The gentle art of reviewing

'Reviewing' is such a subjective business. After I wrote a glowing review of Linnea Sinclair's Hope's Folly I went back and read all the other reviews on the book's Amazon page. Most are 4 or 5 stars, but a few – aren't. One person thought the book was far too long. Another objected to all the time spent on 'feelings'. Somebody else thought the pace was slow, another thought the romance moved too fast. Some were disappointed that previous characters didn't appear. And, of course, none of those opinions are right or wrong. Obi-wan Kenobi's comment to Luke on Dagobah comes to mind. "So what I told you was true... from a certain point of view."

All of this had me mulling on my own reviewing style. I always rate books at 4 or 5. Now, some people will think that's – oh I'm not sure what. Something negative. Something suspicious. But it isn't. You see, I don't often finish a book. I think life's too short (especially at my age) to waste time on reading something that doesn't grab me. In that case, I don't write a review. It wasn't to my taste. Neither is liver, or tripe. So if I finish a book properly (as opposed to skim reading from where I lost interest to see if my judgement was correct - Dan Brown's The da Vinci Code for instance) that's an automatic 3 out of 5. If I was critiquing a story, I would list the points where I thought improvements might be made. If I know the author, I might do that anyway, via email. But I won't write a review. If I enjoyed the story with only a few reservations, the book will score a 4 and I will offer my opinion. If I loved it, the book scores 5.

Mind you, I've sometimes changed my perception. Jack McDevitt's SF novel, Slow Lightning, comes to mind. I tried to read it a few times and gave up quickly. But then – and don't ask me why – I persevered, and the novel has become a favourite. Here's my review. Another example is Terry Pratchett's Small Gods. I LOVE Pratchett. But this book didn't press my buttons the first time through (although I did finish it). When I read it again at another time, it was a better read than I remembered.

I guess I should add that by now I've acquired the necessary thick skin about my own writing. Somebody doesn't like my work, that's okay. No one can please everybody. Other people have a different philosophy about 'reviewing', and simply see it as a way of recording their reaction to however much they read. Loved it, great, okay, ordinary, diabolical. Which is perfectly valid. However, if I followed that approach, I'd be writing a pile of reviews that said 'failed to capture my interest, never got past chapter 3'. The sad thing is, I'd have to give it a score out of 5 - and that doesn't work for me.

Pity they don't have DNF (did not finish) as a category. I wonder how many of those negative review on Fifty Shades of Grey were really DNFs?

What do you do about reviewing? I'd really like to know.

This is Not a Meg Review

Really, it's not. It was supposed to be a review of the new motion picture Meg, but...well...life happened.

We've been subjected to a series of deluges over the last couple of weeks (at last!) which resulted in an allergy flare up for me. I had to skip seeing Meg this weekend. With a little luck, I'll have a review up next week. *fingers crossed*

In the meantime, here's the trailer:

So instead of review today, as a follow-up to Donna's eloquent and sensory seasonal blog on Friday, which you can read right 'chere --  THE JOYS OF FIFTH SEASON  -- I wanted to add a few of my own thoughts on the topic.

When I lived in the cold and damp latitudes, I hated to see Fall (and/or Fifth Season) arrive because it meant a lot of cold, dreary days would soon be followed by the deep freeze and snowdrifts of winter. I suffered from SAD almost every year, and it was greatly compounded by the sudden stillness and isolation of the area where I lived, which in the summer was a thriving resort community in upper lower (no, that's not an oxymoron) Michigan.

The boats and docks would come in around the first of September, the cottages would get winterized and closed up, and the "summer kids"--many of whom were very good friends of mine (as well as a couple of past boyfriends)--would return to school in the big cities in the southern part of the state. Many of them I wouldn't see again for eight or nine long months. and back in those days we didn't have cell phones or computers with Facetime so we could keep in touch on a daily basis.

Remember this old song?  It became my unofficial theme song for Fall.

Yep, life got pretty bleak after Labor Day had come and gone. A thriving community of thousands would suddenly be whittled down to a few dozen "locals" scattered around the girth of an eight-mile long lake, of which I was one. All of the restaurants, go-cart tracks, mini-golf courses, riding stables and arcades would close up shop for the winter. Things got majorly dull.

At least I had my own school year to look forward to, and seeing my classmates again, most who lived fifteen miles away in the tiny town where my school was located.

But at times, it was like I was living in two very different universes. The warm, sunny, sandy one centered around the lake...and the cold, grey, dreary one where I spent a lot of time indoors reading alone--or daydreaming about the next summer. There wasn't much of a Fifth Season in those northerly environs.

