Genre Specific Review Groups discussion

In joining this review group you have agreed to review the books assigned to you on a two month schedule. This group is now in the review phase and is no longer open for sign up.

This is Fantasy Review Group 13 - Sword and Sorcery. As with other review groups, you will be expected to read and give an honest review of the books assigned to you. Assignments will be made after the group sign-up has filled.

Participants are expected to post reviews to Goodreads. The review should be posted to Amazon (US and UK) as well, if the book is available there. This makes having accounts with both Goodreads and Amazon.com a requirement.

Contact the authors you are scheduled to review to arrange to receive a review copy of their work. Note that Amazon has made a minor change in how reviews are displayed. As long as a review that is not verified as a purchase is recent, it will be displayed on the book's Amazon page. Once it rolls off, it will still be counted in the ranking of the book, but the link to show more reviews has been modified by Amazon to show only reviews that come from verified purchases. Authors may consider gifting their book to assigned reviewers so that they will qualify as verified purchases. Reviewers may bypass this limitation by offering to purchase the books assigned to them. All of this is voluntary. Authors may still provide review copies for free, and reviewers can still post reviews to Amazon that are not from a verified purchase. This change in Amazon policy has no effect on Goodreads.

Please post to this topic, both when you receive review copies and when you post the reviews. Authors may respond to reviews, but any form of harassment or anger directed at reviewers will be treated as a violation of the terms of service for this group.

If you are going to be late with your review, either post to this topic as soon as possible or message the author and the moderator.

If your book has not been reviewed by the deadline for either round, contact the review group moderator. This is necessary to make certain that the review process is fair for everyone.

Note that any participant who makes no effort to fulfill his or her commitment to this group will have all reviews of his or her work resulting from this group deleted and his or her membership in the Genre Specific Review Group will be terminated.


THE AUTHORS AND BOOKS ARE:

1 Christian Nadeau - Seeds of Hatred

2 Alistair Potter - The Counsel of Wizards

3 Tristen Kozinski - The Darkness That Slept

4 Carolee Croft - Ariella's Escape

5 Alex Avrio - The Alchemist's Box

6 James Nunn - Dancing on Sand


THE ORDER OF REVIEW IS AS FOLLOWS:

August 2 to September 2

Christian Nadeau reviews Carolee Croft
Alistair Potter reviews Tristen Kozinski
Tristen Kozinski reviews Alex Avrio
Carolee Croft reviews Alistair Potter
Alex Avrio reviews James Nunn
James Nunn reviews Christian Nadeau

September 2 to October 2

Christian Nadeau reviews Alistair Potter
Alistair Potter reviews Alex Avrio
Tristen Kozinski reviews James Nunn
Carolee Croft reviews Tristen Kozinski
Alex Avrio reviews Christian Nadeau
James Nunn reviews Carolee Croft

Hi,

I'd like to join with Seeds of Hatred.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

Do we need to post a list of people we have reviewed and who has reviewed us?

Thanks!

Hi too - I'd like to join with The Counsel of Wizards

My Author page is Alistair Potter

Hello, I would like to join with The Darkness that Slept
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

My Author Page is https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Hello, I'd like to join with Ariella's Escape My author page is Carolee Croft

Hello,
I'd like to join with The Alchemist's Box
My author page is Alex Avrio
Thanks
Alex

Authors:

We have six participants and will be moving on to the review phase. Please let me know as soon as possible about any conflict, since I will be publishing the schedule of review in a day or two.

R.

No conflicts for me

Fine with me. :)

Fine with me too :)

I've no conflicts either.

Authors:

The review schedule has been posted in the initial comment of this topic. Please post comments here when you receive a review copy and when you publish your reviews.

R.

Hi, I have both my novels - kindle format from Amazon UK and as 'verified purchases' the review should stay on the Amazon website. Cheers, Alistair.

I've just bought both mine from Amazon UK too, so both will be verified purchase reviews. Alex.

Bought Carolee's and Alistair's books, don't know if I've blundered though, I bought them on Amazon.ca as it's my default account. Does anyone know if it shows as verified purchase on .com and .co.uk too?

Christian, don't quote me on this, but I think it only comes up as a verified purchase in the country you bought it in, which is fine by me. Thank you for buying the book.

I've bought both books I'm supposed to review on Amazon.com.

Hi Christian,

I don't know for sure about the .ca website - but I think it gets 'bundled' with the .com website.

