Richard Dansky

I’ve talked about writing reviews before in this space, but, upon further (ahem) review, I realized that my work in that regard was not quite finished. Sure, I’d talked about what I thought was important in a review, and John B. Rosenman had posted an excellent essay about his reviewing techniques, but I realized I’d left out the most important thing.

I’d forgotten to talk about how to write a bad review. Not an unfavorable one, mind you – a bad one. A book review that completely and utterly fails to do the most basic job of a book review, which is to talk about whether or not the book is worth your (the reader’s) while.

Now I’m not talking about critique here. That’s a whole other kettle of fish, and not at all what I’m interested in here. Bad critique, I’ve found, often has the twin drawbacks of being simultaneously boring and incomprehensible, and thus is rarely read by anyone not in the critic’s or author’s immediate families.

But reviews, well, those are out there – especially the bad ones. And so, in the interests of saving future bad reviewers everywhere the effort of re-re-re-inventing the twin-belted radial tire, I humbly present what, in my opinion, are the keys to getting it done.

(Not that I’ve ever done any of these. Nope. Never.)

1-Make sure the review is all about you.

Focus on any connection you might have to the work, no matter how slight. Discuss where you were when you read it, as well as how you felt, what you were wearing, what Arcade Fire song you were listening to at the time, and which particular mutant subset of “coffee” you were drinking as you skipped to the end and read the last chapter. After all, a book review should not be about the book. It should be about the reviewer.

2-Expound extensively on what you would have done if you’d written the book instead

This is key. What the author did is really just a starting point for people who are much, much smarter – say, reviewers, or slash fanfic writers eager to insert Jean-Luc Picard into any situation imaginable – to show what the book should have been. It’s particularly important to get this out there in a review, because odds are the review’s going to be the first thing someone reads about the book, and you get to stake your claim to it before anyone else.

3-Be clever. Be really, really clever.

Everyone knows the real reason to write book reviews is to get one of your lines quoted and used on a dust jacket. So, dig deep and find your wittiest witticisms. Torture your syntax. Bring your most obscure metaphors out of cryogenic storage and gene-splice them to obscure references worthy of peak-period Dennis Miller. And above all, make sure that you drop as many as you can into one-sentence paragraphs, so they can stand out.

Like this.

Or this.

Shorter and sweeter than a sample-size mandarin orange crème brulee made by angels in the pastry kitchen of heaven.

You get the idea.

4-Dogpile on the rabbit

If you don’t like a book, don’t bother with analysis as to why you don’t feel it’s worthwhile. Certainly don’t take the time to explore what might be positive in the book, or what other readers might enjoy. Accentuating the positive, and what might be worthwhile in future works from the author is a mug’s game. Get out your junior-grade Wolverine strap-on claws and start ripping. The wordier and more verbose you are, the better. The more savage and cutting your slams, the more likely you are to get quoted on message boards, and to have your cleverness reaffirmed by the patrons thereof.

This is particularly important if someone else has slammed the book, or if someone you don’t like has praised it. The former starts the always-popular game of “Who can get in the nastiest one-liner”, while the latter demonstrates your superior taste in a way that taking your toys and going home can no longer quite accomplish.

5-Let the concept take you higher

Writing a precise yet detailed description of what a book is like can be hard work, often requiring multiple attempts. Instead, it’s a lot easier to describe it as “X meets Y”. If you’re feeling particularly energetic, you can go as far as to say “X meets Y in Z”, where Z is the setting from a third property you’ve read recently. It doesn’t really matter if the signifiers you’ve picked to establish your high concept are appropriate or not. What matters is that they’re popular, and that they’re a sufficiently incongruous that mixing the two engages the review-reader’s curiosity. So, for example, you can call Tim Powers’ Last Call “The Golden Bough meets Season 2 of C.S.I.”, which is about as appropriate as calling Jaws a movie about summer in Long Island, and produce a sufficiently unique mental image to consider your job well done.

The key, of course, is adding these references without providing a single bit of supporting evidence as to why they might appropriate. It’s far better to leave them dangling out there like anglerfish lures for the unwary, and besides, supporting evidence can mess up your sentence flow.

6-Cliches for the win!

Certain phrases, in addition to saving you valuable thinking time, are guaranteed winners. These include:

• “On steroids”
• “On acid”
• “Goes up to eleven”
• “The new Stephen King”
• “Like a video game”

If you can combine more than one in a phrase such as “like a video game on steroids, with elements that go up to eleven”, you get bonus points. And possibly a souvenir t-shirt.

7-Review something besides what you’re reviewing

Let’s face it, you don’t always get to review what you want. You may be jonesing for the chance to unleash your critical eye on the latest Stephanie Meyer or Lewis Shiner, but instead, what lands in your lap might be Book 6 of the Hootenanniad, an epic fantasy of basketball-playing elves waging eternal war against the restless evil of orcish tax accountants. Despair not, however – there’s a way out. All that it takes is a link, no matter how tenuous, from the book you are reviewing to the one you want to review, and presto, you’re on preferred ground.

It’s simple, really. Pick a transition like, “Contrast this to how this author I like much better did it in this book I like much better”, and you’re off and running. Or, there’s always, “this character brings to mind comparisons with this other character I like more, who has all these really cool attributes”, and away you go.

8-Write incredibly flattering reviews of anthologies by editors whose future anthologies you want to get invited into.

Because they never, ever, ever notice when you do that.

9-Facts are for wimps, and grammar is for commies

I’m sure there are places out there where facts matter, but book reviews aren’t one of them. Or any of them. Or some of them.

Feel free to plow straight through to your point without bothering to check whether you’ve gotten minor details right, like, say, character names, the title of the book, or what actually happens along the way. If someone’s reading the review, they know what you’re talking about anyway.

The same goes for grammar. You’re telling someone about a book here, damnit, and what’s important is that you get across your feelings. If the rules of syntax and grammar can’t contain the gushing wells of literary passion that this particular read has inspired in you, then the hell with them! Publish, or at least blog, and be damned!

10-Write long

After all, a review that isn’t a significant fraction of the length of the book itself can’t possibly give you an in-depth analysis of what’s going on there. The purpose of a review isn’t to discuss whether something’s good or bad, or worth the reader’s time. It’s to provide a detailed version of “and then this happened.” Think of it as liveblogging Jane Eyre, and you’re on the right track.

11-It’s not a spoiler, it’s a scoop

You have a responsibility to your readers to protect them from any surprises that the book might offer. That’s why you regard it as your duty to unleash and any all major spoilers the book might contain in the first paragraph of your review, the better to cushion readers against the shock that comes later. Dumbledore dies? The cute boy is really a vampire? Drizz’t Do’Urden is actually the grandson of Oberon of Amber? That’s the sort of news that people can’t wait for! By getting that information out there, you’re doing your readers a service, and they will love you for it.

And so will the authors.

12-Leave ‘em guessing

Do that, and they’ll come back for more, or a least that’s the theory. It’s not important to actually let the reader know what you thought about the book. It’s not even important to state whether or not you think it’s worth reading. All of that brings your writing back down to a merely commercial level, and besides, it pins you down. It’s far better to offer random bits of observation without wrapping them in the straightjacket of an actual opinion.

Then again, it might not be.