Stupidest Thing I've Seen On Twitter Today

Someone is positing that District 9 is a better SFF film than Back to the Future.

That's not even debatable. I don't know if I would put District 9 ahead of Back to the Future 3.

In other news, Ian Tregillis's THE COLDEST WAR is everything BITTER SEEDS was and more. I can't think of a series that I'd more love to see on the big screen. Characters, action, plot - I love this book too much to finish it.

Fact: Internet Polls Suck.

Tor released a curious best of 2011 list today as voted by us, the apparently incompetent internet populace. It's a bad list and they know it, as evidenced by their attempts to ferret out the causes behind the self-described "interesting" results.

1. The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (140 votes)
2. The All-Pro by Scott Sigler (105 votes)
3. The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson (63 votes)
4. The Seventh Throne by Stephen Zimmer (63 votes)
5. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (55 votes)
6. The Final Arbiter by Mark Rivera (55 votes)
7. A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin (53 votes)
8. Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (52 votes)
9. Dancing With Eternity by J.P. Lowrie (50 votes)
10. Among Others by Jo Walton (49 votes)

Um, yeah... Why are we allowed to vote for anything?

I agree with Tor.com that something is definitely amiss. I'm not pretending to be the be-all, end-all when it comes to genre literature but when I haven't heard of 3.5 (familiar with Scott Sigler but not The All-Pro) novels on a voter defined Top 10 list, it's a bit unusual. 

It appears certain authors may be gaming the system. Getting on to the list only takes 50 votes, and you would only need 141 to climb to first. Both of those numbers are definitely doable with a sufficiently motivated fanbase.

But that would be unfair of me to assume right?

There's no way that Stephen Zimmer's shameless plugging on his website had nothing to do with his 4th place slot, nor the fact that this monstrosity took home Best Cover of 2011.

It's like putting Dan Fogler on the cover of the SI Swimsuit Edition.

I mean really? Zimmer must have a garage full of kidnapped puppies somewhere.

Then there is Mark Rivera's constant updates on his book's facebook page. It is surprising that he got 55 of the 82 people who liked his page to go vote for him. I'm impressed - I've got 40 odd cousins and I thought that was a big family.

J.P. Lowrie got in on the act as well. And internet campaigns? Not without Scott Sigler.

BUT WAIT!, you say. You're being unfair, you're not using logic. Maybe it's possible that these books were just really good self published novels. Maybe a lot of people read them, liked them, and voted for them without being asked to by the authors.

Fine. Let's get freaky. -nomically at least.

Let's compare by matching this up with the number of amazon reviews each book got. While the # of Amazon reviews isn't a good indicator of quality, it is a fairly good number of the people that read your book, assuming a comparable % of readers are reviews. I would even assume that people that read self published fiction are MORE likely to review it based on what is likely a closer familiarity with the author. Face it, it's harder to stumble onto self published books than mainstream ones.

My theory is that the more people that read your book, the more people that can vote for it. (Assuming that there are no people who voted for a book without reading it, who would do that?) And since this is purely a numbers game, if 10% of 1000 that read a book like it, you would have more votes than a book that was liked by 50% of 100 readers. And that's being considerate - the numbers of readers for Name of the Wind versus The Final Arbiter are probably more in the neighborhood of 500,000 to 1000.

Lets take a look at the numbers.

Now, I reduced A Dance With Dragons's numbers because it skewed the chart too much at a whopping 31.1 reviews/vote but I think you might be able to guess which of these books might have had their own voting campaigns. Three books have a virtually non-existent ratio and the 4th (Dancing With Eternity) appears to be boosted by some fake Amazon reviews. A pseudonymous reviewer who writes a very short, very positive 5-star review for that specific book and nothing else on Amazon? Look out for herbivores -  you are a plant.

Blegh.

What is the point of having these lists if you can't trust them to be anything more than the most popular books of last year combined with the most mobilized fan community? Complain all you want about juried awards but I'm starting to think those are the way to go.

And Tor.com, is this really a list you want to put your name on? You're better than that.

---

Here is the raw data for those who care.

