It’s probably important for anybody relying on my reviews to know a little more about how my subjectivity comes into play. Since Kindle Unlimited came on-line and made it easy to track, I have read no less than 400 books per year, and I have maxed out at just over 600 books the year I was in home health due to a near-fatal gunshot wound. I rarely rate a book above 3 on the 5-star scale. You, as an author, start at a 3 just to recognize the work you put into your book for my entertainment. You rapidly lose points for poor editing, though you can make some of that up with the story. I take into account primarily these things:
- The Story – is it a good story? Does it make sense, is it new or a fresh take on an old tale. Is it engaging, with characters that draw on your emotions as you read? Does it really make you LOL or cry – I don’t care what emotion, I just want it to draw me in so well that the emotion takes by by surprise. If you keep making me break the story immersion by having to reference a map, an appendix, a language or character reference you’re doing it wrong. If the character sheets in a GameLIT/RPG story are optional to telling the story and can be skipped if I don’t want to look through them, then you have done it right because the story should always be the focus and not the stat pages.
- The Editing – Is the editing good enough that I am not dropped out of the experience by spelling or grammar errors. If there are accents written into the text are they natural, consistent, and ADD to the character and the telling of the story. Odd words for alien/magical/new/unique things should not make me stop and try and sound them out and pronounce them – that’s detracting. These things don’t have to be super complex to be recognized that they are different.
Other factors may impact my opinion, the two items above are just my primary movers. So with the quantity of material that I read, I find myself very selective about what books I spend time writing a review on. Really excellent books will get a review on Amazon in addition to the star rating. Things I think belong in the list of items I recommend to others will get a review on this site. So don’t expect to see hundreds of reviews here every year. Usually, I find only a few books each year deserving of the extra time it takes to post here.
- December 2020 (8)
- January 2020 (1)
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