US (.com) reviews usually appear on the UK website as a linked listing. I'm not too sure if it goes the other way. It's all a bit 'swings and roundabouts', but Amazon does seem to be making an effort to show there are reviews on 'other' Amazon websites, so folks CAN get to 'verified reviews' fairly easily. My policy is - every little helps! :)

I have purchased The Alchemist's Box.

Here's my review for The Alchemist's Box-
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Hi Tristen,
Many thanks for the Alchemist's Box review. I can see it on the amazon.com site, but not on the amazon.co.uk site. Reviews don't automatically get cross-posted across the different amazon sites for some reason, so could you please also post it to the UK site as well if you haven't already.
Many thanks,
Alex

Hey guys, I've reviewed The Counsel of Wizards Please see Goodreads review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Amazon reviews take a bit longer to show up, as you probably know, but they're coming.

Carolee wrote: "Hey guys, I've reviewed The Counsel of Wizards i>

Wow! Many thanks, glad you enjoyed it. Alistair.

I've purchased and downloaded Dancing on Sand.

I've posted my review for Dancing on Sand - links below:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Sand-J...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dancing-Sand...

My review of Seeds of Hatred is now posted.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-...

That's both of mine done for this round.

Alex

Thanks for the review Alex!

Thanks a lot James, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

My review for Ariella's escape

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3CTZ...
Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1PKUMB...

Hi Christian, thank you for the amazingly detailed review! Glad you liked it despite romance not being your usual genre.

Hi, here's my review of Alex's The Alchemist's Box;

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R84CV...

https://www.amazon.com/review/R1ADPFE...

Just a heads up - Tristen's The Darkness That Slept will take a bit longer than 'normal' - I estimate about 400,000 words, but I will have it finished by the end of the ' second round'. Be sure to leave enough time Carolee!

Thanks, Alistair. I know what you mean, I've already started reading.

Thanks for the review Alistair.

Hi folks, here's my review for The Darkness That Slept. Again, following a recent insightful comment about the different rating standards between Goodreads and Amazon, I've adjusted accordingly;

stars     Amazon      Goodreads
*****   Love it         Amazing
****    Like it         Really like it
***     OK              Like it
**     Didn't like    OK
*     Hated it        Didn't like it

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3BOS...

https://www.amazon.com/review/R346NGD...

Alistair wrote: "Hi folks, here's my review for The Darkness That Slept. Again, following a recent insightful comment about the different rating standards between Goodreads and Amazon, I've adjusted accordingly;

s..."

I particularly do not like this practice. I believe that people reading reviews essentially treat the star ratings as equivalents. When I review a book, I give it the same star rating on Goodreads and on Amazon. Additionally, I have received several complaints from authors who felt that their works were downgraded because the ratings were different.

R.

Hi R.

Fair comment. So which 'rating set' do you suggest we use as our guide, the Amazon descriptions or the Goodreads descriptions? If we're going to ignore one set of descriptions, we'd probably want to standardise the method across all reviews to avoid any confusion.

Alistair wrote: "Hi R.

Fair comment. So which 'rating set' do you suggest we use as our guide, the Amazon descriptions or the Goodreads descriptions? If we're going to ignore one set of descriptions, we'd probabl..."

I think that is up to the individual. Personally, I use my own system where I assign no star, half a star, or a star for each of five categories that I think are key characteristics of the type of literature being reviewed.

R.

Strictly speaking, I think Alistair is right, but to me the Amazon ratings are far more intuitive than the Goodreads ones, so I use the Amazon system for both my Amazon and Goodreads reviews. With a 5 point scale, I just feel the mid-point should be the neutral response, which to me is 'OK'. I tend to assume most people reading reviews on here are casual users of Goodreads, who probably haven't dug into the site to find the official definitions of the Goodreads ranking system. I don't think a casual user would immediately realise that a 2 star review means OK - to most I think 2/5 intuitively means 'not so good'.

Alex wrote: "Strictly speaking, I think Alistair is right, but to me the Amazon ratings are far more intuitive than the Goodreads ones, so I use the Amazon system for both my Amazon and Goodreads reviews. With ..."

