Category Archives: Book reviews

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Love, by Shawn Inmon

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This novel, originally released as five serial short stories, is now available in a compilation volume. At various points, I was substantive and/or developmental editor.

If you never had a look at any of the individual stories, and you like romance, you’re in for something good. Shawn likes romance and isn’t afraid to present it with a gender-balanced point of view. He also isn’t afraid to bust stuff up. I had not known, until this series developed, just how willing he was to knock a storyline onto its side with a major event. This is someone who could and would kill off a major character. I love that.

I’d always figured Shawn would eventually compile the parts into a whole, and it made sense, because Shawn did a good job of developing interesting characters throughout the work. Layers kept coming away as familiar characters gained more nuance. Even the arch-villain, in the end, was revealed in part as a pitiable figure.

If you bought some of the stories and didn’t get around to others, Shawn often runs deals. At this writing, it’s $1 for Kindle. For 244 pages, that’s a lot of reading for your buck.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Newly published: No Circuses, by James O’Callaghan

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This novel has recently been published. I was substantive editor.

I loved the story concept from the start. Written by an authoritative source (a retired Foreign Service officer), Latin American cultural nuances, subtle, informed. I am at my happiest when dealing with people who know things I do not. The protagonist finds himself assigned to direct a bi-national center, which I did not know we even had. They’re either designed to promote international friendship and understanding (if you’re idealistic), or a way to try and broadcast our policies and why people should embrace them (if you’re cynical). Our hero finds himself immersed in the culture–perhaps a bit too much. Or perhaps just the right amount.

Author Jim O’Callaghan approached me to edit the ms. I could instantly tell I was dealing with maturity and openness, someone who could and would learn, but I was also dealing with a pretty good writer. There were some baroque and wordy constructions to simplify here and there, but not outright English flaws, and that was refreshing. Perhaps the greatest thing about the story, besides his comprehensive understanding of Spanish and LatAm culture, was his gift for letting the reader find the humor. It was a long project, but as the end approached, I realized I would miss it.

I am a devotee of Andina, the musical sounds of the Andes (mostly popular in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and heavily overlain with Native rhythms and language). They are heavy on guitar and pan-flute, and while I worked, I played nothing else on my MusicMonkey. When you read it, if you have any Andina, I recommend you do the same. If you find yourself desiring to try some, I suggest K’ala Marka, Nativo, Los Kjarkas, Ecuador Inkas or Savia Andina as starting points. Lively, passionate, soulful.

Jim was one of the easiest authors an editor could seek to work with. He handled himself like someone who has already been successful, and that bodes well. It’s an adventure story that pokes fun at bureaucracy, the labyrinthine ways of Latin American politics, and how things are not always as they seem. The Hemingway vibe is perceptible throughout. It has complex characters with crises, emotions and motivations; that is one area where I have nothing to teach Jim. There is no one in this book you will find difficult to picture. It has goofy and often hilarious situations, but none quite so goofy as to crack your suspension of disbelief. As I neared the end, I was convinced this was autobiographical with only names changed. It isn’t, but he had me going.

While I always hope my clients will succeed, and handsomely so, I often edit books that I would not myself purchase. I’m buying a copy of this one. If anything I’ve described sounds interesting to you, consider this one to receive an unqualified recommendation.

Book reviews

Current read: A Short History of the American Revolution, by James L. Stokesbury

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I love history. I hate much recent history writing.

Some years back, I landed work writing a series of US history articles. My collegiate studies focused on ancient Western civs; I only took one US history class, and it wasn’t a highlight. In prep, I went out looking for a balanced survey of the subject–and found none. What I found was two enormous packs of agenda-driven crap: A Patriot’s History of the United States, and A People’s History of the United States. Both were repulsive; the first more so, because my long-ago undergraduate advisor helped perpetrate it, but the answer to was that no balanced survey was readily available.

One may not write about US history, it seems, unless one begins with a conclusion (Murrica is wonderful and perfect, Murrica has never done a single decent thing) and then distorts the evidence to sustain the conclusion. That’s not history.

History is when one looks at the evidence, puts the context into perspective, and tells the story as an honest broker. Nowadays, this is not much done. Nowadays, it’s not just the journalists who write garbage history, though you can tell when they’re doing it. Big names write garbage history. I watch people deify Howard Zinn, and I despair. But it’s not all bad.