The Wise Man's Fear - 713 reviews / 140 votes - 5.09 reviews/vote
The All Pro - 16 reviews / 105 votes - 0.15 reviews/vote
The Allow of Law - 150/63 - 2.38 reviews/vote
The Seventh Throne - 3/63 - 0.05 reviews/vote
Ready Player One - 613/55 - 11.15 reviews/vote
The Final Arbiter- 2/55 - 0.04 reviews/vote
A Dance With Dragons - 1650/53 - 31.1 reviews/vote
Fuzzy Nation - 113/52 - 2.17 reviews/vote
Dancing With Eternity - 40/50 - 0.80 reviews/vote
Among Others - 48/49 - 0.98 reviews/vote

WWLD: What Would Lucas Do?

Ensign: But sir, I don't know if the market can stand another sequel.

Captain: Acknowledged. Reverse thrusters. Full power.

Ensign: Sir, are you sure, that would mean...

Captain: Yes, ensign - it's time for

PREQUELS

The sad thing is that if the upcoming movie does well, this is only going to get worse.

Have we learned nothing from Dune or Pern?

Rape or Be Raped? House-slaves?

Those are some pretty loaded groups of words. So loaded in fact, that one might assume any logical individual would be aware that by using them to describe something as unremarkable as different methods of publishing, they were going to cause a stir.

And who wants a stir?

Surely not a self published author who is responsible for marketing his or her own work without the help of a large publicity department. Why would they use inflammatory language if they knew it would lead to a bunch of people talking about them and posting links back to their website? The same website that they use to sell books. I just don't get it.

And futhermore, in the off chance that a self published author wanted people to find their way back to his or her blog, it would require that author, someone whose entire means of living is dependent on his or her ability to string words together in a manner that evokes something in the person who reads them, to be capable of picking words to generate a specific reaction. Impossible, right?

I really hope you see where I'm going with this by now.

Much like the Westboro Baptist Church, the best way to stop these people from saying "irrational" things is to stop paying attention to them when they do.

And if you're having trouble doing just that, may I suggest Unpossible by Daryl Gregory or The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin as a better use of your time.

How do I know they're worth reading? They came from REAL publishers.

;-)

Twitter Followers: A Graph

To those of you who fall into the "green" category - Thank You. You're the people I wanted to talk to when I started this bastion of mediocrity I call a blog and you're the main reason I'm still trying to keep with it.

To everyone else...well, you won't be reading this anyway...

On Notice!

This series of mini-rants is brought to you by Mind Asplode, the only product made out of 99.9% uncut surprise.

[Author's Note: Please read these "notices" in the light-hearted tone with which they were written. Mostly.]

ON NOTICE - People That Think Book Trailers Are A Good Idea

Watch this and tell me you're excited to read The Host. [Ignore the fact it was written by the same woman who unleashed Twilight on the world.]

I mean really? I hope they didn't spend triple digits on that. And make no mistake, this is par for the course. Personally, I would love to see a publishing house put together a real book trailer - one where random bits of dialogue and prose are spliced together. Here's one for James S. A. Corey's excellent new space opera:

Foaming-at-the-Mouth Denunciations.

 "Anyone Drop A Rock?" 

Smudge.

Martian Navy.

Holden.

Irregular Orbital Graves.

"You Slept At All?"

Yawning.

LEVIATHAN WAKES

Good no?

ON NOTICE - Mira Grant - Zombie novels don't work. Even someone with half a brain [left] knows that. zombies aren't scary on the page. You can't see them in all their grotesque glory. There's no dialogue. They can't (or at least shouldn't) outsmart the protagonists. And every proofreader fears the day when the have to spell "BRAAAAAAIIINNNNSSSSSS!!!!" right.  Zombie novel don't work. Why then is Mira Grant's Newsflesh Trilogy so good? 

The one and only.

ON NOTICE - Seanan McGuire -  You can spell it anyway you want - faerie is still fairy. I'm not buying it. You can take your Tinkerbell, your Oberon, and your pumpkin transmogrifying grandma and live happily ever after. Uh no, those aren't the October Daye books on my shelf. You are mistaken. Why would I want to read grim and gritty urban fantasy that blurs the line between mystery and fantasy? Damn you McGuire! Quit making 97% of Urban Fantasy feel bad about itself.

Wait a second... Zoom in and Enhance...

ON NOTICE - Authors who manage to be awesome while writing as multiple psuedonyms - See above. That and the fact that McGuire is starting up another series, this one about "a family of crypto-zoologists who protect endangered mythological species, the organization of monster hunters sworn to destroy them, and the forbidden romances on both sides." [Check out io9 for the full story]. They say everyone has a story to tell. Chances are McGuire took yours.

