Really REALLY hated it... for all the wrong reasons...

[anghara]

Remember that Shortcovers experiment?

I had a comment on the "Spellspam" excerpt by somebody pseudonymous whose profile was "private" on the site, and now apparently the same dude (same language, same kvetches) has taken the trouble to trawl for the book on the Net and has left the following 1-star review on Amazon:


Ugh, not worth reading. , February 28, 2009

By Literate1 (IN)

Ugh. Mindless drivel, and a knock-off of Harry Potter combined with a poor imitation of the cyberpunk genre. Not worth the time to read. I threw it away after the first chapter, seriously. If you want to read Harry Potter or Christopher Paolini-type books, stick to those. And if you want cyberpunk, stick to Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson. But don't waste your time on this steaming pile of words.

Dude.

Do you KNOW what steampunk is?...

Do you know how utterly silly it makes you look when you use it as a yardstick for a YA FANTASY novel which has no pretentions to be cyberpunk at all...?

[shrug] them's the breaks, you can't please all of the people all of the time, but REALLY now - saying that you hate a piece of work because it isn't something that it never aimed to be in the first place seems a little... out there...

Oh, and PS - if anybody out there who has actually read more than one chapter of the book, and it doesn't matter if you lurve it to death or have issues with it, would you consider adding some (more coherent) reviews on Amazon...? I'm not looking for backpats and sympathy, but a build-up of word-of-mouth would be great...

Comments

[kbaccellia.livejournal.com]

What? That's just rude. I enjoyed your book and the whole spellspam was very intriguing to me. I put my review on both Amazon and Good Reads for you. The third book I plan to send to Enchanting Reviews.

I hate when people tear something apart and put 'anom' or no name thinking that makes it ok to rip something apart. Sorry you had to go through that.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Not particularly WORRIED - I know there's always going to be somebody out there who will at best be indifferent to what I write and at worst hate it with an incandescent hate - I have writers whose work I can't read, too. But at least let it be for a sensible reason. I would never throw a book of fairy tales across the room whining that it doesn't contain faster-than-light travel or a bunch of Klingons, which is the gist of THIS particular reviewer's apparent complaint.

[guinwhyte.livejournal.com]

"I threw it away after only one chapter." They feel the need to lie, too, considering they probably only read what was on the Shortcovers site. Personally, people with the need to have a username like "Literate1" are people whose reviews I discount. Hopefully people will look at the much better (not necessarily rating-wise, but written-wise) reviews and decide for themselves whether the book is for them.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

I loved the first book. Still waiting for Spellspam to turn up in my neighborhood bookstore.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... you might need to noodge them... Spellspam was out in HC LAST year, and is in paperback as of right now, but the THIRD book is already out, and if they still haven't got the SECOND one in...

(lemme know if you want a signed bookplate... [grin])

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

I was there a few weeks ago and mentioned it, so maybe...

Thanks! ;)

[eneit.livejournal.com]

some folk do need slapping.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I loved Spellspam but don't remember it well enough to write a coherent review on Amazon. Sorry. I liked it better than the first book in the series.

ignore the jerk

[kateran.livejournal.com]

ok...I'm a perpetual lurker and almost nothing will drive me out of the woodwork but I have to say... REALLY? Who IS this guy that he prefers Christopher Paolini to you?? I don't want to be negative about any author here, truly, but I don't get that. Not that it's even relevant...the books are completely different. Might as well compare it to Great Expectations or Gossip Girl. Geez! What an idiot.

Seriously. I'll be on amazon in a flash to write my own review. Ignore it. Everything you've written has blown me away. You're awesome.

Re: ignore the jerk

[anghara.livejournal.com]

But if I had ignored him I would never have had this comment on my blog, and I very much appreciate THAT!

Thanks!

[csinman.livejournal.com]

At least they didn't claim to put the book down because they were getting too bogged down whiting out the parts they didn't approve of, or, and this one is just teeth-grinding, mentioning they threw it in the Dumpster because they didn't even want to pass it on to someone else.

But fortunately, I think most people are smart enough not to pay attention to a review that comes from someone who admits they didn't even read the book before they decided what it was about.

In fact, I always look up critical reviews first, because I'm more likely to buy a book if the one-star comments are obviously written by idiots instead of intelligent people.