Categories
LT Early Reviewer

By This I Stand


As you may remember, I participate in Librarything‘s Early Reviewers program. The latest book I received, The 13th Reality, makes two books I’ve received and two books I really did not like. My review of the book was downright mean — it actually made me angry to read this thing, and I opted to shelve my trademark diplomatic demeanor and have at it.

Apparently, the author wasn’t so keen on that. His response is here, at the bottom of the page. I would have preferred something more along the lines of “shut up, you prick”, but instead it looks as if I actually hurt the guy. Guilt, oh yes I feel it.

I must respond in some fashion, but I certainly will not retract my statements. It would appear most readers disagree with me, as the average rating is 3.78 out of 4 on LT and 5 out of 5 on Amazon, so I assume he can take some solace in that.

My forays into Young Adult fiction have been fairly limited, but I get the sense that most readers are grown-ups who forgive poor writing because the target audience is teenagers. I suppose my problem is that I expect everything to be good, that I rank books on a universal scale rather than one limited to genre or intent. Perhaps an approach closer to “it’s OK, if you like that kind of thing” would be a better.

Nah.

2 replies on “By This I Stand”

“Most readers” probably also consider The Da Vinci Code high literature. Everyone and his brother are vying to be the next JK Rowling. Don’t feel too badly that you might have grounded one of them.

Leave a Reply to JohnCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.