Reviewing Criteria

Topic: Reviewing Genres & Subgenres

Question: Should there be different reviewing criteria for the different subgenres? Within crime fiction, for example, some people do not feel any book classified a thriller needs to be realistic. Thriller protagonists are allowed to display superhero-like qualities - an ability to go for days without sleeping or eating, etc, and still defeat their adversaries.

Should books be reviewed differently based on subgenre? And if we review books this way, what of cross genre books? Are there any potentially disastrous consequences of applying different reviewing criteria?

I sent the question to reviewers in the crime fiction and fantasty communities. Some adopted a literal interpretation of the question, some applied it broadly. Most said no, and you can read their answers here. Some said yes and a few could see both sides of the equation. Below, Declan Burke expands on what he feels are the conditions crime fiction works should meet, Brian Lindenmuth addresses the cross-genre question, and I weigh in with my opinion on the topic. If you'd like to share your thoughts, join us for discussion here.

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I remember a reviewer stating on a discussion list that they didn't expect thrillers to be realistic, so they use different criteria when assessing them, as opposed to police procedurals. At the time, I was baffled. This gave way to fear. My next book coming out in May is purely a police procedural… and purely a thriller. How would this reviewer decide to evaluate my book? Knock it because it's a thriller with an emphasis on realism? Or strictly look at the procedural aspect?


Now, I have a confession to make. I don't read a lot of reviews. If I'm considering a book that I'm conflicted over, I might look up some reviews online. I always look over the reviews in Crimespree. There are a select few reviewers I trust, whose opinions I seek out…


But as an author, going around reading reviews of your book can be torture. The range of reviews rivals that of the number of genres. Some are 150-200 word synopses. Some are purely subjective opinions. Some are more critical assessments. Some mix an analytical analysis with subjective impressions. I find the process excruciating. Unless I know that Reviewer X is always snarky, or Reviewer Y has a history of always trashing first novels or Reviewer B dated a woman named Sandra who broke his heart and hates anyone with the name, I might be inclined to take every single word written about my books in reviews seriously. (And then, when you get over that, people wonder why you don't take pay attention to reviews, I suppose.)

Surely reading the average book's amazon reviews should set us straight on that point.

The problem is, as authors, you have to learn to be objective, and it isn't easy.

Readers are faced with the same problems. Blogs sprout up daily, with varying levels of commentary about books. Some join the fray at amazon and post reviews there. Ezines and review sites abound.

How does one know who to trust?

Confidence in a reviewer is something that is earned over time, and that means stumbling over many reviewers who don't work for you before you find the ones you appreciate.

As I read the answers that my question generated, I almost wondered what the point was in me saying anything. In a way, whether they answered yes, no, or yes and no, almost everyone who responded touched on some of my thoughts about the subject. However, I will expand with my own thoughts on review criteria.

At the most basic level, I don't believe in a 100% universal absolute for the method of reviewing a book.

However, I do believe in general guidelines. The majority of the time, a reviewer should be able to identify what the book is trying to be - or what the author is trying to do with the book - and assess whether or not they feel the book measured up to that. It may be simplistic to limit that to genre and subgenre definitions, but much of the time those will apply as well.

The one thing I don't believe in is reviews based solely on the life experiences of the reviewer. We have those on amazon already, in varying degrees. Personally, I'd rather read a completely critical assessment of a book than read something by a person trying to reduce the book to the sum of their life experiences. That's what leads to "reviewers" tossing out unqualified judgments. “This writer is a hack. Don't waste your money.” “My barium enema was more enjoyable." "I cried at the end, I was so happy the book was finished. Then I burned it."

Statements such as those, unqualified from some dissection of the text, are simple mudslinging. And that's why I resist embracing the purely experiential review. Well, also because that's not how I was taught to write reviews when I studied journalism.

My how times have changed. Subjectivity and unqualified opinions seems to be the order of the day, and some reviews are more about the wannabe-celebrity-reviewer than the book.

I can say that there are books you read that simply are an experience, themselves, and must be read to be fully appreciated. That kind of review has value, because it is about the book, not the reviewer. However, those reviews are rare.

I prefer to read reviews that balance the components of judging figure skating. One portion for the technical merit. Did the book achieve its goals? If it can readily be defined by genre or subgenre does it meet the criteria for that genre? If not, was there a good reason and did it work for the book?

