someone who understands what the story is about, by someone who reads carefully, knows what the story was attempting and points out where it fails, the chances are much greater that you’re going to learn something you need to know. Such pans are worth reading and such praise is worth enjoying.

The rest is just so much noise.

Not a Review – Of a Book I Will Not Name

Posted on by

 I used to review books. That is to say, I used to do it regularly. Back when SF Age of late lamented memory was still around, I even got paid for doing them. As a kid who grew up as a voracious reader that’s the sort of gig you wonder who you have to bribe or murder to get. I mean, paid to read books? Does it get any better than that? Yet by the time SF Age was coming to the end of its run, I was pretty much burned out on the whole idea. Not because I was forced to read books I wasn’t interested in. The esteemed editor, Scott Edelman, would always ask first and if the book didn’t interest me, I didn’t have to take the assignment. I can only think of one such case when I actually did turn one down, but it was always an option, and the books usually had something going for them that piqued my interest. I read a lot of good books in that time.

No, I burned out because the job eventually got too hard. Seriously. Continue reading →

Ebook Reviewing – Nice Hammer. Too Bad This Isn’t a Nail

Posted on by

Not too long ago I was listening to a podcast where the guest was a well-known critic/reviewer in the sf and fantasy field. I was especially struck by an exchange during the interview where the reviewer mentioned owning a Kindle and how much he was enjoying it. So the host asked him how owning the ebook reader had affected his reviewing habits. To which the reviewer replied that it hadn’t affected them at all, because he didn’t usually review books on the Kindle. There’s a reason for that, of course, and that reason—at least in theory—has nothing to do with being prejudiced against ebooks. Continue reading →

Review – The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche by Peter S. Beagle

Posted on by

The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances by Peter S. Beagle, Tachyon Publications, 1997

My first acquaintance with Peter Beagle’s work, like a lot of other people’s, was the classic The Last Unicorn. I was hooked, and sought out everything else I could find, which at that time was I See By My Outfit and A Fine and Private Place, a non-fiction account of a cross-country trip on a motor scooter and Beagle’s first novel, respectively. I didn’t even know that he did any work at less than novel length until I stumbled upon the one-two pairing of “Come Lady Death” and “Lila the Werewolf” in The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle back in 1978.

The Tachyon collection came along a good deal later, in 1997, and even though it also included the above two stories, I snapped it up for what else was there, including the title story which I had managed to miss in its first print appearance, plus “The Naga” (likewise) and a story original to this volume, “Julie’s Unicorn.”

Continue reading →