But for me, times have changed.

Now, I live in a very different place and I love to see this extra season roll around.

Why? Because that's when New Mexico comes alive with the colors, sights and sounds that celebrate the harvest, the history and the passing of the summer heat.

There are fairs, rodeos and fiestas--both Spanish and Hot Air Balloon. There's the Burning of Zozobra (also known as Old Man Gloom) which has been an annual celebration in Santa Fe for decades. The mountains get painted in swatches of gold and orange as the leaves of the aspens and hardwoods change at the higher elevations, and the aroma of juniper wafts in the air from the outdoor fireplaces and chimineas. Fresh green chiles are roasted in front of many of the local supermarkets, and riestras and wreaths of red chiles are hung on doors and front porches. The mariachis play in the plaza in Old Town and at the State Fair, and we enjoy it all with some of the most spectacular autumn weather--clear, crisp and dry--under the bluest of Southwestern skies.

It's really hard not to love this time of year in the great Southwest.

I hope you're enjoying the seasonal transitions, wherever you call home.

Have a great week (and hopefully I'll be back with that Meg review next Monday).

THE JOYS OF FIFTH SEASON

The Chinese call this time of year “fifth season.” Fifth season is not summer, not fall, but something all its own.  

Here in the western North Carolina mountains, it’s the time of year when the days are still warm, but the nights start to get chilly. The light takes on a golden quality as the days grow noticeably shorter, coating the still-green leaves of the trees in a buttery glow. Queen Anne’s lace and milkweed cover the fields and roadsides, while coneflowers and bee balm rule in the garden. Bees busy themselves with storing up for the winter; butterflies with strengthening for their long migration to the tropics.

It’s not quite the time of harvest, but it is a time of savoring the last of summer: that final camping or fishing trip; that last visit to the beach or cabin; the last of the white corn or watermelon from the garden. In the night sky, the Perseids rain down meteors if you’re lucky enough to see them. Or thunderstorms dump torrential rainfall if you’re not.

Fog in the morning in August=snow in winter in Appalachia.

Around here, we start counting the number of foggy mornings in August, a predictor of the number of snows in the coming winter, according to the old folks in Appalachia. If we can go by fogs this August, next winter will be a wild one, with lots of snowstorms ahead of us.

In a few weeks the kids will be back at school (if they aren’t already in your part of the country). Vacation and the lazy days of summer will be over. Fall will be truly in the air—cold and crisp and smelling of apples, pumpkins and freshly sharpened pencils. Take a moment to breathe in the sunshine of Fifth Season before it turns to long shadows and bright leaves.

Cheers, Donna

(Apologies to Greta on the other side of the world, where the seasons are reversed!)

My favorite SFR

I'm a re-reader. Not every story will grab me, but if it does, I'll read and re-read. One of those books that hit the sweet spot was Linnea Sinclair's Hope's Folly. If you'd like to read the book's blurb, you'll find it here.

Yes, I suppose this is a review. But for me, it's also a statement of what works in science fiction - for me, personally, which, let's face it, is what a review is - a subjective point of view. This is a writer I admire – right up there with my all-time faves. So let's do the review thing. But if you're a writer, take note of how well this story has been built.

Hope's Folly is a love story, set in a time of political conflict and approaching war. The human Empire is being run by Tage, who has usurped the power of a weak and failing Emperor. Tage has decimated the ranks of the Admiralty, replacing senior fleet officers with people more likely to dance to his tune. But not everybody is going quietly. A rebel Alliance has risen to oppose Tage. Amidst the turmoil, the two alien species in the Galaxy see their opportunity to expand their own borders.

When the story opens we meet Admiral Philip Guthrie, who escaped the purge of the Admiralty by the skin of his teeth. He's 45 years old, with a shattered right leg healing slowly and the weight of the deaths of many colleagues on his conscience. Tage used Guthrie to plan his purge. Now, Guthrie is determined to join with other Alliance leaders to build a new fleet and defeat Tage's Imperial forces. But the Empire wants him dead and the Farosians want to capture him to swap him for their own leader, who Tage has imprisoned. On top of all that, Guthrie's new flagship is a very old ex-fleet cruiser which was disarmed, decommissioned and used as a freighter, and he has to enlist a crew from wherever he can, knowing some of them will be plants.