ON NOTICE - Days When Neil Gaiman Doesn't Link My Blog - Lonely blog is lonely.

I'll give you 30 guesses.

ON NOTICE - The New York [Behind the] Times - C'mon. Everyone knows Lauren Beukes is awesome. I'm glad you figured out that Zoo City was worth reading. Everyone else has known that ever since Moxyland put Angry Robot on the map. But if you insist on identifying up-and-coming writers, I've got another name you might want to check out: George R. R. Martin. He's poised to explode.

I've heard good things about this one too....

And the updates...

REMAINING ON NOTICE - Naomi Novik - Someone needs to tell her that while dragons aren't real, unanswered questions are. Interview, Novik. Interview.

REMAINING ON NOTICE - One of the Not So Fine Editors At Tor - You're up for parole when I finally see The Coldest War. Not a second sooner.

OFF NOTICE - Patrick Rothfuss - You know I can't stay mad at you.

OFF NOTICE- : & ; - Still don't know the difference but my therapist has helped me accept that I never will.

OFF NOTICE - A Certain Unnamed Publisher Who Lies - Now known as "A Certain Unnamed Publisher Who Lied, But Eventually Came Through"

REMAINING ON NOTICE - China Mieville - Placed on Double Secret On Notice for getting such awesome UK covers. Speaking of which, I now have a special Mieville bookshelf.

REMAINING ON NOTICE - Myself - What's it called if permanent and immutable have a child? And then that child is frozen in carbonite. That's what chance I have of moving off this list.

OFF NOTICE - The Art Department at Bantam - If I re-purchase all of the books, the covers will match again. #itssosimple #waitasecond #thatwastheideawasntit

On Notice!

Time to stomp some more yeti grievances, particularly some irksome publishing practices. Be better, bookbinders.

[Author's Note: Please read these "notices" in the light-hearted tone with which they were written. Mostly.]

I'll get to it...eventually

ON NOTICE - One of the Not So Fine Editors At Tor - Over on his blog, Ian Tregills shared the unfortunate news that The Coldest War will likely be delayed until summer 2012. Why you ask? Is he struggling with the complexity introduced by combining time travel, precognition, and free will? No. The book is done (as is the third volume, Necessary Evil). The problem? The book sat untouched on his editor's desk for 20 months. That's two babies and a partial summer in Europe (diapers are expensive). I understand not e-mailing me an ARC because you hate me but if your job is to read and edit contracted manuscripts, you should probably take the manuscripts you've got and read and edit them. Especially if they are contracted. Seriously, do your fucking job. I'd blame Big [If there was a replacement for helium, I'd insert it here] in some kind of conspiracy theory as they probably want to stop Ian's great coverage of Peak Helium. I already had to deal with the fact that I'll never be able to record the entire Malazan Book of the Fallen as read by Alvin the Chipmunk and now I have to wait until 2012 to read The Coldest War? But seriously,  Bitter Seeds is awesome. Delaying The Coldest War is not.

This time, we swear.

ON NOTICE - A Certain Unnamed Publisher Who Lies - You know who you are and why you lay awake at night. And that's all I'm going to say on that topic.

One does not simply write his way into Mordor

ON NOTICE - Patrick Rothfuss - I can't 1) write a #1 NYT Bestselling Book; 2) Speak  in front of crowds and manage to speak coherently much less be personable, comfortable and absolutely hilarious; 3) Grow an EpicBeard that could emasculate Gimli even after he simultaneously bedded Galadriel and slew? slained? slought? Smaug with a self-forged combination of Excalibur and Callandor.You can do all three. Frak you.

:(

ON NOTICE - ; & : - As you are probably aware, I don't know the difference.

Not bad but have some shelf respect.

ON NOTICE - The Art Department at Bantam - Everyone was excited to hear the A Dance With Dragons got yet another final release date. Or at least that's what I assume, since everyone and @dianamoher posted about it. Somewhat less appealing? Another round of new covers. I understand the HBO series is coming out and it's superhypermondoubercritical to plaster "Now A Hit Series on HBO" all over what used to be self-respecting fantasy books. But why did you have to abandon the green ADWD cover? I believe this is now the third (possibly fourth) time these books have been recovered. Just because I want all of my books to match does not mean I will repurchase ever volume. No, I'm serious, I won't. Why don't you believe me? Quit Laughing! Damn it.