The War of American Independence, or the American Revolution, is a favorite subject of mine. It conflicts me. On the one hand, I consider our rebellion a symbol of the national pathology. On the other, even I–the least nationalistic American citizen most people will ever meet–find myself stirred by the exploits of the Rebel militia, the forlorn Continental Navy, and so on. There is an odd pleasure in reading of how a ragtag army, which spent much of its time going home after expired enlistments, stood in there with some of the elite armies of Europe and won by not quitting. It is inspiring to have some distant sense of connection with it, even if my own forebears were nearly all on the other side. But in the United States, one is almost not allowed to consider the Revolutionary War with any objectivity. Only two stances are tolerated: “we were right,” or “we were lunatics.”

My own reading of the history suggests that one may credibly split the difference, here as in so many other cases. Yeah, it was the act of a bunch of whiners who resented helping to foot the bill for their own defense, a war spurred by the rich and fought by the poor. But it is just as true that the Crown was enormously out of touch with colonial life and reality, and dealt with the colonies in such pigheaded and ham-fisted ways as to bring about armed rebellion. Not often do I see history that examines events not in light of what we know now, or what mythology we have spent eleven generations creating, but in light of what the participants understood or could know.

This is why I am enamored with the subject book. Its only fault is that it is short on maps (in particular, it needs one for the Saratoga campaign). It credits the colonials where due, and the British where due, and takes one ever back to the context of the times. Why did the British not carry the war through to a finish in 1776? Because a healthy segment of British thought misunderstood the colonial sentiment, and hoped to bring the strays back into the fold. Because nationalism was rather a new thing; a war in which taking the enemy capital did not result in a settlement with concessions was a new thing. Because colonials would resent beyond all expectation the mother country enlisting Native Americans and German mercenaries to put down the rebellion. Stokesbury always takes us back to the vital question: what did the participants know and think, at the time, and without our modern hindsight?

It sounds so obvious, yet is the first thing many seem to forget. Take Japan in December 1941. Today, it seems bizarre that Japan imagined that Pearl Harbor and blows against the British and Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies would force the United States to accept the Pacific status quo. They understood us as poorly as we understood them. And yet, without that thinking, the actions of the times make little sense. Insight into the contemporary mindset is vital to historical understanding. That, dear reader, is where Stokesbury delivers. His account positions the events, impartially presented, in the context of what those of the day knew and understood, while pointing out that which they did not yet realize.

That is how you teach history. Prof. Stokesbury passed away two decades ago, but if this is a fair sample, he was a loss to the discipline of history. If you’d like to understand the Revolutionary War without the modern partisan crap, and without 20/20 hindsight, this historian has delivered.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Wedding, by Shawn Inmon

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Let’s ring in the new year with a new release.

This novella is the fifth and concluding piece in Shawn’s Second Chance Romance series. I was substantive editor.

I don’t recall the point at which Shawn decided to make this a series, but it’s a good one. All along, I have been urging him to resist the temptation to let the story be too derivative of his first book, a non-fiction true romance. While this is inarguably inspired by that story, it’s pleasing that he has diverged a great deal from its concept. He has built up a number of interesting supporting characters, and shows a gift for seeing the comedy in everyday things that are ridiculous when we consider them.

When he sent me the plot digest, I responded by asking (paraphrased): “So are you changing the title to Second Chance Wedding Planning? Because that’s about all you have here.” Shawn is an exceptionally coachable author who gets fuller value from my services than any other client I have, and he went back to work. In so doing, he expanded the story by 50%, though I brought that down to about 30% in editing. The outcome is a very clean conclusion that introduces new players, has conflict and suspense, and does a nice job of setting up a sequel novel if Shawn decides to go that route. I hope and suspect that he will.

Lastly, I want to thank you all for your readership in 2014. I enjoy a thoughtful, kind, and intelligent reader base here at The ‘Lancer. May your 2015 be the best year yet for you all.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Thanksgiving, by Shawn Inmon

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This short story/novella is now available. I was substantive editor. It is the fourth installment of Shawn’s Second Chance series. Though one can read it as a stand-alone without difficulty, I recommend the three previous editions as a good lead-up.

I believe that when Shawn hatched the idea to align the series’ release dates with holidays, that was in the category of ‘seemed like a good idea at the time.’ It has proven challenging for him, and by extension, for me to a lesser degree. Our earliest discussions of the storyline centered around how to portray and unfold the events foretold in Second Chance Summer, and those happen to fit well with Shawn’s professional knowledge, so I was confident he would handle them well. He definitely has.

