More Thoughts on Book Reviews: Turning the Scope Around

I had an interesting online conversation the other night with a writer friend of mine. Not someone I know deeply well, but have chatted with a several times and he's someone I respect as a writer. He'd just read Finding Angel, and has rated it "3 stars." He sent me an email to give me a heads-up before posting the full review, since it's not going to be a glowing, raving one. I appreciated it, and asked for some personal feedback.

While I didn't take the rating personally in the first place, our conversation made me feel even more okay about it. He made comments like "steady, solid prose." The main downside was that the action didn't start soon enough for him. 

I found myself saying, "I'd rather hear that I can sling a sentence but the story was too slow for someone's taste than hear that my prose is clunky."

It was a gut reaction. Before that moment, I had no idea I felt that way.  

And then he went on to give an example of a book he also gave 3 stars to for similar reasons as mine. Mrs. Perigrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I nearly laughed out loud. I LOVED that book. 

THIS is where explanations make all the difference in the world. I could have seen his three star rating and been hurt. But because he backed it up with reasoning--honest reasoning--I am totally fine with it. It put me in a class with a book I'm honored to be compared to--regardless of star rating. I can see because of his comments and the comparison to Mrs. Perigrine's that this is something I'd consider a taste issue.

You see, I happen to like books that take their time to build a character and a world before starting the heavy action. I also like subtlety. Little hints and clues of things to come that don't necessarily smack the reader in the face. 

I read a blog post very recently about Madeline L'Engle. It had to do with her religious beliefs, but the blogger commented that he was in the middle of reading A Wrinkle in Time. He said that thus far he is finding the book "boring." 

Boring? That was *the* book that spawned my love for fantasy and sci-fi novels. I picked it up today and read the first few pages and my heart did flip-flops. I love, love, love A Wrinkle in Time. One thing I love about it is that it doesn't just slam you into action. It starts with Meg sitting in the attic while it's storming outside. She's just thinking about her life, letting us get to know her.

BTW--I have thrice had my writing compared to Madeline L'Engle's and nearly had my head soar right off my body! Logically, if we follow this through, that means the blogger I mentioned would likely find *my* book boring. But knowing he feels the same about a book I adore makes that perfectly okay.

Anyway, my writer friend has yet to publish his review, but I do have one three-star on Amazon so far. I'm going to share it with you, and give you my take on it.

I really enjoyed this book. The story was creative and imaginative. I loved the characters throughout, especially Angel, Gregor and Sir Benjamin. The writing was a bit disjointed at times. I would have liked a bit more of a fluid feel through the text, but I was pleasantly surprised with the complexity. It was far more then I expected.
I certainly was wrapped up in the storyline, curious to turn the next page and see what awaited me. I could have done without the small interludes between the scientist and Dawric. I didn't think they added much in the ways of story or suspense level.
I think this is a great Middle Grade Fiction read. It is simplistic enough that a child could follow it and not inappropriate in content. Teens and Young Adults may be interested as well, but might find it to be too choppy for their taste. A fun story and worthy read.

There are two main complaints in there:

The reader found the writing disjointed/choppy/not fluid enough--which to me are all essentially the same thing, and refer to the style of writing. They didn't say my dialog was stiff and unnatural or my sentences were clunky. They're not saying my writing is bad, just not the style they prefer.

The reader also didn't dig the villain interludes. I knew from the beginning those would be a point of either love or hate for many readers, falling into the category along with prologues--extraneous info that some readers feel passionately against (a reason I kept those bits very, very short). I can also take it to mean the the story stood strongly on its own without the interludes, which is a good thing.

Anyway, in this review, the positives seem to far outweigh the negatives. I see words like: enjoyed, creative, imaginative, loved, pleasantly surprised, complexity, more than I expected, wrapped up in the storyline, curious to turn the next page, fun story, worthy read.

If that's a three-star review, I say bring 'em on!

"Oh, really?" you say. "You want three-star reviews?"

Well, of course I'd rather have higher ratings. But I'm looking at it this way. The three-star reviews I've had so far have had such positives in them I find it hard to be upset. So far, I know of four people who have said they'd rate Finding Angel 3-stars:

The two I've shown above.

Another is a reviewer who ended up asking me so many questions about Finding Angel we became friends. That, to me is a positive. Not just that I got a new friend out of the situation, but despite the story not wowing her, she continued contemplating it.

And the fourth person is a good friend, who has not posted a review but discussed her rating with me personally. I'm going to respect her privacy and not give any details, but I will say this--I respect what she had to say to me, I didn't take any of it personally because I know she has very particular taste, and I know that on some level the story *did* hit home with her and I am happy in that knowledge.

Also, if I extrapolate (which is a highly inaccurate process, but all I've got here), taking into account all the reviews I know of posted online and the comments made to me by readers that were never posted as reviews (sorry, you'll have to take my word on this), for every three-star review I get I'll be getting several four- and five-star reviews. As long as the weight leans toward the top of the scale I can be happy, because you really can't write a book that pleases everyone. (Even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has 198 three-star reviews on Amazon right now. But the others outweigh them by so much.)

My point in all this is to follow up an what I was talking about in my last post about star ratings. Different elements mean different things to different readers. When I first look and see two stars knocked off a rating of my book, I think, "Holy cow! What did I do?" But for them a star isn't necessarily made of the same stuff as it is for me. Not that it answers the question to life, the universe and everything, but I find that interesting.

