One-star review

[pegkerr]

Ganked from sleigh, papersky, and rezendi; I believe John Scalzi started the whole thing, challenging other writers to post one-star reviews they got on Amazon. I'd actually posted about this previously, but if you missed it the last time around, here it is again:

[There are no one-star reviews, by the way, for Emerald House Rising. Hurrah! The lowest review of that book that I got was one person who marked it four stars but said she really meant about 3.5.

The Wild Swans, out of twenty-six reviews, has one one-star review, as follows:

2 stories: Puritans and Gays

First off, I want to say I liked the author, I just didn't like the subject of this book. It should have been two books, in my opinion.

It was frustrating to read 2 entirely different stories, that did not seem to have anything to do with each other. So much so, that I found myself skipping ahead so I could contine story 1, then going back to pick up on story 2.

Story 1: The age-old Swan story with a Puritans-persecuting-others twist. The self-righteous, selfish, lying clergy who with many of their foaming-at-the-mouth followers, were ready to hurt anyone not like them.

Story 2: This one was so depressing! It rehashed the terrible time in the 80's when AIDS was first discovered. This whole story was about homosexuality with religion thrown in. Sad and cruel.

The author wrote well, but I would have never picked up this book if I had known what the subject material was. I was expecting a nice Swan story. So if you are looking for a happy book, look elsewhere.

I should also give a tip of the hat to someone who gave the book three stars ("I may have been overly generous") but titles the review "Typecast, Contrived, Lacking in Subtlety." Gee, what would the reviewer have said if he/she really hated it? Read that review here.

Edited to add: trogon pointed me to another review at Library Thing that I hadn't seen before. This is a 1/2 star rating out of five!

The portrait of AIDS in this book is very early 1980s (everyone is going to die; sex is bad, yadda, yadda). It left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Comments

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

O.K. Glad your e-mail isn't thinking we're all Spam, now.

she probably won't get freaked by one F-word

Tongue was firmly in cheek as I typed that. As you probably guessed. ;-)

BTW, we have some rubber chickens in the toy section of my Cub. Interested???

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

BTW, we have some rubber chickens in the toy section of my Cub. Interested???

Now I'm laughing again. I don't know if our administration would allow it. But OMG the idea is awfully tempting!

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me, I need to post the latest chicken dispatch.

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

If you think you're laughing, you should see the smirk on my face every time I grab one of the damn things around the neck to put it back on the shelf...

Even naughtier, check out the advertising for the new Indiana Jones with a big life-size picture of Harrison Ford as Indy grinning and brandishing a whip. Across his, um, hips, is a big banner reading: More to Explore!

I am not making this up.

And there is not enough money in the Universe to induce me to sell the rights to my dignity in that way. ;-)