Since romance is the name of the game in this storyline, the reader who returns to it for matters of the heart portrayed with unabashed confidence will not be disappointed. Of course, when he sent me the first editing candidate draft, I didn’t pull any punches. There were a few twists that I felt made no sense, and a few possibilities unexploited, and I suggested he address both situations. Shawn is coachable, and he got back to it. The result is a somewhat different type of story than the previous books, which I believe readers will find refreshing–and it will close up some threads while opening others. As always, I enjoyed the project, and working with Shawn.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Chad Stinson Goes for a Walk, by Shawn Inmon

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This short story is now available on Amazon. I was substantive editor.

Shawn brings me story ideas early in the process, which I wish more of my clients would do. I am very frank with him. Some of his ideas, no likey, and I tell him so in a style I call tactful bluntness. If he still wants to write it, of course, I stand ready to help him as best I can. For some reason, he seems to be surprised when I like an idea very much, which is not justified because he has a lot of good ideas, and I tell him so.

This was one of the good ones, and after the first read, I told him as much. Shawn’s horror/supernatural concepts are maturing, and his characters grow more original with his advancement as a writer. The best thing about Chad Stinson, in my view, is the witty mix of social comment and growing macabreness (macabrosity?).

Any author who can pull you gradually into something freaky, while making you laugh at society, accomplishes in two different directions. A great, quick read with broad appeal.

Book reviews

Hitler’s Foreign Executioners, by Christopher Hale

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I love history.

Because I love history, I like to see history books that take on difficult topics, expand understanding, challenge perceptions.

When someone picks up a history book, my respect for that person grows. However, I also feel a duty to help the history consumer who may look at a well-put-together book and take it all at face value.

And when the author of a history book botches up a number of details, that’s a problem.

This brings us to Hitler’s Foreign Executioners: Europe’s Dirty Secret, by Christopher Hale.

Hale, a documentary producer and journalist, sets forth to explain that the Holocaust was not merely a German production, but that soldiers and civilians from many European countries took active, willing, and destructive parts in it. He was motivated to do so by a ceremony honoring Latvian SS veterans as patriots, when in reality the Latvian SS were guilty of Holocaust atrocities and don’t deserve to be honored by anyone. I believe he is responding to the rising tide of far-right sentiment in Europe that keeps finding reasons why Jews are somehow bad, and why therefore, the Holocaust really wasn’t quite so bad.

He had a good idea there, because some people evidently need a reminder of just how widespread and awful the atrocities of WWII Europe were. I don’t; I know. I was interested in new evidence, research, and analysis to add to my store of understanding.

And he has screwed it up. It annoys me.

The problem is that he makes many factual errors. I don’t like factual errors. These are factual errors no academic historian worth even a bachelor’s degree would make, much less a professor of history.

He has ‘heavy’ Ju-52 ‘bombers’ pounding Yugoslavia, when in fact the Tante Ju was a transport. It was capable of bombardment, but the Luftwaffe had far better bombers (none truly heavy, by the way) and far too few Ju-52s. I’m pretty sure that the Ju-88s, Ju-87s, Do-17s and He-111s, all main Luftwaffe bombers, did the bulk of it. Hale doesn’t even know which bombers were which.

He has Nazi Germany ‘seizing’ the Ploesti oilfields in Romania. This is false. Romania joined the Axis in late 1940, and Hitler had no need to seize anything. Romanian oil in large part fueled the Nazi war effort, supplied without qualms. Hale evidently doesn’t realize that Romania joined the Axis of its own free will, which overlooks a fact that would help his case.

He describes the June 1941 Iași (Romania) pogrom as the first large-scale pogrom of the war. This is ridiculous. To think it not ridiculous, one must decide that Kristallnacht (1938) was somehow not a pogrom. There had already been quite a few pogroms, which is not to minimize Iași, simply to point out that Hale’s wording is recklessly imprecise.

He believes that the Yugoslav Army, crushed by the Germans and Italians in April 1941, fielded only five divisions. That’s ridiculous. It had over thirty divisions, and while much of it was low in training or morale, to suggest that it was half the size of the Dutch Army Hitler overran (ten divisions) in May 1940 is silliness. Hale does not seem to know anything about the orders of battle for the conflict.

