My Review Policy

Since I made a formal book reviewing criteria post, I just want to remind everyone of my policy, which I will do periodically.  I didn’t have a formal post until August 1st, but I did mention some points in my FAQs (such as giving me a free book not guaranteeing you a good review).  So here is the full post:

What I Review

  • Teen-targeted self-help
  • All of the major YA genres: romance, fantasy, sci-fi, historical, realistic, etc.
  • Nonfiction teens would be interested in.
  • Self-published fiction that fits the above guidelines.

What I WILL NOT Review

  • Erotica.  Not interested, people.
  • Spiritual fiction.  I will not touch religion on this blog.
  • Poetry.  Unless you’re Dante, Homer or Virgil.
  • Short stories (unless they’re in an anthology).
  • Any unpublished work.

So your book fits the criteria, great!  What do you do next?

1.  You must contact me via the Contact page here on my blog.

2.  I check my email three times per day, so I expect you to at check it at least once.  I don’t like waiting around for an author’s reply for days.

3.  You must have a blog and/or official website as well as membership to 2 or more social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Fark, Reddit, etc.  If I have to take time out of my day to read and review your book, you had better take the time to publicize my review, but only if it’s good.  I certainly don’t expect you to publicize a bad review.

4.  When you contact me, you must be able to provide me a free copy either in PDF or paperback.  I personally prefer physical copies of books, but I know shipping to Canada can be costly.

5.  When you give me a free copy of your book, it does not guarantee you a good review.  I give full disclosure in a review when an author has contacted me to prevent any conflicts of interest.  I review all of the books I read honestly and if you don’t like it, don’t bother wasting my time.

6.  You may mention if you want to do a giveaway or interview, but you must wait until I publish your review before we actually go through with it.  I’m not going to do a giveaway for a book I didn’t like.  You must also have a sizable enough social network to promote it through so I can actually get more than 5 entries.  Otherwise, it’s just a waste of my time and your money.

I reserve the right to accept or refuse your request on a case-by-case basis.

The True Confessions of a Book Reviewer

I’m approaching my ninth month as a book reviewer, even though it doesn’t feel like it and I’ve been reflecting a lot on my blog and book reviewing in general.  It wasn’t until I saw this article on The Perpetual Page-Turner that I realized a lot of other reviewers experience the same things.  Well, here are my confessions:

1.  There are times when I don’t want to get out of bed, let alone write a review.

I love writing reviews and when I really love a book, writing a review is easy.  However, when there are mixed elements in a book it’s hard to write a review.  You have to balance out the good and the bad and say why certain aspects were bad.  Writing-wise, it’s much more difficult than to gush, but it needs to be done.  I owe it to my readers and the author to write a fair review, but that doesn’t make it any easier to write when I have writer’s block.  There are some days when I don’t even want to get out of bed to go to work and make money, let alone write a review for fun.

I go through the occasional period of writing trouble and feel under-appreciated; I’m not ashamed to admit that.  But then I get that one comment that makes my day and gives me new motivation to write through the good and bad times.  It’s comments that expand upon the article, promote discussion and show that someone appreciates what I’m doing that give me the motivation to keep writing every day.  To some it may seem pathetic, but it’s that occasional thoughtful comment that makes my day, especially when I’ve had a long day at work. Continue reading →

The Best and Worst of August

In case you’re not familiar with my “The Best and Worst of…” series, here’s the deal: every month I reflect on my statistics and tell you the top 5 most viewed posts and the top 5 least viewed posts—the best and worst of that month.  So what was popular and what wasn’t in August?  Well, here are the top 5 articles and reviews (site announcements are not counted) for August:

1.  The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

2.  The Giver by Lois Lowry

3.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

4.  Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

5.  Matilda by Roald Dahl

Although school doesn’t start until September 4 here in Saskatchewan, in some places in America (where most of my traffic is from) it has already been in session for a few weeks.  This is why all of my top posts seem to be from students doing homework research for novel study as all four of the books listed here are typical novel study novels.

School being back in session is also why my overall traffic is up from 4, 350 views in July (when everyone is on vacation) to 4, 846 in August (a larger spike than I predicted).  It helps that I broke a personal record for views per day, which now stands at 305.  That doesn’t sound like much and really, it isn’t, but it smashed my old record of 246 views in one day.  The weirdest part of that record?  It was broken on a Thursday, which is traditionally one of my worst days for traffic, aside from Sundays.

Well, enough about views per day, let’s bring on the five worst posts of August!

1.  The Bad Queen by Carolyn Meyer

2.  YA Release Dates to Look Forward to

3.  Emperor: The Field of Swords by Conn Iggulden

4.  Some Thoughts on the YA Genre

5.  Isabel: Jewel of Castilla by Carolyn Meyer

I’m not surprised at all to see two Carolyn Meyer books on the bottom 5 because despite being a great historical fiction writer, her popularity has waned over the years.  ‘Ya Release Dates to Look Forward to’ is no surprise either because most of the dates listed are now irrelevant as the books have been released by now!

‘Some Thoughts on the YA Genre’ is sort of misleading at #4 because although it didn’t gather many views here on my blog, Mark over at The Masquerade Crew used it as a syndicated post and soon my timeline was flooded with people tweeting about it.  I assume that at least half of the people tweeting about it actually read it, so that’s more than enough to put it out of the bottom 5.

