Things I wish I had known when I started writing Epinions Book Reviews
Jan 27 '03
The Bottom Line I had to figure these things out on my own after my first few reviews didn't get unanimous VH ratings. Perhaps I can save others some trouble.
How would you rate this book review if this were the entire text?
In this exciting book by Robert Ludlum, the hero is unfairly accused of a crime which he did not commit, and must go to a great deal of trouble, including traveling to various interesting places, in the quest to pin the blame on the real villains and restore his good name. Lots of action stuff. Some colorful characters. A beautiful woman for him to fall in love with. Happy ending. The plot was complicated before all was said and done, but I swear it had some original aspects and kept me interested. Definitely worth your time and money to enjoy this story for yourself. (Sample review of The Aquitaine Progression, a thriller by Robert Ludlum.)
Or this one?
In this exciting book by Louis L'Amour, the hero is unfairly accused of a crime which he did not commit, and must go to a great deal of trouble, including traveling to various interesting places, in the quest to pin the blame on the real villains and restore his good name. Lots of action stuff. Some colorful characters. A beautiful woman for him to fall in love with. Happy ending. The plot was complicated before all was said and done, but I swear it had some original aspects and kept me interested. Definitely worth your time and money to enjoy this story for yourself. (Sample review of Tucker, a western by Louis L’Amour.)
Followed by this one?
In this exciting book by Jacqueline Carey, the heroine is unfairly accused of a crime which she did not commit, and must go to a great deal of trouble, including traveling to various interesting places, in the quest to pin the blame on the real villains and restore her good name. Lots of action stuff. Some colorful characters. A gorgeous man for her to fall in love with. Happy ending. The plot was complicated before all was said and done, but I swear it had some original aspects and kept me interested. Definitely worth your time and money to enjoy this story for yourself. (Sample review of Kushiel’s Dart, a fantasy novel by Jacqueline Carey.)
Personally, I'd be likely to give any one of those sample reviews a "Somewhat Helpful." If I left a comment to explain my rating, it might be: "This is a nice start to your review, to get my attention before you go into more detail. What is the hero's name? What does he do for a living? What makes him a likeable person we will want to cheer for (or is he pretty obnoxious but still interesting to read about)? How much danger is he in if they can catch him? Is all this set in the modern world (and where), or a thousand years ago, or a thousand years in the future?”
The point is that a really brief book review is likely to look like a Generic Review that could be easily adjusted, with just a changed name over here or a pronoun over there, to suit a wide range of novels. It may remind your reader of a hundred other stories he’s read before, without giving him any useful information on what makes this one better (or worse) than average. (And I hereby admit that some of my earliest book reviews on Epinions, two years ago, weren’t much better, but I learned in a hurry that I wasn’t going to get lots of Very Helpful ratings if I didn't make some changes.)
I grant you that if one of my own sisters were to recommend a book to me in face to face conversation, she might say something very similar to that Generic Review I used above. She wouldn't necessarily give me several hundred words of detail. But you've got to consider the context. My sisters have known me all their lives. They've discussed the merits and weaknesses of various books and movies with me. If any sister of mine thinks an ending is happy, or a plot is complicated, or the overall story is exciting, and she thinks I'll like it too, that's an informed opinion from someone who knows my tastes as I know hers based on past experience. But if I read the exact same words in a review on Epinions by a total stranger assuring me it’s a good book, it tells me almost nothing!
Most of my reviews have been on works of fiction, and I'm going to emphasize that in this essay. I may offer a few tips on bulky works of nonfiction later on. I don't use a printed checklist of points to cover in the body of my review for each novel I write about, but there are some things I usually mention in my text, and certainly bear in mind as I start writing. Here they are:
1. Title.
2. Author’s name.
3. Genre.
4. Protagonist.
5. The Problem.
6. Comparisons.
7. Final Satisfaction.
8. R-Rated? X-Rated?
Title and Author's Name seem self-explanatory. Just work them into the body of your review somewhere, if only to make sure the search engines pick up on them.
Genre. What type of story is this, and when/where is it set? Historical novel in feudal Japan? Stone Age activities in Ice Age Europe? Murder mystery in modern New York City? A blood-soaked tale of interstellar warfare three thousand years in the future?
Protagonist. Give his name, and at least a few other details on what sort of person he is - and I don't just mean describing what he's supposed to look like. If several protagonists are working together in the plot, instead of just one central character most of the time, you can tell a bit about each of them, with more about one or two who are most interesting.
The Problem. What is the principal problem the protagonist seems to be facing, at least in the first few chapters of the story? Why is it interesting to the reader? (Or if it’s not, why is it so boring?)
Comparisons. Does some aspect of this book strongly remind you of another story (book, movie, stage play) your readers might remember? In what way? Is this resemblance good or bad? (If the author of this book simply copied a famous story’s plot outline without adding anything interesting or surprising, that’s a bad sign.) You don’t have to give comparisons, but when you do, they can help a well-read reader get a better feel for just what type of book you are talking about here.