And that’s all by page 87 of a 400-page book.

Ah, one might rejoin, but aren’t those all just minor details that do not detract from his primary point? Yes and no, in that his primary point happens to be well supported by evidence whether or not he supplies it correctly. Here’s the problem with a journalist who doesn’t know or understand the minor details. While I give Hale credit for providing lengthy footnotes and sources, I do not want to have to check them all. When he has the accepted details right, I feel less compulsion to verify everything he says. When he gets them wrong, and puts out a sloppy book, I begin to wonder how far I can trust his account and use of the sources. This undermines his credibility in a very unfortunate way. If he thinks the Ju-52 is a bomber, and that the Royal Yugoslav Army had only five divisions, I with good reason question his basic knowledge of the facts. And if I must question that, then I can’t believe him without digging up all his sources and verifying them.

I don’t buy a book expecting to have to do that. However, in my case at least, I know enough about the war and the Holocaust that if I wanted to dedicate a few months to the job, I could check them all and make my own determinations. Or, far better, I could read one that doesn’t make me think the author didn’t really care about getting the history right.

This is terrible. We needed this book. The overwhelming body of evidence–and believe me, I am aware that Rosh Hashanah will begin in my time zone shortly after I post this, and yes, that bothers me–documents what Hale is saying. The attempted eradication of European Jewry, which ‘succeeded’ to an appalling degree and which we call the Holocaust, is supported by oceans of evidence. More to the point of this book, most European nationalities had some sordid hand in the Holocaust. Some participated with gusto that embarrassed and concerned even the SS, which is saying rather a lot. People should know that. People should know that this monstrosity is part of the history of the nations whose people participated in it, whether that bothers those nations or not (and if it doesn’t, that bothers me). And when anti-Semitic groups start trying to paint mass murderers as decent human beings, we need books to bonk them on the head with. Thick ones. good ones.

Hale could have written one of these, but he failed, because he either did not know the fundamental facts, or did not consider them very important. I cannot see another logical reason; I do not think he set out to be wrong. I think he just doesn’t know and doesn’t think it’s important. His training is to create an impression, which is what documentaries do: present in a short time the selected information that will tell the viewer how to think.

Fundamental facts are important, whether Hale thinks so or not. Command of the fundamentals is the basis on which to build an argument. Without it, one undermines one’s own basis. The poor proofreading I can pardon. A series of flagrant mistakes, I will not.

Thus, the assistance to the history consumer that I promised: before you buy it, take a look at the author’s main line of work. Most of the truly lousy history books I have read were not written by professors of history. Most were written by journalists. Hale is a documentary producer, and based on many of the documentaries I’ve watched, that suggests he’s in the entertainment business. Fine and good–but when he starts to write history that the layman will tend to believe, he is loansharking in my temple, and I will lash his journalistic ass out of it.

Even if I agree with the conclusion he reached.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Spiking the ball

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In my line of work, there are some unwritten rules of good behavior.

  • One must always do one’s best work within the parameters assigned.
  • One must not review books in which one has had a hand.
  • One must always remember that it’s the author’s book. It was the editor’s job to make the author look as good as possible, and s/he got paid to do so.
  • One must not go to review comment sections in any way that could remotely upstage or embarrass the author.
  • One must accept that invisibility is praise. It’s like officiating a sporting event: if your work is excellent, it goes unnoticed.

I don’t think I’ll be breaking the rules if I do a little endzone celebration here, because I did something I feel pretty good about.

As blog regulars know, the e-book Shadows by Terry Schott was published about a week ago. Terry’s genre is dystopian contemporary science fiction, and he has a significant following. He engaged my editing services on this newest book. Before I got to work, I took a look at the reviews of his previous works. They were mostly very positive, and the only nagging complaint was that a few reviewers remarked upon the ‘editing.’ We’ve been over the ways in which that can be a shortsighted review comment, but I did take note of them. Terry didn’t need me in order to get people to like his stories better. The best service I could offer him was to make the ‘editing’ remarks go away.

Sixteen reviews in, and it’s clear that his fans love the story.

Not a one, so far, mentions the editing. That means that not only did those reviewers have no issues with it that they cared to mention, none so far even noticed much of a change. And if there are potential purchasers on the fence, ones who would be put off by adverse commentary about editing, it may hearten them that the reviews make no such mention. They may attribute it to the author’s strides, or to some unknown factor.