And some updates....

OFF NOTICE - Anyone with an ARC of The Heroes. That group grew to include me. And I'm already On Notice. Not to mention the fact that the book is readily available everywhere.

REMAINING ON NOTICE - Naomi Novik - Still waiting on that interview

REMAINING ON NOTICE - China Mieville - Still too awesome

REMAINING ON NOTICE - Myself - The other names are removable. I'm engraved. For a number of reasons.

My (Almost) Dinner With Ken Scholes

I jetted out of work today at a quarter to five with the intention of driving out to Schaumburg to participate in a little meet and eat with fantasy author Ken Scholes.

He's excited for pizza.

Now, I was looking forward to it. I've never really done the convention thing and "local" book signings always seem to be out of reach. (Note To Publicists: a book signing in Oak Brook, IL is not a book signing in Chicago.)

A two hour drive (each way) is not "local"

But when I went to retrieve my car, it apparently had gotten a head start. After a few frantic moments, my wife and I discovered that, fortunately, it hadn't been stolen. It had just broken THE CHICAGO CODE.

www.cityofchicago.org/revenue... discreet

You see, after the snowpocalypse a few weeks back, the snow never melted. It just got pushed to the edge of the road, sharing the room that us Chicagoans use to park our vehicles. A fortnight and a few sixty degree days later, some of that snow has melted - apparently enough to free up a space between my tires and the curb. Even though I was parked in line with all the cars on my street, that curbside gap made us "road obstructions" and earned every car on the steet a trip to the local impound lot. Bear in mind, my car had been parked in the same spot for over a week: I didn't start to obstruct traffic until yesterday.

The orange color means it's full of vitamins.

So instead of an enjoyable evening spent conversing with one of my favorite authors over pizza and drinks, I journeyed to Lower Lower Lower Lower Wacker. For those of you familiar with Chicago, Wacker is the street next to the river. Lower Wacker is the street below that, with garage parking for high rise hotels. It's also where the car chase scenes for The Dark Knight were filmed. Lower Lower Wacker is the street below that, where hotels receive shipments of food in exchange for dumpsters full of refuse. At this point, the pigeon to pedestrian ratio is borderline incalculable.

He's was just trying to reach sunlight...

[As an aside, you should have a relatively simple way for pedestrians to get to a towing yard. For some reason, I can imagine a lot of people going there sans cars. Just a thought. Or you could space your stairways blocks apart with no discernible direction between them. Your call.]

I'm pretty sure James Cameron just made a movie about this.

Flash back to the pedestrian yeti, black with grime and weary with travel. One level below Lower Lower Lower Wacker is hell. The level below that houses the impound lot. I suspect Orpheus had an easier time with retrieving Eurydice.

How much? I thought Sisyphus had it bad.

As ridiculous as the whole situation was, I didn't take it out on the unfortunate minons. The employees at the impound facility didn't deem my car to be obstructing traffic, they didn't schedule the towing, nor did they tow the car itself. They're just doing their jobs in a city where not everyone has one. So I was polite and friendly, despite my irritation at missing my dinner with Scholes. I got my car in a relatively quick amount of time, probably about 45 minutes (only about 2 hours in DMV time) which is more than can be said about the divorcee whose driver's license didn't match her credit card, the middle-aged man whose credit card didn't have room for a $190 charge, or the probable illegal immigrant whose only form of ID expired in 1996.

The only thing worse than being here is working here.

At least my $170 towing charge (in addition to the $75 parking ticket x2) earned me a renewed respect for the relative financial security I'm fortunate to possess. There are a lot of people out there for whom getting a car towed would be much more than an inconvenient adventure.

Yeah, kind of like that.

So I didn't get to meet Mr. Scholes or return home with a signed book or two. I'm a bit disappointed but at least I gleaned a story out of it. There's no denying it was an interesting experience, albeit one I'm not keen to repeat.

How was your Thursday? Anyone make it to dinner with Ken?

Covering [Hypothetical] Covers: Behemoth - Scott Westerfeld.

Over on his blog, Scott Westerfeld is showing off the German cover of his latest book, Behemoth. Hidden behind the jump, is what the US cover would have looked like if vengeful demons had not possessed the art director over at Simon Pulse.

Cover Artist: Unkown.

