Recently, there’s been a kerfluffle of more than one writer arguing with someone over a bad review.
I’ve always heard that any publicity is good publicity, but that’s not always the case… and not all bad reviews are equal.
I recently found a bad review – 2 star – on goodreads of my novel 11,000 Years. I’d seen one a while back on Amazon for the original printing, and found it amusing. The review on goodreads, however, isn’t.
A legitimate bad review follows the kind of review that most are, dealing with things like writing, worldbuilding, etc. The bad review I looked at violated two basic rules:
1. You do not relate all or even most of the entire plot of the novel you’re reviewing. This is a review, you’re not writing a study guide, or Cliff’s Notes ™.
2. You do not reveal major plot points or events, much less do so without a SPOILER warning.
This reviewer did both, and that’s why I say it’s a poor bad review.
At this point, I will go on to assert that the reviewer clearly didn’t understand the book – and I wonder if he actually finished it. He seem to have his own agenda, and I’ll give one point that is reasonably arguable:
SPOILER ALERT.
He refers to one major event, saying that one character sodomized another. The problem is, sodomy is usually referred to having sex. In the novel, it is not – it is, in fact, rape. I’m assuming everyone reading this is well aware that rape has nothing to do with sex, that it’s all about power (and if you didn’t know that, feel free to look at the last fifty years of psychological studies and articles on the subject).
If he didn’t understand that, he didn’t understand what was going on.
Otherwise, I found his review amusing, and in the end, somewhat childish. *shrug* That’s all I have to say about his review.
Of course I should add one more thing: any evangelicals and/or libertarians who didn’t like this book are going to HATE with a passion my next book, and one of the two after that.