I smile, invisibly, with fierce satisfaction.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Newly published: Shadows, by Terry Schott–and a free offer

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This contemporary SF e-book has been published. I was copy editor.

Shawn Inmon, for whom I’ve done steady work over the past couple of years, was kind enough to refer Terry to me. Most of the referrals I receive involve unpublished authors, which was not Terry’s case. His current (and the subject) project was kicking off a new series, having concluded another after something like seven books.

When the author is previously published, that must inform editorial decisionmaking. Terry made clear that his previous editing experiences hadn’t been what he’d hoped for. It seemed illogical to propose to duplicate their undesired efforts. What I did was look up Terry’s body of work and find out what readers liked and didn’t like about it.

Most of his reviews were favorable. Those that were critical mostly blamed the ‘editing.’ When I read that, my ‘you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about’ hackles usually go up. There is no way to know if the editing is at fault, for close on a dozen reasons, and the comment in a review shows ignorance of the process. At the same time, take it however I might wish, I had to absorb the feedback in terms of its true meaning. ‘It needs an editor’ is reviewer-blurt for ‘I found errors and they shouldn’t be in a finished book.’

Damn right they shouldn’t. No argument. However, most people liked the books, which meant that Terry had something to lose. What if I talked him into making some significant changes to his approach, and the reviews came back tepid? Picture it: “I used to like these stories, but now, not so much. The writing has improved in terms of less errors, but the story isn’t as good, and that was what I cared about.” That, dear reader, is what goes under the hammer every time an established author engages a new literary witch doctor. It would be one thing if previous books had been met with a wave of launched javelins. These had not. I might be entirely capable of talking Terry out of pleasing his audience.

In my world, that is the rough equivalent of an arsonist firefighter.

No one hires me hoping to alienate his or her reader base.

So I proposed to Terry: how about I limit this to copy editing, so that we address the unhappy minority’s biggest complaint, without depriving your happy majority of what it loves? He liked the idea, and I got to work. The story is set in Ontario, although the Canadianness isn’t really emphasized. This was an orthography factor for my work, because Canadian English has subtle differences from US English. I am not sure Terry anticipated that I would know that, but after brief conference, we agreed to conform the ms to Canadian orthography.

The result is a modern game-related SF/thriller that comes into clarity much as does an image when one increases the resolution. At, say, 80 x 50, one would see a lot of squares. Bump it to 160 x 100, more detail; 320 x 200, still more, and so on until the plot and backdrop come into full focus. If that is your genre, you may very much enjoy the milieu Terry has created.

===

There’s more than one new project out there in the genre. I’ve known Mike Lee Davis, aka Studio Dongo, since he was Sloucho back at Epinions. A good guy who was one of the best writers at the site, he’s also writing contemporary/conspiracy SF these days. He is currently promoting Vanishing in a Puff of Logic, a gaming story, whose Amazon blurb reads:

Vanishing in a Puff of Logic is the story of one neurotic gamer’s attempt to win at Nethack while tripping on shrooms.

On a slightly deeper level, the story is about that same gamer’s desire to triumph as a female elven wizard who is, literally, naked.

And on an even deeper level . . .

Let’s face it. There is no even deeper level.

If you get the impression that Mike’s pretty down-to-earth, capable of surprises, and has a sense of humor about his work and himself, you’re correct. His book is free today and tomorrow, August 11 and August 12, and if you check him out, I think you’ll like what you see.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

When the reviews say “she should fire her editor”…

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The short version is: the reviewer doesn’t know that. In fact, that reviewer knows little of the dynamics of editor/author relationships.

It’s common, though. An unpolished book sees print, either self-published or conventionally published. The reviewer finds fault, figures it’s the sort of fault a competent editor would have fixed, and leaps to one of two conclusions:

“She obviously didn’t have an editor.”

“Her editor was clearly a failure.”

Either is possible. The first is common enough, because competent editing is not inexpensive, and the big draw of self-publishing is that one gets to make all the decisions. Considering the sizes and fragilities of many first-time authors’ egos, given time, an author can talk herself into the delusion that editors are for mere mortals. In reality, she may have been terrified that an editor would puncture her bubble (carefully nurtured by family and close friends, who told her she was wonderful), giving her only two choices she can live with: give up in despair, or do the la-la-la-la fingers-in-ears thing. She has a third–to learn to better herself–but that’s the most difficult one for many.

