In which Rolanni is cranky

[rolanni]

So, over here at Tor.com, there are at this writing 19 reviews and one interview on display on the first page.  Three of those 19 reviews are for Baen books; the rest by Publishers Divers.

The three Baen books under review are:  Cauldron of Ghosts, by Weber and Flint, The Sea Without a Shore, by David Drake, and Carousel Sun, by Sharon Lee.

There's a reason I'm telling you this.

Of the  three Baen books reviewed, two are held up and mocked for their covers, before the review is even engaged.  Full disclosure:  One of those is Carousel Sun, which has a rooster on the cover. Which is apparently hilarious.  Especially since, yanno, there's a rooster in the book.  The other book so mocked is Cauldron of Ghosts.  David Drake's book, I am actually relieved to report, received a respectful and affectionate review, with no mention of the cover.

Now, 'way back before the rocks cooled, I reviewed professionally.  And what I reviewed was the stuff between the covers --  the story arc, the characters, the structure, the theme.   The cover was understood to be a sales piece, and I, the reviewer, was understood not to be an artist, an art reviewer, or an art director.  The only time I might mention the cover would be to point out that the author's name was spelled wrong.

While I do very much understand that Baen covers are considered highly mockable in the wider SF community, I question that mocking when it appears on the site of a competitor, and when the only two covers mentioned at all are Baen covers.  This strikes me as dishonest at best, and agenda-driven at worst.

Back in the day, had I suddenly made it my mandate to include cover art in my reviews, I would have reviewed all the covers, in order to provide my readers with a balanced opinion of all the books.  Because that was, after all, my job.

Comments

[quotidian-c.livejournal.com]

I'm going to go against the crowd here to say I don't think it's inappropriate to mention the cover in a review as part of the overall package. It _would_ be inappropriate (and ridiculous) to imply that the cover has a bearing on the text of the book or was controlled by the author, but I don't think Bourke does that. While they are gently mocking, neither description gives me a negative impression of the book - in fact I went into the body of both reviews with a smile.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I'm going to go against the crowd here to say I don't think it's inappropriate to mention the cover in a review as part of the overall package.

I would agree with that, provided each review included a comment on the cover.

The point of the rant above is that the reviewer chose two books, from the same publisher, to ridicule, and to forward her (apparent) opinion that Baen Books is a . . .slightly ridiculous. . .enterprise. There were, strictly in my own personal opinion, other fertile grounds for cover art mockery among the rest of the books she reviewed, and yet she withheld her wit. This tells me that the reviewer has an agenda with regard to Baen Books.