Next review is yet to come, and it'll be posted soon enough - I guess two/three days up to week. Anyway I always considered reviewing books as a pleasure/hobby/something to kill your time with. I never imagined that reviewing could be... dangerous.
I've met various people, some had horribly big ego - some of them hadn't. Some of them were authors. Unfortunately. (And others, obviously, were not, though this post is not about them).
Thing I just wanna make comment on is connected to Anne Rice and her mindless-zombie-fans army. Some of you might have heard about what happened already, some may not. I'll try to stay objective, but unfortunately it is hard thing to do.
Everything started with Mrs. Rice posting a link to negative review of her book - Pandora (from the New Tales of the Vampires series). In my opinion, even though I am a huge Anne Rice's fan, negative opinion was true - Pandora is one of weaker, if not the weakest book from whole vampires universe written by Anne Rice (considering New and Old Tales together). Anne Rice is a gifted author, of course, she knows how to write, create characters and all that... only not in this case, and that is - in my personal opinion - fact. Pandora is boring as hell and it is (together with Vampire Vittorio and Memnoch the Devil) the most boring book I've encountered from her. Even Songs of the Seraphims were better - though I am not brave enough (not yet anyway) to go for newest novels by her.
But, anyway I guess beat bush around long enough, so let's go straight to what happened. Miss Articulate posted a review in which she said she disliked the book*. Worth mentioning is the fact, that she bought well used book just because she needed it to make some craft-work. It happens to be Pandora, unfortunately for Miss A.
Anne Rice posted the link on her Facebook profile (which she does often - I mean, she shares both positive and negative opinions as well as other stuff) with comment "by Miss Articulate is a review by some one who loathed the book so much she cut it to pieces. Comments most welcome.".(it's a status update from 30th April, though I've no idea how to link you directly to it). Comment seems to be normal one, though just after seeing it, I had my doubts. I heard before about how negative reviews make Anne Rice upset and knowing that I had some feeling that this comment is not a neutral one. But I never have imagined how big this case would be. And unfortunately I was right this time - an army of mindless zombies attacked reviewer with less than appropriate words. As the blogger said - she is one, with more or less 100 followers. Anne Rice has thousands.
And of course, one may say that it is not Anne Rice's fault. Well, of course - she didn't ask her fan base directly to squash Miss Articulate, though one could argue if she is blameless as she wants to be.
In my opinion she is not - well, if she'd just posted the review it'd be fine (and it'd be nice as it is not so common to post negative reviews), but I find Mrs. Rice's comment as an example of passive-aggressive one. The type in which the one who said something has still clear hands but... Yeah. There is a "but" in this case.
I was going to post some reviews on Anne Rice's books, but honestly even I've no readers (so no one really could link me to Mrs. Rice) I probably won't risk an attack of mindless-zombies. I am just not ready for Apocalypse coming so soon.
*Review is here, if you are interested. http://articulateandintricate.com/2013/04/25/punishing-pandora-anne-rice/
OMG, that's... I can't find proper words for that.
ReplyDeletePoor girl, she became a victim of so many mindless people! Geez. Mrs Rice should already grow up and realize that when you are an author, some people likes your work, others don't. That's part of it.
Srsly, I simply can't understand that kind of people.
Anyway, nice post, I look forward for your next review :D
Cyni