Lieutenant Rya Bennton is the daughter of Guthrie's captain and mentor, back in the day. A 29 year-old Imperial Security assassin, she turned rebel when her father was killed in that purge. She's no dolly bird, tall and built with curves and a lovely ass – and a spare thirty pounds she could afford to lose. She remembers meeting Guthrie when she was a pudgy 9 year old and he was a 25 year old lieutenant who showed her how to fire a laser pistol. She, like Guthrie, has a love bordering on obsession with hand weapons. The description when Rya first sees Guthrie's Norlack laser rifle is a wonderful piece of innuendo. In this scene, too, we see the connection between the two, the way they think alike.

“Is this,” she asked hesitantly, “what I think it is?”
“What do you think it is?”
“Norlack 473 sniper, modified to handle wide-load slash ammo.” There was a noticeable reverence in her voice.
He pulled the rifle out, hefting it. She had a good eye. Norlacks weren't common. But recognizing it was modified for illegal and highly destructive charges … Then again, she'd seen it in action. “It is,” he confirmed, amused now by the expression on her face. It had gone from reverence to almost rapture.
“That is so totally apex.” Her voice was hushed. “May I,” and she glanced shyly at him, her eyes bright, spots of color on her cheeks, “fondle it?”
He stared at her, not sure he heard her correctly. Then he snorted, laughing. Fondle it, indeed. He handed it to her. She took it, cradling it at first, then running her fingers lovingly down its short barrel. Sweet holy God. He didn't have enough painkillers in him to stop his body's reaction to the smokiness in her eyes, or the way her lips parted slightly, the edge of her tongue slipping out to moisten them, as her hands slid over the weapon.

Ahem. Back to the review.

The love story between these two is gorgeous. Rya keeps insisting she has a huge crush on her commanding officer – that's all. What would he see in her, anyway? And that thirty pounds... Guthrie keeps realising that not only is he too old for her, but he has a duty to her father's memory to protect her, not lust after her. He also has to get his almost defenceless ship past Farosian raiders and Imperial warships, regardless of Rya and a broken leg. But circumstances fling them (often quite literally) together in what used to be Rya's father's ship as Guthrie tries to build a cohesive team from a bunch of disparate people who don't know each other. And one of them is a mole.

So why did this story grab me and not let go?

Because it's so real. In Linnea Sinclair's universe the ships are not run by all-powerful artificial intelligences. To me, they're not much different from what we have now, with engine rooms, weapons systems and the all-important environment systems all run using computers but with people running the show. Guys get to cut code, hack, mess about in the systems. The ships have blast doors. The pipes gurgle and knock, metal pings as it cools, or creaks and groans. Everything smells – hot engine oil, leather, soap, food, hair. The ex-freighter has a ghostly smell of oranges that comes and goes.

The people are real. Guthrie is tall, smart, the son of a rich family (which has its own drawbacks). But he's not a superman. He makes mistakes, has his own foibles, calls himself a Galactic-class ass on more than one occasion. I've mentioned Rya's issues with her weight. She's also impulsive and not much good at saying 'sir'. The secondary characters are just as convincing, ordinary people forced to cope with extraordinary circumstances.

The politics is real. I have a history degree and these things matter to me. I can see the Empire disintegrating in this way. If I were to be asked for a similar situation in our recent past, I'd go for Stalin taking over in the USSR.And then there's the cat. Captain Folly, who comes with the ship, leaves white fur all over the place and prefers women to men. He's a moggy, much loved by a little girl called Hope. He plays an important role in the story. You'll like him.

As always with Linnea Sinclair's stories, things move apace – except for the opening chapter, which I enjoyed more the second time around. This is the third book of a series and the first chapter orientates the reader, I guess. But persevere. From there on, the author works on the basis of 'if things can go wrong, they will go wrong'. Guthrie's relationship with Rya plays as an underlying complication to all the other issues the two face. Take out the romance, and yes, you'd still have a great story. But man, you'd miss out on soooo much.

Oh, and before I finish, I must mention the sex scenes. They're not many and they're intense, steamy and sensual, but not a how-to manual.

I loved this book, I loved Philip Guthrie. He is very definitely my kind of man. Sigh. I'm too old to be a fangirl. Five stars. But you knew that already.

So that's the review done. What can I learn as a writer?

• Make the cause worthwhile - things people will lay down their lives for.
• Engage all the senses.
• Introduce a bit of quirkiness (the cat and the oranges).
• Use humour.
• Make sure ALL your characters are real people, with a mix of strengths and flaws.
• Keep the pace up.
• When your heroes are in trouble, pile it on.
• Introduce the unexpected to add twists – but don't suddenly introduce cavalry without the reader knowing it's out there.
• And probably other things like great use of words and getting into a character's head.

Anything else you'd like to contribute?