I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do with my first novel – the adventure fantasy that got me an agent but no-one wants to buy – and with that in mind, I looked at a couple of small publishers in the dealer’s room at Worldcon. There was one promising candidate; their books looked nicely produced and they publish adventure fantasy apparently similar to mine. I bought a book, talked to the author and the publisher and promised them a review.
I’ve now read the book.
It is nicely produced and has a decent cover. The writing is mostly pretty clean and there is a story in there. But……there’s a lot of big flaws which I think should have been addressed during the editing. Unless, of course, this is the result of their editing process.
I thought about writing a detailed review; there was certainly plenty to talk about and maybe contacting the author privately before I posted the review. I thought about inviting the author to join the T-Party. They could certainly do with a thorough novel critique the like of which the T-Party can provide. I thought about how such advice might be received; they have, after all, published a second book in the series. So I haven’t written the review….so far. I have posted a two star review on Goodreads with no comments and am no longer considering sending the publisher my novel.
Have I done the right thing?
martinowton 