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John has asked that I publish my review criteria, so here it is. Note that this only really counts for books I've read this year (2006) and beyond - in years past I wasn't quite as critical as I am now.
I have to admit I'm seriously thinking of changing my rating to simply 'Worth it' or 'Avoid it' since that's all I'm really trying to convey, but at least for now here is what my rating system is.
If a book has no rating, that means I didn't finish it. I don't quit that many titles, but more than I'd like. Unfortunately I'm unlikely to blog about them because at that point they don't become worth any more of my time.
A one star rating implies that the book is overall very poor, but might appeal to somebody who must have the work based on a particular series. An example of this would be many of the D&D books published by Wizards of the Coast. Overall this means I regret spending time reading it because I got nothing out of it. I have to wonder why I would finish such a book, but who knows.
A two star book is one that is going to appeal to fans of the series or author, but the book has some issues. Note that this book isn't lame or a waste of time - it just isn't going to appeal without something else (love of author, fondness for the subject matter, etc.) to help pull you through it. I've read several books by Jack Chalker and Fred Saberhagen like this.
A three star rating indicates that the book is very solid and fans of the genre will enjoy it. It should offer some new ideas perhaps or be such an engrossing plot or contain interesting deep characters. There are plenty of books like this - in fact I'd argue that most sci fi published today fall into this category.
A four star rating will be used when a book is a great - really a fantastic sci-fi book that anybody who enjoys sci-fi will find worth the time to read it. In fact, it's so good a sci-fi fan who doesn't read it would probably regret it because it will be talked about and see time in the reward nominee lists. Books like Rendezvous with Rama and Ringworld are in this category for me.
A five star rating is rare - this is the book that gets it all right and does it so well, you believe most readers, whether they like sci-fi or not, will enjoy reading this one. This is the book that is so good you'd recommend it to everybody - your mom, your spouse, etc. The Knight is a book like this, as is Ender's Game to me.
I also include half-star ratings when I feel like it - I don't always know exactly why in advance, but I try to put that into the text.
I'm not trying to review the reading experience as John does (as an aside, I think that's a fine way to review and I'm glad I know how he rates books in his reviews.) I'm more interested reviewing in a book as a piece of literature and helping place these books in the complete collection of literary efforts. Are many sci-fi books just pulp fiction? Sure, absolutely, but that doesn't mean they aren't interesting. I understand the concept of sci-fi as the 'literature of ideas' because it isn't always about symbolism and characterization but instead about cool ideas on the potential of the past, present, or future. But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate when a book does deliver on all these things and when I read one that does I think it deserves mention.
I like to do a review after I've read the book and can still remember it so I sometimes I just end up with a summary instead of a full in-depth review. Sorry about that, but if I don't have time I figure even the summary info is better than nothing. I also like to think a little bit about a review and not write it up immediately after reading the book because I like to be able to gain some perspective on it. That's hard when you've literally just finished it and are exciting or disappointed with the ending. If I take a day to think about it, I often realize the book isn't quite as good or as bad as I might have initially thought.
Comments (6)
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Posted by Scott Shaffer at Friday June 09, 2006 at 1:06 PM
© Friday June 09, 2006 at 1:06 PM SF Signal
Sweet! I linked to both our policies in the Meta-Signal widget on the home page.
Posted by John on Friday June 09, 2006 at 4:34 PM at 4:34 PM
Ender's Game... I just got handed that the other day. I was skeptical but if it is on your 5 star radar, I'll read it. I can't believe that I'm actually going to read an old fashioned book. Maybe I'll just hold my iPod in my other hand so it doesn't feel so weird. 
Posted by Sci-Fi Ranter Girl on Friday June 09, 2006 at 9:58 PM at 9:58 PM
Ok here is how a rating system should work and anyone who doesn't use it is lame:
Note: adult language
Half Star: this book sucks bad and it pissed me off. I would rate Hyperion with a half star.
One Star: This book sucks bad but did not piss me off. Old man's war would get one star (just kidding I liked Old Man's War but I can't think of a one star book at the moment)
Two stars: this book just sucks. Rendezvous with Rama, The Difference Engine, Blind Lake, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, The Real Story are all books that fit this catagory.
