The other day, someone commented on the blog that, unfortunately, Imager’s Intrigue and Haze were boring and major disappointments. I replied directly, something I usually avoid doing, at least immediately, because the comment punched several of my buttons. As many of my readers well know, my first fantasy, The Magic of Recluce, features Lerris, a young man who, at the beginning of the novel, finds virtually everything in his life boring, and everything that he railed against at the beginning far less so at the end… yet the world in which he lives has changed very little.
I have no problem with readers saying that they personally found a book of mine – or anyone else’s – boring… or whatever. I have great problems when they claim the book is boring, without qualifications. A book, in itself, is neither exciting nor boring. It simply is. When a reader picks up a book and reads it, there is an interaction between what the reader reads and what the writer wrote. What a reader finds interesting depends at least as much on the reader as the writer. There are some books that have been widely and greatly acclaimed that I do not find interesting or enjoyable, and that is true of all readers. In general, however, books that are well-written, well-thought-out, and well plotted tend to last and to draw in a greater percentage of readers than those that are not. The fact that books with overwhelmingly positive reader and critical reviews that also sell large numbers receive comments like “dull,” “boring,” and “slow” suggests that no book can please everyone. That’s not a problem.
The problem, as I see it, is that there are more and more of such unthinking comments, and those comments reflect an underlying attitude that the writer must write to please that particular reader or the author has somehow failed if he or she has not done so. This even goes beyond the content of the books. A number of my books – and those of many other authors – are now receiving “one-star” or negative reviews, not because of faults in the book, but because the book was not available immediately in cheaper e-book versions at the time when the hardcover is published. Exactly how many people in any job would think it fair that they received an unsatisfactory performance review because they didn’t offer their services at a lower rate? Yet that’s exactly what the “one-star-reviewers” are essentially saying – that they have the right to demand when and at what price what version of a book should be released.
It took poor Lerris exile and years to understand that Wandernaught was not boring, but that he was bored because he didn’t want to understand. But that sort of insight seems lacking in those whose motto appears to be: Extremism in the pursuit of entertainment (preferably cheap) is no vice, and moderation in the criticism of those who provide it is no virtue.