Now THERE's a review!

[seawasp]

As I've mentioned before, Boundary -- and for that matter all the stuff I've been involved in writing -- seems to bring out totally polarized reviews; either people really like it or they hate it, with very few "well, it was okay" comments.

Here's a man who REALLY didn't like Boundary. I love this one!

(One star) another piece of garbage..., October 1, 2006
Reviewer: david in georgia (Georgia (USA)) - See all my reviews
...from Baen books, trading on a well-known name (Flint's) being slapped on the cover to sell a bit of rubbish that reads as if it wasn't even proofread much less put thru anything resembling a serious editing process. Clunky, trite and a waste of time and the purchase price. I'm not sure there was a single scene or idea in this book that wasn't stolen from earlier works...not a single original idea in the whole thing, unless doing something worse than anyone has done it before counts as "original."

C'mon, david in georgia, don't be shy. Tell me how you REALLY felt.

I'm a bit put out by the "wasn't even proofread" bit, because I know it was. As for the rest, it's just another illustration of that wonderful variation in perception. When "david in georgia" can say "not an original idea in the whole thing" and even suspect all the scenes were stolen, and others find it an exciting and original story, you KNOW that much of reading remains in the mind of the beholder, so to speak.

Of course he's totally right in one sense; there isn't an original idea in that book, really; then again, I'm not sure I've seen an original idea in ANY book in the past several years, so I would be reluctant to use that as a yardstick to judge anything I read.

Comments

[aardy.livejournal.com]

FWIW, getting a starred review in Booklist or one of the other such journals is a near-guarantee that libraries all over the country will purchase one (or more) copies of a book. Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kliatt, VOYA, and Horn Book/Horn Book Guide are a few of the others. (And if something is not reviewed in any of those at all, then it often won't be purchased, due to the requirement at some libraries that all purchases must have been positively reviewed in at least one, and sometimes three, of such journals. And due to the fact that, with so many books published each year, the only way some library selectors manage to stay on top of genres they don't normally read--especially Fantasy & SF--is by selecting books that get reviewed in one of those journals.) Also, note that some of those journals NEVER do negative reviews--if something gets reviewed negatively, the journal simply doesn't print a review of that book at all. So getting reviewed there is a good thing, but not getting reviewed just means you didn't get reviewed.

I see two libraries in my consortium own Boundary, but mine isn't one of them. Will have to see if I can put a bug in someone's ear to rectify that...

By the by, if you haven't seen the comment yet-- my co-worker may have found your "What book is this?" book #1. Once you give a thumbs-up or -down on that one, she'll either die happy or start looking again.

Well...

[seawasp]

If you go to Amazon you can see that it DID get (positively) reviewed by "School Library Journal", something that pleased me immensely. It sounded like a review for a RAH-juvie type book, and higher praise I couldn't ask for.

Publisher's Weekly and the others, I don't think did. Maybe they'll do Threshold.

As you may have noticed, no, your friend has not nailed it, unfortunately. :(