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Readers vs. Reviewers
Apr. 1st, 2010 09:20 pmBack on March 23, I mentioned the fact that my book Taking Flight was cut from the ABNA competition after the second round. I more or less expected that, and figured that was the end of what I would hear. However, yesterday I received the "reviews" of two "expert reviewers." I have no idea what "expert" means in this context. I suspect that they are just individuals who have posted lots of those customer reviews on Amazon.
( Actual review contents under cut )
I will not quibble with the complaint about description vs. action other than to point out that there is plenty of action even in the first chapters that these reviewers saw. It just isn't the kind of action that they are accustomed to on television or the movie screen, nor in popular best sellers. No one shoots at anyone, or gets caught up in a car chase. Instead we see a series of events, 24 hours in the life of what amounts to a high school student, in a setting that apparently was too hard for one of the reviewers to even conceive of (though actually many authors have presented similar scenery.)
The book does have fast action and even a bit of violence, but these elements build gradually against the peaceful countryside setting. Because the rules required the "excerpt" to be presented from the very beginning of the novel, rather than taken from the middle, there was little I could do about that.
The real irony is in what Reviewer #2 says. He or she likes the setting on the outskirts of Cairo, Illinois, yet later complains that the "rural setting" is too out of date for "modern kids" to identify with. I say that kids who are so limited in their horizons that they can't imagine anything but city streets really need to have those horizons pushed outward to encompass the whole variety of the real world. How will that happen if they aren't exposed to diversity? Isn't that one of the valuable elements of reading overall? I always thought so. Do they think that there are no "rural" places any more? That there are no people who live and work in them (including teenagers going to school?) I have news for them. Even today, Cairo, Illinois is no bustling metropolis. It's a small town, and you can walk to the edge of it and be in the wilds of rural America. That's what made it a good setting for this story, in addition to its reasonable proximity to the geology that forms a major element in the conclusion of the tale.
I do find it irritating that such a competition would give science fiction, which is a recognized genre in the rules, to a reviewer who admits to not being able to grasp or get into the "far fetched" nature of a science fiction story line. Reviewer #1 gave a fair evaluation based on what was available to them. Reviewer #2 was no more competent to evaluate this piece of writing than I would be to judge Scotch, given that I don't drink distilled liquors at all. The difference is that I have the good sense to decline to express an "opinion" about single malts and would instead disqualify myself.
( Actual review contents under cut )
I will not quibble with the complaint about description vs. action other than to point out that there is plenty of action even in the first chapters that these reviewers saw. It just isn't the kind of action that they are accustomed to on television or the movie screen, nor in popular best sellers. No one shoots at anyone, or gets caught up in a car chase. Instead we see a series of events, 24 hours in the life of what amounts to a high school student, in a setting that apparently was too hard for one of the reviewers to even conceive of (though actually many authors have presented similar scenery.)
The book does have fast action and even a bit of violence, but these elements build gradually against the peaceful countryside setting. Because the rules required the "excerpt" to be presented from the very beginning of the novel, rather than taken from the middle, there was little I could do about that.
The real irony is in what Reviewer #2 says. He or she likes the setting on the outskirts of Cairo, Illinois, yet later complains that the "rural setting" is too out of date for "modern kids" to identify with. I say that kids who are so limited in their horizons that they can't imagine anything but city streets really need to have those horizons pushed outward to encompass the whole variety of the real world. How will that happen if they aren't exposed to diversity? Isn't that one of the valuable elements of reading overall? I always thought so. Do they think that there are no "rural" places any more? That there are no people who live and work in them (including teenagers going to school?) I have news for them. Even today, Cairo, Illinois is no bustling metropolis. It's a small town, and you can walk to the edge of it and be in the wilds of rural America. That's what made it a good setting for this story, in addition to its reasonable proximity to the geology that forms a major element in the conclusion of the tale.
I do find it irritating that such a competition would give science fiction, which is a recognized genre in the rules, to a reviewer who admits to not being able to grasp or get into the "far fetched" nature of a science fiction story line. Reviewer #1 gave a fair evaluation based on what was available to them. Reviewer #2 was no more competent to evaluate this piece of writing than I would be to judge Scotch, given that I don't drink distilled liquors at all. The difference is that I have the good sense to decline to express an "opinion" about single malts and would instead disqualify myself.