Excuse me while I go print this out and Scalzi it to the edition I already have, which sadly looks like this:

Cover Artist: Unknown

Blegh.

If you don't understand my frustration, here is what the original Leviathan cover and the what-should-have-been cover to Behemoth would look like side by side.

Barking spiders, what were they thinking?

On Notice!

Several people have been pissing me off lately and I'm not going to sit around and take it. So I'm channeling my inner Stephen Colbert and declaring a few people ON NOTICE!

[Author's Note: Please read these "notices" in the light-hearted tone with which they were written]

Nooooooovik!!!

• Naomi Novik - You remain the only author (besides Karen Traviss who doesn't do interviews, whatsupwiththat?) who didn't participate in my Keeping An Eye On... series last year. Now I don't expect anyone to feel obligated to do an interview with me but Novik keeps taunting me with promises, going so far as to request questions from me a few months ago. Enough of this will you or won't you drama. This is not a sitcom romance. This is a serious, respectable, in-no-way-professional, amateur blog that likes to talk about books and with authors. Consider yourself on notice.

Obviously, someone stole

the axe owner's copy 

• Anyone with an ARC of The Heroes - James from Speculative Horizons. Gav from NextRead. Niall from The Speculative Scotsman. Heck, even Joe Abercrombie himself. If you've already read The Heroes (my most anticipated book for early 2011), I've got a heaping helping of hate for you. It tastes like chicken. Angry chicken. The kind that is doesn't qualify for KFC Double Down consideration. The kind that has been pumped up with more steroids than the guy who broke Batman in half and then discovered that his hen was cooping up with The Situation.  

Not The Situation

• China Mieville - You don't take on Facebook and win. You. Just. Don't. Especially when you also wrote Perdido Street Station and The City & The City. It's not safe to have that much awesome contained in human form. He's like a mortal version of Neil Gaiman. You better Spiderman that kind of influence. And please don't hurt me.


Who is this Sanderson guy?


• Myself - I turned down an autographed, advance copy of a 1st edition hardcover of Towers of Midnight. What the hell was I thinking? And I used a Jersey Shore reference. Kill me now.

A Bad Review

I've been a little quiet the past few days while puzzling over the review of David Weber's Out of the Dark. It's not a problem specific to the book, nor is is indicative of the book's quality.  It's a common occurrence - it just takes a few days for me to figure out how to put my feelings into words.
So while I was busy not reviewing Out of the Dark, I decided to waste some time on Twitter. Where I saw this:

@torbooks - RT @BSCreview: Out of the Dark by David Weber – review http://bit.ly/cjC0xM

I decided to take a look at the "review" and was very surprised at what I found over at BSCReview.

Who’s the reigning King of Military Science Fiction? David Weber, author of the Honor Harrington, novels, is certainly a contender for the crown with his ultra-realistic descriptions of weapons and battle strategies, and his suspenseful, colorful descriptions of warfare and battles against alien foes. His newest novel, Out of the Dark,

is sure to add to his well justified fame. Though not an Honor Harrington novel, it is a superb stand-alone thriller about the invasion of the Earth in the near future by the Shongairi, a race of carnivorous beings bent on colonizing the planet and enslaving humanity.

The Galactic Hegemony, an organization made up of civilized sentient races, has decided that humans are nothing more than blood-thirsty savages. They are omnivores seemingly bent on their own destruction, and have no hope of attaining any higher level of intelligence or civilization. The Earth is thus marked for colonization by the Shongairi. Whatever happens to the humans is of little or no import to the Hegemony once the decision has been made, though the centaur-like Barthonis, who made the fateful judgment, secretly wouldn’t mind if the Shongairi get more than they bargained for.

The Barthonis, an herbivorous race, based their judgment on viewing an extremely bloody battle King Henry of England had against France, in which his forces succeeded despite being vastly outnumbered, because he held the better ground and employed better battle tactics. They just see it as a pointlessly violent battle, which would be extreme to their way of thinking even if carnivores like the Shongairi were the participants. The Survey Team calls our planet KU-197-20.

This opening scene of the battle is their justification that it is morally justifiable to subjugate humanity. They realize that it will be several hundred years before the Shongairi can reach the Earth and begin their conquest, and that things can change during that time, but they don’t believe that humanity will have been able to attain a much higher degree of sophistication, intelligence, and civilization even given the rather long interim time period until the point when the Shongairi arrive.

