On Book Reviews

Book reviews are simple things. You read the book and you write/talk about how much you liked it or not, right?

Sadly not.

Book reviews are a minefield. People review the postage, the delivery courier, whether the parcel was left in the rain, the publisher’s selling policy, the quality of the paper (though some of my author friends do argue that this last one is legit). This always blows my mind – how are these things, in any way, under the control of the author? We all get one-stars, they’re a part of the job, but dunking on a writer because the parcel got stuffed down the back of the shed is kind of unfair.

And (inevitably) it doesn’t stop there. One well-known review site (you’ll know the one) can be a minefield of trolls, gleefully clustering under their bridges to await a passing book. And when that book starts to slide in the ratings, out they all come, ganging up to bash out all the damage they can, with no thought as to what that really means for the author.

On the upper side of this bridge, though, we find #booktok, and in my two years at Waterstones, I’ve come to observe this phenomenon with genuine wonder. It’s the page-flip opposite of the trolls’ wanton destruction: gangs of (usually) young women who share and celebrate the books they love. They meet up for a day out, and this means shopping sprees, buying hundreds of pounds’ worth of new books, books that they’re going to read and love and enthuse over (and review), and this absolutely lifts my heart. It’s their bonding and their social life, and it’s amazing.

Positive or negative, book reviews have power. Whatever that book may be, it’s a year of a person’s life, it’s an author bleeding onto paper, tearing out their heart and putting it in down in words. We all know not to respond to a bad one, but book reviews can touch and hurt us. And in large numbers, they can make or break a title, or a career.

So watch out for those bandwagons, hey?

The best thing of all, though, is when a reviewer actually ‘gets it’, when they really understands what you’re doing. They see into your heart, they see that blood on the paper and that’s the most incredible thing. It really makes you feel like someone noticed your epic journey, and you actually spoke to them.

This week, then, I’ve had the single best accolade I’ve ever had for my Sisters fiction, and for The Rose in Darkness, the Sister Augusta novel. It’s from the WH40k Book Club podcast, telling me that Augusta’s exploration of her faith (a complex thing, even for the Adepta Sororitas) had touched their own - watch the full review for details. It’s amazing, and almost had me in tears in my turn.

One of my all-time favourite quotes comes form Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos (also an all-time favourite book). It’s from the PoV of Leon Trout, when he encounters his author father Kilgore’s lone fan, and he says, ‘his earnestly scribbling father had not lived in vain’. It’s the quote that helped me start writing again, after so many years of creative depression, and it can’t be stressed enough.

Please, people, if you love an author’s work – tell them. We’re all horrifically insecure (well, almost all of us) and you have no idea how much that stuff matters.

Reading: Just starting Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K J Parker. I bloody love sieges, me.

Watching: Still working our way through Red Dwarf (now up to series seven) and realising how much some of the humour has dated. Like the Kochanski character (why was she not still played by Clare Grogan?) being your archetypal ‘hyper-emotional’ female, which was rather getting my space-goat (and did she really have to be wearing red spandex?)

Props for making her smart though. Thank Holly for small mercies.

Playing: Baldur’s Gate, still, now started for the FOURTH time (and think I’m finally getting the sodding hang of it). I this was any other setting, I probably would’ve given up by now, but my lifelong love of the Realms just won’t let me…