But let’s cast reasonable doubt on the title statement’s implication. Taking that line in the review:

There might never have been an editor or proofreader, although I would concur with the review line in that case: that means she hired herself as both, and did an unacceptable job worthy of dismissal. The outcome might have been acceptable to her, but she’s not the reader. The reader makes the final decision, and authors and editors who forget that will suffer.

The ‘editing’ issues may be proofreading issues. Not that editors should ever let an error pass untouched, but editing and proofreading are not the same–and many reviewers don’t realize that.

The author might have hired only a proofreader, who is not a copy or substantive/developmental editor, and who stuck strictly to catching typos, punctuation, and egregiously bad grammar. The reviewer probably doesn’t know if that’s the case.

She might have hired only a copy editor, who is not a substantive/developmental editor. A copy editor doesn’t care if the story is stupid, as long as it’s well-written. The reviewer may not realize that being hired to tighten prose isn’t the same as being in at the birth.

She might have hired any of the above, then disregarded all the guidance. It happens rather often, yet the reviewer may assume in error that the editor actually had influence.

She might have been fundamentally incapable of decent writing, hired professionals to fix it, and then decided the book needed revision. If she never accepted the reality–that she must never, ever fix her own mistakes unedited–that would leave stretches of capable writing interspersed with inexplicably amateurish insertions. All the reviewer will see is that parts of the book appear dropped on their heads.

The reviewer may not grasp any of the nuances on the spectrum between proofreading and substantive or developmental editing. To the reviewer, it may all look like ‘editing,’ which is tantamount to equating a Jiffy Lube oil changer with an ASE certified master auto mechanic. My mechanic in Kennewick (Ralph Blair at Tri-City Battery, a great guy and an expert at auto repair), didn’t do my oil changes; one of the junior techs did. That was fine, because anyone under Ralph’s tutelage had better do a good job. The point is that they did different work. So do editors (of the various types) and proofreaders.

There is no guarantee that the reviewer even knows good writing from bad. Many should, as all reviewers are readers, often voracious ones; they should be exposed to enough good writing to know it from bad. That’s the theory. In the real world, I see many, many lousy books festooned with shimmering reviews. If reviewers are generally competent to judge bad writing, why are so many of them gushing about this junk? That alone should cast reasonable doubt upon any criticism one finds in a book review, at least absent proof of the reviewer’s fundamental competence.

Someone else may have bungled, and badly. I know of a social historian (emphasis on sports) by the name of Allen Barra, who now works for American Heritage and The Wall Street Journal. I like Barra because he is unafraid to stake out a position and support it, in addition to his fundamental writing and researching competence. Barra wrote a biography of Wyatt Earp some years back, and I bought a copy. What I saw mystified me. To my eyes, the book seemed to have been typeset and published in the early stages of author revision; there were swatches of text duplicated in more than one place, unfinished thoughts, orphaned paragraphs, and many other problems. This made no sense. I’d been planning to write a review, but before I did, I got in touch with Barra. I had an address for him from a very brief correspondence over something he wrote at Salon. In short: “What the hell happened, Allen?” Barra was quick to explain. His publisher had committed a spectacular error, publishing an early and incomplete version of the ms. Seriously. You may imagine his discomfiture. He asked if he could send me a copy of the correctly published version. At first I demurred, thinking it a bit much for an author to try to ‘make it right’ for every reader victimized by the stupidity of his publisher, but he made the telling point: “If you are going to write a review, I would rather it be of my best work.” Couldn’t argue with that. He sent it, I read it, and the review was what the proper version merited.

And yes: it could be that a bad writer hired a bad substantive editor, did everything he said, and published junk. I’m not saying that the title statement is always wrong. It is that it is often an uniformed statement issued by a person unqualified to judge, or unaware of the reality. It’s one thing for a reviewer to say: “The book is not well written,” or “The story has unacceptable holes,” or “I found the basic typos distracting.” Those judgments are as fair as the reader’s own discernment, and are all verdicts no author should wish to see in a review. But “She obviously either had no editor, or had an inept one” is generally unfair, because so many other factors may have been the reality–starting with most readers’ absence of understanding of how authors work with (or against) their various editing and proofreading colleagues.

Just please do bear it in mind the next time you get ready to peel the paint off a terrible book.