On Reviewing

I'm about half way through Blue Remembered Earth and about half way through writing a blog post about it and I'm frustrated. I tend to be hyper-critical of my own writing and at the same time I'm a regular reader of blogs with really brilliant reviewers like Alex Pierce from Galactic Suburbia and the tor.com crowd and it's really hard to measure up. So I'm not really going to try.

I'm just going to get really subjective. Quite frankly, I'm not an English major, I'm an IT guy. What I'm going to do here is to try and explain why I'm reading the book, lay out my preconceptions and then give an opinion. I'll try and give an informed opinion, but bear in mind where I'm coming from.

For a case in point, the Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan was well reviewed last year. The guys over at the Coode Street podcast rave about it every couple of weeks and I think it made it onto more than half the other guys from Locus magazine's top recommendations for 2012. Personally, I thought it was beautifully written, deeply personal to the writer, but harrowing and confusing. I get that that was the point, but only one of the reasons why I read is to appreciate the craftsmanship and story-telling of the writer. I also want to enjoy it. This one was like having a root canal.

Another case in point is Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, which I thought was brilliant and one of the best urban fantasies I've read, but got luke-warm reviews from most critics. I feel a little redeemed that the later books in the series have had better reviews. (It also could be that some of the reviewers couldn't tell their arse from their elbow - I read one that compared Aaronovitch to Pratchett for goodness sake. I guess they're both British ...)

This one introduces Peter Grant, a police constable who asks a few too many fanciful questions for his own good (and not enough smart ones) and winds up as an apprentice to the last wizard in England. A good thing too, because over the next few books London really needs more help in the magic department. This book and its sequels are action-packed, fun but never losing sight of the serious consequences when things go wrong. I found the denouement of the first book is particularly shocking.

So that's where I'm coming from.