OK they don't suck but they are not any good either; they just fill a void in time that I am glad I didn't waste watching Seinfeld reruns.
Note I can be biased becouse of chronological problems. Rendezvuos with Rama would fit this. Not a great book but it did introduce some great concepts to sci-fi. I was exposed to those concepts in works that were written later so I was unsuprised by them in Rama. In other words I must be exposed to a great new idea for the first time in a work that was first to express it in order for me to give it credit. I will not post-recoganise it.
Also good books, books that would be three, that piss me off can fall into this catagory. Childhoods End (which is actualy not a good example becouse it should be a four) would be in this catagory. Jesus Christ is that book fucking depressing....but so well done in being depressing. Anyway I will often go back and amend book ratings like this to their proper place after I get over being pissed. Another book that pissed me off but was good would be Orynx and Crake. Actually come to think of it blind lake sucked and pissed me off. It should be a one...oh wait but it did not suck bad and pissed me off so now a one star equals books that suck bad and book that just suck and piss me off.
actaully I just looked at the books I rated and Quarantine is a two and I don't know why.
So to recap: two stars are books that suck, books that are good but piss me off, and books I don't know why are rated that way...plus books that suck and piss me off are one star.
Three Stars: This book was good, and you should read it becouse it is good and I say so. Books like A Fire Upon The Deep, Diaspora, The State of the Art and The Forever War
I don't know why I put The Forever War as a three and not four...oh wait now I know...becouse at the end when they were in that stupid null space sphere and it was lame and then Joe Haldeman made that really crappy sequal Forever Free that sucked and pissed me off...so books that would get fours but have stupid null space spheres crappy endings and really sucky sequals get three stars...but Forever Peace was at least the spritual sequal to Forever war so...screw it.
Three stars are good books and Forever War
Four Stars: This book is great, and if you have not read it yet you suck, but it is OK to admit that you have not read it....exept that you do suck and now that you have admitted it everyone now knows you suck. Ender's Game, Forever Peace, The Knights of the Limits, On Human Nature (which isn't even Sci Fi), The Dispossessed and Permutation City would be four star books. What the hell?!?! I never even read Fire upon the Deep why the hell did I rate it as a three? Jesus H Chr....I ment to put Deepness in the Sky as a three star and I now remeber why I didn't give it a four. It is becouse he named two books with the word deep in it. Singularity or no singularity Vinge is a jerk for doing that.
Five Star: Use of Weapons and Nueromancer and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot and sucks.
hey can I contribute review summaries??
Posted by joshua corning on Friday June 09, 2006 at 11:43 PM at 11:43 PM
Heh-heh...funny! And you get extra bonus points, Joshua, for using the SF Signal style of bold book titles! 
Posted by John on Saturday June 10, 2006 at 12:00 AM at 12:00 AM
I realize that you must get tons of requests to review new books. Since you were too busy, I decided to share the most recent review of my novel.
I'm a therapist in a children's mental health program in West Virginia, U.S. -- the state with the highest rate of child maltreatment deaths in this country. Author proceeds from my first science fiction novel are donated to prevent child abuse.
Following is the most recent review. It was also reviewed by Barry Hunter if you visit his site: www.baryonline.com. A satirical essay about my promotion of the project was published in Wingspan Quarterly: www.wingspanquarterly.com. If there is anything that you can do to help promote this project, please consider it. SpecFicWorld donated free advertising. Otherwise, I've been self-promoting anyplace that will let me. I can email a copy of the novel if you would like to review it yourself. Several authors gave me blurbs if you would like to read them -- a few are on the publisher's site. I'd buy advertising, but I doubt that I could afford it. I've been saving to create a web site, and that should come first. I apologize if you've replied before. In the beginning of this project, I kept a manual list -- it didn't work. Thanks.
Robert Eggleton
********
I Owe One to Robert Eggleton
By Evelyn Somers, The Missouri Review
Earlier this year I was contacted by a first-time novelist asking if I would review his forthcoming e-book. If people knew how many requests of this kind editors get, they would understand that out of self-preservation we sometimes . . . well, I ignored it.