Thanks for indulging my inner musings as I turn the microscope on the ratings given my own book.

How Much Does a Star Weigh? (Dissecting a Book Review)

I have read and participated in discussions on what seems like dozens of blog posts about book reviewing. They've tackled topics like giving undeserved positive reviews, always giving reasons for your star ratings, whether you should review books by people you know, and a multitude of other issues.

What I haven't seen is a discussion on how star ratings are derived. In other words, what particular elements do you mark down for, and by how much? How much "weight" do different elements carry?

Plot, character, and world-building are the three foundation blocks of a novel, in my opinion. But other chunks that take up a lot of weight are dialog and pacing. Voice is a very important one to me. And then there are things like sentence structure, description, and word use. All of those elements are in some ways tied inextricably to each other, but they can still be looked at separately.


I'm going to attempt to assess my own method by looking at some of the reviews I've left on Amazon.

I've never given a book a one-star. I think if a book is that bad, well, frankly I'm not going to make myself read the thing. I likely won't get past the first few pages. And how does one justifiably write a book review of only a page or two?

There are times, however, I can get a decent way into a book--much farther than the first pages--but still give up. The reasons? Some books with strong voices have lost me because I didn't buy the story premise or the plot. Some had a great premise and plot, but the voice drove me nuts. Some had characters that were so inconsistent I couldn't keep reading. If any element, regardless of which one, was enough to make me stop partway through, the book got a two-star.

Three-star reviews tend to come from being able to get completely through a book, but finding some particular element distracting. I may find myself having to stop because I'm getting annoyed by the voice or idiosyncrasies in the plot. But there is something else--maybe a character or a situation in the story--that I'm curious enough about to draw me back to the book.

Four-star books keep me reading, but have slight speed-bumps here and there. It's a book that when I reach the end, I'm very glad I read it. The big elements are strong and the writing is tight. The voice may not have knocked my socks off, but it was pleasant enough. However, it may not be a book I hold on to with intention of ever reading again.

Five-star books are those that I'd totally read again. All the big elements are there and well-done. The voice is compelling, and the writing clean. I've become completely absorbed by the story and when the book is out of my hand I'm itching to get back to it. There are different levels of this, btw. I have marked books five-star that I still wouldn't rank up there with Harry Potter or The Name of the Wind. They're not epic-omigod-you-must-read-this-or-die, but they touched me. The Muse by Fred Warren is a good example. I picked it up on a day when I was feeling particularly foul. Depressed and grumpy and pretty much sick of the world. But when I closed the book, which I read in just a few hours, I hugged it to my chest and smiled.

Hmmm.....has this actually helped? I'm not sure. I think I can pinpoint certain things that seem to matter more to me than others. Such as, I can tolerate a less than stellar plot if the characters and voice are compelling enough. I've read books with voices so strong I've thought, "This book could be about a trip to Walmart and I'd read it," because I love the character and/or prose so much.

But if the writing isn't fluid and I'm constantly tripping over the prose, the most incredible plotting in the world won't matter. Connections to the characters are lost because the voice is too dry or the wording prohibits the reader from getting into the character's head and really experiencing things. The potentially coolest-ever story world falls flat because I feel like I'm trying to look through a dirty window to see it.

And there is the problem of subjectivity. For example, I've seen books slammed solely because they are written in first person present tense. The reviewer finds that to always be like a dirty window, yet I happen to love that pov choice IF it is done well. There are things that are wholly personal taste.

There are times when what we love, hate, or are indifferent about is hard to nail down, too. We just "feel" like it's a three-star or five-star. It's simply the taste left in our mouth when we close the cover. Nothing in particular stood out as poorly done, but we're underwhelmed. Nothing was outrageously original, but we "couldn't put it down."

Sometimes I wish star ratings could be done away with. I've found myself reading and reviewing books for  which I can describe my dislikes in detail--yet I know as I write the review those same things are going to strongly appeal to another type of reader. I don't like techie-focused "hard" sci-fi. The details bog me down and I find my eyes rolling back in my head. But what if it's the most well-written hard sci-fi book out there? I actually wouldn't know that! So my review says the book goes into excruciating detail--without that star rating the potential reader can interpret that in light of their own likes and dislikes.

What I'm coming to realize is that stars have different weights for different readers/reviewers. What makes a four-star for one makes a three-star or a five-star for someone else. And reviewers put varying degrees of emphasis on different elements. In other words, what kills a book for me may not bother you a bit, and vice versa.

And here's something kind of out in left field: What if it's something that is editing-related? Not talking about self-pubbed books here, in which the author has taken control of all aspects. I mean traditionally published books, where an editor is assigned to (or chosen by) an author but doesn't really do their job? Should the rating reflect that, as most readers relate the story solely to the author and don't think about behind-the-scenes?

Reviewing used to feel so much easier before I started letting my mind run down these trails!

So, tell me: How much does a star weigh for you? What elements are most important to you, and therefore heavy enough to knock stars off your ratings?

(PS--I never, ever let cover art influence my review of a book. I've found cover art and content can be drastically disconnected from each other. Some of my favorite books ever have covers I hate. Just sayin'.)