(no subject)
You know, going through reviews and looking at negative (generally one star) reviews of books on Audible and Amazon just reminds me how unbelievably stupid and clueless people are in general.
Everyone is allowed to have their own opinions and give reviews based on them, but when people get things outright wrong and then complain about them, or latch onto a completely minor thing and make it out to be an all-encompassing failure that saps an entire work of any redeeming value at all, I just start slamming my head against the walls.
Negative reviews are how I decide if something is worth it, when I'm on the fence about a story. If all the negative reviews are completely nitpicky, overdramatic, or utterly stupid, then I usually wind up going for it. If there are actually some decent, well-reasoned negative reviews, then I do a little more research before making up my mind.
Yesterday I was looking at reviews for Ellen Kushner's 'Swordspoint', which I rather liked. It's a few decades old, so it's not exactly new material, but a couple years back it got an audiobook edition through a program that Neil Gaiman started to get more books into audio format. Among the few valid opinions about not particularly finding the story interesting or having some issues with the narration, the rest were basically either completely idiotic, utterly wrong, or blatantly homophobic. If you call 'Swordspoint' little more than gay smut, I'm going to sit and laugh and wonder what the fuck book you were reading.
Today, it was Terry Goodkind's books. I know a lot of people have really strong negative opinions of him and his books, for perfectly valid reasons of taste or problems with the writing. But when people refuse to even look at what a book is about beyond the blurb on the back, and then complain that they had no idea what they were getting into and they were so violently offended they had to delete the book and this is the ONLY BOOK OUT OF 100 THEY'VE EVER HATED SO MUCH THEY HAD TO DELETE I start rolling my eyes. People complained that there was sex and violence. People complained that he was trying to 'copy Tolkien' (???), people complained that the writing was terrible in reviews that themselves were chock full of the most basic spelling and grammar errors, people complained that the story was terrible because the 'bad guys' did bad things, people complained that it wasn't an 'epic fantasy'.
Yes, Goodkind is heavy-handed as fuck when it comes to the whole morality and good vs evil thing. Yes, his stories are very, VERY violent. No, his stories are not mysteries that make the reader work really really hard to try and figure things out. Yes, he can be really ridiculously black-and-white or overly melodramatic and overly simplistic. Yes, he does overwrite to an extent. Yes, I can understand why some people dislike the characters. Honestly, Goodkind is writing less a book of fantasy type stories and more a book about codes of morality and social ethics. Reading 'The Sword of Truth' series is like reading the bible in that it's graphic and horrible and full of black and white morality and it's trying to teach you lessons and the characters are really not so much characters as representations of very basic ideals. But when people start complaining that the series is just full of 'rampant pedophilia' or calling something like 'Swordspoint' nothing but fetish material that romanticizes (gay) men like men fetishize lesbians (?????), I just want to go live on an island away from all the god damned stupid.
I don't understand people who whine about the fact that not every 'fantasy' story is High Fantasy, full of dwarves and elves and fairy creatures. Swordspoint and the Sword of Truth series aren't high fantasy. They never claimed to be. Frankly, if you look at what their authors say for about three seconds, I don't think either of them really considers their books 'fantasy' stories.
AND WHO THE HELL SPENDS 25$ ON A FUCKING AUDIOBOOK WITHOUT EVER RESEARCHING ANYTHING ABOUT IT AND THEN WHINES WHEN IT WASN'T WHAT THEY EXPECTED?!
I just don't fucking buy it when people listen to or read a book for an hour and then write it off as WORST BOOK EVER NO REDEEMING VALUE THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOT EVEN ONE GOOD THING ABOUT ANYTHING IN THIS BOOK PERIOD. Even most bad literature has some redeeming value, somewhere.
And if you spell the protagonist's name so unbelievably wrong that it takes me thirty seconds to try and figure out who you're even talking about, and then spend a whole paragraph complaining about the author's spelling and grammar, there is no way in hell I'm taking you seriously.
And of course most of the complaints inevitably compared the stories to Tolkien and Robert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' series or George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire'. You can't stand sex or graphic violence and you're reccing ASOIAF? Bullshit.