Robert tried again. There was something in the tone of his e-mail. Clearly this mattered to him. So I said yes, I'd take a look, though I didn't think we could review Rarity From the Hollow. This is all fogged somewhat in memory: in the months since then our magazine moved its office, I was hospitalized for a cat bite (yes, they're dangerous!), we've published several issues, read hundreds of manuscripts, I went to Africa, etc., etc. But as I recall, Robert sent me the first chapter, which begins with two impoverished schoolgirls (from the Hollow of the title) studying together and spelling the word for an adult sex toy. It was quirky, profane, disturbing. I said I'd look at the book, not entirely sure what I could do to help.
He sent me the whole thing. I read portions of the book, which is subtitled "A Lacy Dawn Adventure," after the girl protagonist, Lacy Dawn. I liked Lacy, who lives in a world of poverty, classmates with precocious sexual knowledge and/or experience, unemployed men, worn-down women and cruelty so casual that it's more knee-jerk than intentional. Maybe I was just too bothered by the content, but at a certain point I knew I just couldn't do anything. Time was nonexistent.
So I deleted the book.
Robert contacted me again, and I got soft. You see, there was something about the whole project in general. Robert is a social worker who has spent at least a portion of his career working with child-abuse victims in Appalachia. The book was partly about that, and mostly very strange. In the Hollow, Lacy takes up with an android named DotCom, from "out of state," which really means out of this world. Under DotCom's wing, she decides that she will "save" her family. Little does she know she will end up saving the universe. Robert was donating the proceeds from sales to help child-abuse victims.
Robert is not a kid; he's maybe my age, maybe older. This wasn't about youthful ambition, vanity and reputation. It was about some kind of personal calling. I believe in those. I also believe in people who are driven to get their writing out there to an audience, through whatever venue. The e-book idea intrigued me. The earnestness of the appeal got to me. Send the book again, I said. He did. It's still on my hard drive. (I suppose I should delete it, since I haven't paid for it.)
Robert kept after me. If I liked it, could I write a blurb? Yeah, of course. I was fund-raising for my African trip (a Habitat build), teaching, editing, raising three kids. But who isn't busy? We set our own priorities. I put Robert and his book lower than some other things, which really wasn't fair because I said I would do something, and I didn't.
And it has bothered me. Here's another thing people don't know about editors. They sometimes have consciences about books/stories/poems/whatever that they've allowed to get lost or neglected in the shuffle of what amounts to thousands of pages.
So I'm belatedly giving Rarity From the Hollow a plug. Among its strengths are an ultra-convincing depiction of the lives, especially the inner lives, of the Appalachian protagonists. The grim details of their existence are delivered with such flat understatement that at times they almost become comic. And just when you think enough is enough, this world is just too ugly, Lacy's father (who is being "fixed" with DotCom's help) gets a job and Lacy, her mother and her dog take off for a trip to the mall "out of state" with Lacy's android friend, now her "fiancé" (though as Lacy's mother points out, he doesn't have any private parts, not even "a bump.") In the space between a few lines we go from hardscrabble realism to pure sci-fi/fantasy. It's quite a trip.
Rarity is published by FatCat Press, which has other e-books for sale as well. You can find it at www.fatcatpress.com. The blurb on the website says in part:
Lacy Dawn is a true daughter of Appalachia, and then some. She lives in a hollow with her mom, her Vietnam Vet dad, and her mutt Brownie, a dog who's very skilled at laying fiber-optic cable. Lacy Dawn's android boyfriend, DotCom, has come to the hollow with a mission. His equipment includes infomercial videos of Earth's earliest proto-humans from millennia ago. DotCom has been sent by the Manager of the Mall on planet Shptiludrp: he must recruit Lacy Dawn to save Earth, and they must get a boatload of shopping done at the mall along the way. Saving Earth is important, but shopping - well, priorities are priorities.
Yes, priorities are. I should have had mine in order. Robert Eggleton's book deserves your attention. Check it out.
Posted by robert eggleton on Wednesday November 22, 2006 at 7:26 PM at 7:26 PM
Ummm, gosh, I'll pass on that. A short link to your website might have gotten my attention. A long pasting of a review gets me rapidly disinterested.
Posted by Fred Kiesche on Thursday November 23, 2006 at 4:15 AM at 4:15 AM