"It makes no sense to condemn how Jane Austen's choices render Sense and Sensibility a poor thriller, or to decry the lack of science fictional underpinnings in Richard Wright's Native Son. There is clearly something more we need to take into account when reviewing fiction. In addition to the common set of literary criteria, genres properly understood must each have their own additional criteria that their works need to be reviewed by, that which constitutes their inclusion in the genre."
- Matt, reviewer for Fantasy Bookspot

Like Matt, Maria and Karen Chisholm, I feel that we can't help having different expectations from different types of books. I expect a thriller to have plenty of action and suspense. I expect there to actually be some sort of investigation in a police procedural. You can call this subjective if you want, and say the expectations are based off of my past experiences as a reader, but it all boils down to the same thing - established criteria for what constitutes a good thriller/procedural/hardboiled/insert-subgenre-of-your-choice story, and if I criticize a romantic suspense book because there was sex in it, well, I'm the one who looks like an idiot, not the author.

The expectations may even be influenced by the cover. A dark, ominous cover suggests noir, or a police procedural or thriller. If I start reading and find it to be a cozy or romantic suspense I may feel misled, and while that isn't about what the author did with their story, it is about the book because the cover and cover description should accurately reflect the contents. Whenever possible, authors should get involved with cover design to make sure it suits their story.

After assessing the technical quality of the book, the reviewer then moves on to what in figure skating they call artistic impression. In other words, part of the review is an objective analysis of the book, based on what it's trying to be, and part of the review is a subjective analysis based on the impression the book made on the reviewer.

One of the reasons I like this approach is that it enables me to review books that are outside the scope of my usual reading and still be able to write a positive review if it's warranted. The enjoyment I derive from THE BLUE CASTLE is different than the enjoyment I get from reading a book like THE GUARDS. However, I want to be able to recommend both as great books to the appropriate audience for the book.

I prefer to review in that method. It forces me to justify my impressions, particularly if they're negative, which ensures readers that the review is not a personal attack or the result of me being in a foul mood or breaking a nail or having a bad hair day.

And I prefer to read reviews that follow that approach, because it helps me determine how much credibility the reviewer has and how much weight to give their review.

But as you can see from the varying responses, the opinions about what reviews should be are as varied as the reviews themselves.

While they may not all be exactly what I'm looking for in a review, ultimately this is a good thing. It means there's a type of review out there for every type of reader, the same way there are different genres and subgenres to meet our varying tastes. We don't all agree about good books, so why should we all agree about what makes a good review?

Of course, that still leaves me squirming when it's time to read the reviews of my next book, but I grudgingly have to admit that's not such a bad thing either. It keeps authors humble.


- Sandra Ruttan


"The truth is that the world of fiction is in a great deal of flux right now -- and the reviewing world along with it. The growth of the WWW has created a vast new body of reviewers; genre publishers (at least in speculative fiction) have taken to carpet-bombing these new reviewers with advance reading copies, guided by the mantra that a bad review is better than no review. As a result it can be difficult for new reviewers to determine their desired level of engagement, and to match themselves up with appropriate books to engage with. At the same time (and exacerbating this), in the literary world there has been an increased fuzziness in genre borders. New movements and new genre blends have added a new layer of complexity; where before genres acted as signposts, now readers (and reviewers) must constantly determine what genre conversation or conversations books belong to - if indeed they have not begun a new conversation. It is an exciting time for fiction, and reviewers may prove more important than ever in marking paths towards appreciating many of these new works."
- Matt, reviewer for Fantasy Bookspot. His full thoughts on the subject can be found here.

Brian Lindenmuth addresses the cross-genre issue…

I firmly believe that the most successful cross-genre books are able to so effectively mix the tropes that all genres involved can claim it as their own. I wrote about my thoughts on this in my review of Already Dead.

Unlike other novels that purport to mix the fantastic or supernatural with the mystery novel Already Dead is a pitch perfect hard-boiled private eye tale first and a tale of the fantastic second, which isn't to diminish the supernatural aspects, trust me they are there. This is the quality that in and of itself separates it from the pack. Most tales born of this hybrid are Fantasies told in a Mystery setting instead of a Mystery told in a Fantasy setting. It might not seem like there is much of a difference but they are in fact worlds apart. When a writer of fantasy creates the characters or worlds in which this hybrid tale is told it is often times perceived by readers of mysteries as the work of a dilettante, someone wanting only to infuse the fantasy genre with something different. But the "different" in question is in all actuality something that is commonplace, after all mystery novels, in all shapes and forms, represent a sizable portion of the market. Without much exertion one could easily name tropes and clichés of that genre as well as the icons and more popular examples.