Well, that’s it for August!  My overall traffic is up now and I expect it to spike again as pretty much all schools will be in session at the end of the long weekend.  September will also feature more guest posting than usual because Caleb from 20four12 and I have worked out an arrangement that sees us guest posting for each other every other Friday.  My first post for him will be on September 7, then he will post for me on the 14th and so on and so forth.

If you’re looking to guest post for The Mad Reviewer, please read this article.  I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Flyte by Angie Sage

(Cover picture courtesy of Free eBooks.)

It’s been a year since Septimus Heap discovered his real family and true calling to be a wizard. As Apprentice to Extra Ordinary Wizard Marcia Overstrand, he is learning the fine arts of Conjurations, Charms, and other Magyk, while Jenna is adapting to life as the Princess and enjoying the freedom of the Castle.

But there is something sinister at work. Marcia is constantly trailed by a menacing Darke Shadow, and Septimus’s brother Simon seems bent on a revenge no one understands. Why is the Darke Magyk still lingering?

Bringing fantasy to new heights, Angie Sage continues the journey of Septimus Heap with her trademark humor and all of the clever details readers have come to love.

Although I gave Magyk, the first book in the Septimus Heap series, a mediocre review, I still continued on with the series as it had potential.  As it turned out, that was the right decision.

Now that Septimus has been found and reunited with his family and Jenna has finally been claimed as the lost princess (something that was obvious from the beginning), Angie Sage begins to focus more on their character development.  They are able to grow beyond their archetypes and readers will be much more sympathetic to them, especially when there’s an unexpected betrayal in the family from Simon.  Simon himself is kind of your stereotypical tortured Judas: he’s angry at being passed over for an Apprenticeship in favour of a much younger person he doesn’t believe is really his brother.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t really grow beyond this stereotype, but for a book meant for ages 9-12 he’s a decent enough villain.

What I like about Flyte is that we see a lot more of Septimus’ world and learn a lot more about it as well.  Now that Septimus is Marcia’s Apprentice, we also learn a little more about Magyk, although we still don’t learn as much as I would like.  However, the book is meant for people much younger than I am, so I don’t think it will bother many readers.  Aside from the fact we never really learn what the source of Magyk is, Angie Sage has still created an interesting fantasy world that readers will love.  It’s not completely unique and you will find a lot of fantasy tropes, but she does put her own spin on things so it doesn’t stray too far into the annoying cliché range.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble

The Song of Troy by Colleen McCullough

(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

In The Song of Troy, the bestselling author of The Thorn Birds recounts the tale of Helen and Paris, the immortal lovers who doomed two great nations to a terrible war.  It is told through the eyes of its main characters: the sensuous and self-indulgent Helen; the subtle and brilliant Odysseus; the sad old man Priam, King of Troy; the tormented warrior prince, Achilles; and Agamemnon, King of Kings, who consents to the unspeakable in order to launch his thousand ships.  This is an unputdownable tale of love, ambition, delusion, honour and consuming passion.

The Song of Troy is thus far my favourite book dealing with the Trojan War and I’m lucky I even found it at all because it was in the ‘Almost New’ section of my local bookstore.  I almost never found it, except that the picture of Helen on the spine drew me to it.  Yes, I judge books by their covers; I’m a horrible person.  It’s nearly five hundred pages long but they read fast and before too long, it’s over and you’re left feeling sad.  You probably know how the Trojan War ends (hint: the Greeks kick butt), but after falling in love with the characters over 500 pages, it’s hard to let go.

In any other author’s hands, each chapter being told from a different point of view would be annoying head-hopping.  Yet in Colleen McCullough’s book, you don’t really get that sense.  Each chapter is clearly labelled as being a new point of view and when each new person picks up the tale, they are moving the action forward, not merely recounting what happened to them up until that point.  Of course characters like Helen, Odysseus, Achilles and Agamemnon get more page time than minor characters like Diomedes, Automedon and Nestor, but you get the sense that you know each character intimately.

What I like best about The Song of Troy is that we get behind-the-scenes explanations for each character’s motivations.  Achilles, instead of being portrayed as a complete [expletive of your choice], we see how it was necessary to have a very public break with Agamemnon over—you guessed it—a woman.  Odysseus is my favourite character in the whole book because he’s intelligent, crafty and politically savvy.  He’s notorious for his irreverent, but utterly brilliant advice on how to win the war:

“You could, of course, starve them out.”

Nestor gasped in outrage.  “Odysseus, Odysseus!  There you go again!  We’d be cursed to instant madness!”

He wriggled his red brows, unrepentant as ever.  “I know, Nestor.  But as far as I can see, all the rules of war seem to favour the enemy.  Which is a great pity.  Starvation makes sense.” (Pg 182)

This was my first Colleen McCullough novel and I’m most definitely looking forward to reading her famous series, The Masters of Rome.  If The Song of Troy is any indication as to how much research she does, how well she plots novels and how sympathetically she portrays historical figures…well, let’s just say I will have stumbled onto my new favourite series.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

Amazon*     Barnes and Noble*

*Sadly, The Song of Troy is only available as a used book.