The Shongairi find that humanity has changed much more than the they or the Galactic Hegemony team had anticipated. In fact, though we still engage in extreme instances of violence, pointless wars, and we have no One Government type of world, in many ways humanity has attained a Level Two civilization. They decide to continue on with their plans, though, and to try to hide the truth about humanity’s unprecedented speed at attaining this higher level by destroying any evidence that might suggest this, after they conquer the Earth and humanity bows down to them as their masters.

Out of the Dark originally began as a novella in the anthology Warriors, which was reviewed here at BSC (but not by me). The main character of the novella is also one of the novel’s main characters, Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky. He believes that he is going to be rotated home from his latest tour in Afghanistan. Instead, Buchevsky finds himself in Romania, prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols and trying to organize the scattered survivors without getting killed.

David Weber expanded greatly on the original story, and the novel is told from multiple POVs. Humanity is much more tenacious than the Shongairi had thought they’d be. Despite the world’s main military bases and most of its major cities having been destroyed by energy weapons that make it seem as if they’d been wiped out by nuclear bombs, our surviving military forces valiantly fight back. They use, for instance, F-22′s and Abrams and Bradley tanks to inflict casualties on the Shongairi, and they make up an impressive resistance movement. The Shongairi have never had to combat anyone who had achieved a Level Two civilization before. Their armor wasn’t built to stand up to spent-uranium ammunition, and their combat strategies never had to develop a high level of nuance, because they had always faced foes that had offered comparatively little resistance. As the author notes, in the Shongairi’s defense:

It wasn’t their fault. This wasn’t the kind of battle they’d been trained to fight. Not the kind of combat their vehicles had been built to survive or their doctrine had been framed to confront.

The survivalist efforts of the Dvorak and Wilson families, as well as the battle scenes, were the two biggest factors in my enjoyment of the novel. Former Marine Dave Dvorak and Rob Wilson run a shooting range, and they have been steadily making improvements on a massive cabin in the Nantohal National Forest in North Carolina over the decades. The cabin has been in the Dvorak family for a long time, and both clans gather up their impressive array of guns and other belongings and head to it upon hearing about the alien invasion. A quote I really liked and thought was amusing regarding Dvorak and Wilson is one told by some of their friends, that they “were both politically somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, although possibly still to the left of Genghis Khan.”

Out of the Dark by David Weber is Military SF at its best. It’s a novel that gives one hope that if worst came to worst, and we were invaded by a technologically superior race, we would give them all the fight they wanted, and more, even if Washington, DC, was bombed back into the Stone Age.

Oh, and then there are the other heroes that come to humanity’s aid, though they have generally considered us to be prey items….When it comes to the defense of the Earth, and kicking some Shongairi butt, certain differences can be put temporarily aside. If you’re a fan of the Honor Harrington, novels, or Military SF in general, you’re going to want to add the very compelling and page-turning Out of the Dark to your reading lists.

Now, I typically wouldn't quote whole articles verbatim but it's necessary to illustrate my point. By color coding for Opinions/Reviews, Facts about the book/author, Summary of the book, and Quotes it should be very easy to see the breakdown of this so-called review. And this is being extremely generous when labeling review statements. And I understand why Tor is promoting the article - it's basically an elevator pitch stapled to an outline of the first five chapters. But to call it a review?

Ignoring the deep thoughts of "page-turning," "ultra realistic" and "compelling" in the introduction and conclusion of the review, the actual review content boils down to a single sentence:
 

The survivalist efforts of the Dvorak and Wilson families, as well as the battle scenes, were the two biggest factors in my enjoyment of the novel.

That's it. Now there are some generalizations about David Weber and his status in the military SF subgenre. Oh and the fact that Weber wrote The Honor Harrington Novels. Well at least BSCReview read the cover. Or at least the front of it. If they had read the back, they might have realized that the same book they describe as a "superb stand-alone thriller" is also the "stunning launch of a new military series." I love stand-alone series. And Democrublicans.

From poking around their site it's clear that BSCReview is interested in making money and little else. I don't necessarily disagree with the overall tone of the piece. Out of the Dark is an enjoyable novel (saving my full thoughts for the review) but there is no way you can consider this a legitimate review by any definition of the word. And I would hope that any respectable book reviewer can see why.

Look for a real review of Out of the Dark in the near future.