“You can’t evaluate a work outside the context of its time.”
“You can if it’s good.”Daria, “Is it Fall Yet?”
As I was reading The Amber Keeper and The Barefoot Queen, I wondered if I was being too harsh—even before I finished them and wrote my reviews. Every time one of the eighteenth-century gypsies asked someone if they were “OK” in The Barefoot Queen or yet another pair of characters would have a meet-cute in The Amber Keeper, I had a hard time controlling my eye rolls. And yet, these books are rated fairly highly on GoodReads.
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| I probably shouldn’t review books when I’m feeling sarcastic. |
In the last few years, I have read a lot of very good books. Plus, I re-read A Constellation of Vital Phenomena for my book group. I’ve been spoiled lately. It’s hard not to hold everything I read to the same standard. It’s not fair. I have no problem judging a book based on the merits of its genre. I have different standards for plot and characterization when it comes to speculative fiction and mysteries and literary fiction and historical fiction.
I suppose I do have one yardstick when it comes to basic writing competency. A story can be bad when the basic premise is flawed or the writer doesn’t have a big enough vocabulary or the structure is so poorly constructed that it ruins whatever effect the author was going for. Besides, I would hate to think that I was actually lowering my standards to give a book a good review when it was just so-so and I know that others will like it just fine. It’s just that reading really good books spoils me until I can recalibrate.
I’m probably overthinking this.