Honestly it's gotten to the point where online reviews for anything are nearly as bad as youtube comments.
Everyone is allowed to have their own opinions and give reviews based on them, but when people get things outright wrong and then complain about them, or latch onto a completely minor thing and make it out to be an all-encompassing failure that saps an entire work of any redeeming value at all, I just start slamming my head against the walls.
Negative reviews are how I decide if something is worth it, when I'm on the fence about a story. If all the negative reviews are completely nitpicky, overdramatic, or utterly stupid, then I usually wind up going for it. If there are actually some decent, well-reasoned negative reviews, then I do a little more research before making up my mind.
Yesterday I was looking at reviews for Ellen Kushner's 'Swordspoint', which I rather liked. It's a few decades old, so it's not exactly new material, but a couple years back it got an audiobook edition through a program that Neil Gaiman started to get more books into audio format. Among the few valid opinions about not particularly finding the story interesting or having some issues with the narration, the rest were basically either completely idiotic, utterly wrong, or blatantly homophobic. If you call 'Swordspoint' little more than gay smut, I'm going to sit and laugh and wonder what the fuck book you were reading.
Today, it was Terry Goodkind's books. I know a lot of people have really strong negative opinions of him and his books, for perfectly valid reasons of taste or problems with the writing. But when people refuse to even look at what a book is about beyond the blurb on the back, and then complain that they had no idea what they were getting into and they were so violently offended they had to delete the book and this is the ONLY BOOK OUT OF 100 THEY'VE EVER HATED SO MUCH THEY HAD TO DELETE I start rolling my eyes. People complained that there was sex and violence. People complained that he was trying to 'copy Tolkien' (???), people complained that the writing was terrible in reviews that themselves were chock full of the most basic spelling and grammar errors, people complained that the story was terrible because the 'bad guys' did bad things, people complained that it wasn't an 'epic fantasy'.
Yes, Goodkind is heavy-handed as fuck when it comes to the whole morality and good vs evil thing. Yes, his stories are very, VERY violent. No, his stories are not mysteries that make the reader work really really hard to try and figure things out. Yes, he can be really ridiculously black-and-white or overly melodramatic and overly simplistic. Yes, he does overwrite to an extent. Yes, I can understand why some people dislike the characters. Honestly, Goodkind is writing less a book of fantasy type stories and more a book about codes of morality and social ethics. Reading 'The Sword of Truth' series is like reading the bible in that it's graphic and horrible and full of black and white morality and it's trying to teach you lessons and the characters are really not so much characters as representations of very basic ideals. But when people start complaining that the series is just full of 'rampant pedophilia' or calling something like 'Swordspoint' nothing but fetish material that romanticizes (gay) men like men fetishize lesbians (?????), I just want to go live on an island away from all the god damned stupid.
I don't understand people who whine about the fact that not every 'fantasy' story is High Fantasy, full of dwarves and elves and fairy creatures. Swordspoint and the Sword of Truth series aren't high fantasy. They never claimed to be. Frankly, if you look at what their authors say for about three seconds, I don't think either of them really considers their books 'fantasy' stories.
AND WHO THE HELL SPENDS 25$ ON A FUCKING AUDIOBOOK WITHOUT EVER RESEARCHING ANYTHING ABOUT IT AND THEN WHINES WHEN IT WASN'T WHAT THEY EXPECTED?!
I just don't fucking buy it when people listen to or read a book for an hour and then write it off as WORST BOOK EVER NO REDEEMING VALUE THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOT EVEN ONE GOOD THING ABOUT ANYTHING IN THIS BOOK PERIOD. Even most bad literature has some redeeming value, somewhere.
And if you spell the protagonist's name so unbelievably wrong that it takes me thirty seconds to try and figure out who you're even talking about, and then spend a whole paragraph complaining about the author's spelling and grammar, there is no way in hell I'm taking you seriously.
And of course most of the complaints inevitably compared the stories to Tolkien and Robert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' series or George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire'. You can't stand sex or graphic violence and you're reccing ASOIAF? Bullshit.
Honestly it's gotten to the point where online reviews for anything are nearly as bad as youtube comments.