I definitely think a little clarity/guidance would help, if we are trying to be as 'fair and honest' as possible. Even R.'s 'system' has its issues, regarding regional UK/US language and punctuation variations, and common or historical practice that falls outside the most recent linguistic model applied to business communication. A lot of significant literary and mainstream authors (Cormac McCarthy, Hemmingway, Vonnegut, etc.) would fail miserably if their work was run through the 'grammar mill' of modern software analysis. Even Dickens, whose grammar is generally regarded as impeccable, would be flagged for long sentences and the use of capitalisation mid sentence to name two obvious 'issues'. At the end of it all, I think it does need to be personal reaction in terms of story quality, and how that story is communicated to the reader, but with an allowance if one is reading outside ones own 'comfort zone'. I'm probably siding with Alex, the Amazon 3 star 'OK' seems about right; at very least, it errs on the side of 'improving' the Goodreads assessment (for those that are aware of the variation). I'll nip-round and change my ratings. Thanks for the input R. and Alex. One small niggle about ratings; within Goodreads, I'm surprised authors are allowed to 'star rate' their own work - what, other than 5 stars, are they going to use?

Addendum: as I went to 'standardise my ratings', I spotted that Goodreads has a 'mouse-over' function that pops-up and states what the rating actually is - it's completely 'in your face', and hovering ready to change the rating, it is basically saying at present what I believe about the book, and to change it to another 'statement' feels wrong, but it also feels wrong using that same rating on Amazon, as it's 'wrong' again and impacts more on the book's credibility. Some help please!

Alistair wrote: "Alex wrote: "Strictly speaking, I think Alistair is right, but to me the Amazon ratings are far more intuitive than the Goodreads ones, so I use the Amazon system for both my Amazon and Goodreads r..."

The rule of thumb I use in rating grammar in a story is that, if I have to stop and figure out what the sentence means, then there is a grammar issue with it. This is important, because, every time the reader has to stop to deal with the writing mechanics, the narrative and the reader's suspension of disbelief are disrupted.

I recommend interpreting the star system like school grades, since they are both five levels. (i.e.: five stars equals an A, four stars equals a B, three stars equals a C, two stars equals a D, and one star equals an F.) But I think that this should remain a personal decision for the reviewer as it would be if the reviewer had purchased the book independently from any group process.

R.

I feel comfortable giving the same star rating all across the board. Here's my review of The Darkness that Slept on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1L5MP0...

Hi folks, following guidance from the moderator(s), and some discussion within the group, I've amended the star ratings on my recent reviews to be the same for both Amazon and Goodreads. I've stuck with the 'mid' point concept rating of 3 stars as being: 'OK' or a 'C' Grade. Strictly speaking this 'up-rates' the Goodreads reviews, but recognises the near universal acceptance of this interpretation of the star rating system. The only downside I can see is if someone star rates based on the Goodreads 'ratings descriptions' and then carries that 'blindly' into the Amazon system, effectively 'down-rating' the novel on Amazon (which nobody wants!). With this possibility in mind, can I ask that as well as requiring the star ratings to be the same, reviewers are asked to recognise and then ignore the disparity of the descriptions, favouring either a personal system or the 3 star mid-point 'OK' of the Amazon system.
Thanks, Alistair.

I have posted my review for Dancing on Sand. It's on a different though, so the name's not actually mine.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

I have posted my review for Counsel of Wizards.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Amazon US
https://www.amazon.com/review/RUA1N36...

Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R9QIU...

I'm sorry, I just didn't like it much.

As for the star system. I'm sticking with what I've always done. I.e. When I rate a book two stars on goodreads (it's ok), I raise it to 3 on amazon. If I want my profile reviews to be coherent, I can't change policies based on which group I'm doing a review in.

Christian wrote: "I have posted my review for Counsel of Wizards.
Hi Christian - Ouch! Not your cup of tea. Thanks for your input though.

Cheers, Alistair.

For me, I never paid attention to the meaning of the actual ratings. (I know that's oh so useful for the discussion.) I've always operated under under what the starts actually represent. 3 stars is a good rating, and translates to a six-out-of-ten score. It's slightly better than the median value, which means that I enjoyed the book mostly but wouldn't openly recommend it for various reasons. 4 is a book I would recommend openly to people in search of its style, and five is someone I recommend to anybody reading the genre. 4 says the book was really good, but had some flaws, 5 says the book is basically impeccable. 1 and 2 are basically 4 and 5 inverted.
That being said, a part of me deeply dislikes the rigid five-star rating, its leaves almost no room for nuance and only allows swings of 20%, which is huge.

Christian wrote: "I have posted my review for Counsel of Wizards.
Hi Christian, one last question regarding the review that has been troubling me - your mention of a 'super weapon'. In the context you describe, I couldn't work out what you meant. If it is an issue that needs 'fixing' I'd like to sort it out. I'd be grateful if you could PM me with the reference, thanks. Alistair.

Hi Alistair,

I answered in pm.

Christian wrote: "Hi Alistair,

I answered in pm."

Cheers, now where's the thumbs up emoji?