Reviews, Good and Bad

There's been some interesting conversation about reviews the past few days on the blogs of Sarah Weinman, Ed Gorman, Lee Goldberg, and Bill Crider. I thought I might as well weigh in with my opinions. For a long time, my books never got reviewed. My first novel was read by almost no one, and after that everything I did for a long time was published under pseudonyms or house-names. (At one point I had written eighty novels, and only one of them had my name on it.) However, as I started getting published under my own name, some of the books began to get reviews here and there. Most of them were good. Those I liked. Some were lukewarm, which were also okay but a little worrisome. A few were bad, and of course they bothered me. But not too much. In the words of Denny Crane, "I've had my heart broken plenty of times. Stings for a few minutes."

Then along came Amazon.

Some of the readers who post reviews on Amazon do not like my books. Some of their comments have been so vicious I can almost feel the spit flying off the monitor screen when I read them. It's been said on there that one of my Civil War books is the worst Civil War novel ever written. Another review claimed that one of my World War II books was the worst World War II novel ever written. One reader said he couldn't find the words to describe how much he despised me and my books.

Okay. Stuff like that is so over the top it's not that hard to ignore. Sure, you don't like to see it, but it doesn't mean anything. I'm more bothered by reviews that are little more than excuses for the reviewer to throw out some cute, insulting quips that were probably thought up before the book was ever read.

The only review that really got me upset wasn't even for one of my books, but was directed at one of Livia's novels. The reviewer spent most of the review complaining about a particular plot point that she said wasn't explained in the book. Well, it most certainly was. I got the book down off the shelf and looked to be sure. This one thing that the reviewer said was not in the book (and the lack of it ruined the rest of the book, in her opinion) was right there on page so-and-so, lines whatever. That one still bothers me, because it tells me that the reviewer skimmed the book, at best, yet still felt qualified to condemn it in public.

I've long said that the best review I ever got came from my father, who was not a man to pass out many compliments. After reading one of my books, he told me, "You know, there really wasn't a good place to stop reading in that book."

I'll take that, any day of the week.