Final Satisfaction. The ending may have been happy or sad, and you generally shouldn’t explain exactly what happened in the end (such as who lived and who died and who went to prison), but was the ending satisfying? Not necessarily happy (Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet had a strong, satisfying, and very sad ending), but did you think it was worth your time, and would it be worth the reader’s time and money? Was the outcome actually surprising in some way, or did you see it coming from the start and you figure your readers will too? Did the author suddenly get bored and end the book by solving the hero's problems with a random miracle instead of something he had deliberately managed to do? Or did the author just stop the book without having solved much of anything for the characters you had been patiently following through their endless troubles?
R-Rated? X-Rated? Some people would prefer to be warned in advance if there are really steamy detailed sex scenes in this book, for instance. Or torture scenes, or something of that nature. (I once wrote a review of a novel that was all about the protagonist's months of study in his government's Torture School, learning how to interrogate people by any expedient means.) Or a major character who can scarcely speak a sentence without inserting some foul language that is bound to offend some people’s tender sensibilities. Also, if a book appears to be aimed at a juvenile or child audience, parents will appreciate knowing if there is something particularly disturbing in it that might not be suitable for, let's say, an eight-year-old. Also, if it's a "graphic novel" (a volume in comic book format) or simply has lots of illustrations, it would be nice to let people know if there is frontal nudity in it. That sort of thing. Often you won't need to address this "rating" issue at all in a book review, but keep it in mind.
There are also many people who want to know how you felt about the book as you read it, and they have a point in wanting to know that. It just isn’t enough all by itself. A newcomer to Epinions might stress emotions at the expense of providing anything solid. For instance, "Suspenseful! Fascinating characters! Exciting action scenes! Amusing plot twists! I can't wait to read more by this author!" It's fine to say all that, but if that's everything you say, people will be scratching their heads and saying, "What was so suspenseful? What made these characters more fascinating than a million other fictional characters I could read about? What made these action scenes particularly exciting? How do I know that a plot twist that amuses you won't just bore me to death, since everyone's sense of humor is a little different?" Etc.
It also works the other way around. If you hated the book, you ought to provide a stronger case against buying it than just saying, "I hated it. Lots of bad stuff in here." Even if my own sister told me that, I would want at least one or two specific details to give me some idea of what she was talking about. I once read a review of a Tom Clancy novel in which the reviewer firmly stated that in it, Clancy made some unfair, shallow, and misleading statements about China's trade practices (or words to that effect). He saw this as a serious flaw in the book. Maybe this was true. I couldn't tell because I hadn't read the book myself, and the reviewer never gave a single example of just what Clancy said in this book that struck him as so disturbingly unfair, shallow, and misleading! All he was essentially saying was, "It's a bad book! You see, I personally thought there were some stupid statements in it, but I won't tell you what ones they were or what was wrong with them! Just take my word for it!" How helpful.
The above items are things people want to know about this particular book. It is possible that this book is part of a larger structure they also need to know about.
Is it part of a series? If so, what type of series? Is it the type where it really doesn't make much difference because each book is a separate story that just happens to share a few characters in common with lots of other books by the same author? (Stories about Sherlock Holmes and other fictional detectives usually fall into that category – a new mystery with a new cast of possible suspects in each case.) Or the single-ongoing-epic type where only a masochist would read the books out of order because he wanted to feel as confused as possible? For instance, Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time is very much one ongoing story that has recently released Volume 10. When I recently posted a review of #10, I felt the ethical obligation to start out with a warning that my review would be of no particular value if you hadn’t actually read the previous nine volumes, and trying to read the book itself with no background knowledge would be even worse since you wouldn’t know who any of the hundreds of characters were.
Also, if this book is somehow tied to one or more movies or TV shows (A Star Wars novel, an X-Files novel, a book which later became a popular movie such as Gone with the Wind), you ought to mention that to your readers too.
Some feel it wise to quote at least a few lines of the actual writing. Some snappy dialogue exchanged between two characters, or a paragraph of expository prose, or anything that can give people a good feel for the writer’s personal style. I frequently use quotations myself, and it works out quite well.
I recently wrote a review of a hard-boiled detective novel in which I quoted some remarks made by the hero to a cop friend of his: "Don't worry, I don't underrate the cops. But cops can't break a guy's arm to make him talk, and they can't shove his teeth in with the muzzle of a .45 to remind him that you aren't fooling. I do my own leg work, and there are a lot of guys who will tell me what I want to know because they know what I'll do to them if they don't."
I figured that little speech told you an awful lot about private eye Mike Hammer right away, as well as being a good sample of the style of the entire novel (since he was the first-person narrator from start to finish).
This piece has been longer than most book reviews need to be, but I wanted to sum up all the things I've been saying a few words at a time as friendly advice to other newbies over the last two years. From now on, if I want to give a fledgling book reviewer advice, I'll probably just point to this URL. Meanwhile, to all of you who are reading this, I hope you found something useful in here and I look forward to seeing your book reviews in the future!
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Epinions.com ID:
lorendiac
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Location: Indianapolis
Reviews written: 148
Trusted by: 122 members
About Me:
"Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories." (Arthur C. Clarke)
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