One has to recognize that not unlike other genres the mystery genre has its own sub-genres and each of these sub-genres has its own style, tone, feel and rules. A police procedural reads NOTHING like a thriller or a cozy, nor would you want it to. So, the fantasy author in question needs to carefully choose what type of mystery story that they want to meld with their fantasy creation, and then seamlessly blend the two. This is not easy to do, especially so that EVERYONE is happy, mystery and fantasy fans alike. Often books of this nature miss more then they hit. But the interesting thing about this is that the readers aren't always aware of the misses. If the fantasy reader isn't aware of the false notes that the police procedural portion of the story isn't ringing true then it doesn't deter them from enjoying the fantasy story at hand which is still different from other fantasy tales out there, which again was probably the point.

However, when a tale is crafted though that rings true on all counts, both fantasy and mystery, then what you have in your hands is not regarded as a novelty but instead a rarity and a classic as well. Already Dead is just such a book. You could easily hand the book to a mystery fan and they would recognize and claim it as one of their own, now it would be prudent to recognize Huston's pedigree in the genre, namely the now completed Hank Thompson trilogy, though that alone wouldn't facilitate the allegiance. You could also give the book to a fantasy or horror fan and they too would claim it as one of their own. Perhaps the most important thing for just such a work would be that they would all be correct.

In recent years, under various names, there has been a new breed of fiction published. Cross pollinating freely among the genres to create something new. Already Dead is not only a perfect example of what can be accomplished with this technique but it also serves as a picture perfect example of the down side of cross genre writing. It SHOULD appeal to fans of dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, science fiction, PI and noir. But it fell through the cracks and nobody read it. It got a nominal amount of press in mystery circles based on Huston's Hank Thompson trilogy, but in other genre circles, not much.

I also would point to a great, multi-genre writer, Dan Simmons and an interview that he gave: You have written in so many genres. How do you prepare to switch genres? When you sit down to write your next book, do you have to get into a different mindset to write a gritty p.i. story than when you write SF?

Writing in different genres requires wildly different mindsets -- and also wildly different approaches in research, style, plotting, characterization, use of dialogue, and narrative. Just because John Updike can write a good "Updike novel" with all of its sinful suburban goings-on doesn't mean that he could write a serious SF novel if his life depended on it. Genres aren't ghettos -- or shouldn't be (too often they accept that fate) -- but they are like different species of animals on a complex evolutionary tree; they have adapted and refined their own ecological niche, with their own evolved protocols, tropes, themes, shortcuts, and histories.


- Brian Lindenmuth, reviewer for Mystery Bookspot. His full thoughts on the subject can be found here.

With Conditions To Crime Fiction...
Should different criteria apply to the subgenres of crime / mystery fiction?

As Raymond Chandler said, there's only two kinds of writing, good and bad.

Realism isn't the issue. Peter Pan, for example, would suffer badly if its reviewer took issue with the fact that boys can't fly. Science fiction often bends the rules of physics out of shape. What's important is that a story is true to the logic of whatever world the writer has chosen for its setting.

However, crime / mystery fiction derives much of its appeal from the fact that it's set in a world that's recognisably 'real'. It is hugely popular because it engages with readers' anxieties about the consequences of what happens when the rules
and laws that govern day-to-day life are broken or ignored.

For a crime / mystery writer to suggest that a hero requires superhuman abilities in order to restore (even the illusion of) equilibrium is
to betray the essence of the unspoken contract with the reader, who almost certainly does not possess superhuman powers. A reviewer does a reader a disservice by making allowances for a writer who is in effect writing fantasy masquerading as crime / mystery fiction.

John Connolly is a good example. Connolly works hard to root his characters in reality, and the pay-off is that the supernatural elements of his cross-genre novels are all the more chilling for the effect he creates. In this instance it is the reader who makes the allowances before opening the book, acknowledging that Connolly's novels have a unique logic. The reviewer's duty is simply to record whether or not Connolly has upheld his side of the contract.

Every review that glosses over implausible character traits and story scenarios erodes the credibility of mystery / crime fiction.
Ultimately, they're counter-productive for the reader, the writer and the genre itself.
Declan Burke is the author of THE BIG O
and a reviewer and commentator on the crime fiction genre at Crime Always Pays