As 1. A fanzine reviewer, 2. a fanzine editor and 3. a reviewer for a paid publication (Strange Horizons) - with ongoing anxiety about how I perform all those roles - I have thoughts on the Locus review.

But to me it basically all comes down to responsibility?

Book reviewers, particularly the blogging community, often come back to this point about "reviews are for readers, not authors" - usually as a reminder about when author engagement is and isn't appropriate. But reviewers always have a responsibility to the author.

That Locus review badly misrepresents the book. It blames Book 2 for confusion that is pretty transparently due to the reviewer's failure to read Book 1, misspells character names and gets the setting inspiration completely wrong. That's a failure on the part of the reviewer.

I don't think, in the context of a paid review going out in a leading genre publication, there was a way for this reviewer to responsibly cover the book without engaging to some extent with the first in the series. There might be contexts where that could work, but not here.

There are things that I think are appropriate in some forms of review, but not others. I have written reviews for sequels at NoaF where I had forgotten parts of the previous book and how I might have struggled (or not) because of that. Those reviews talk about my shortcomings

My reviews at NoaF often have my "presence" in them - little bits of my life or reading habits or feelings that contextualise why I'm reacting to a book in a certain way. But none of *gestures at self* this is the book's fault, and it's my responsibility to make that clear.

(And there are no doubt points at which I've fucked up this balance, and centred myself at the expense of a book or been unfair to an author as a result of my dead angles. All I can do is keep trying to learn)

But, like, the important thing here is that I make choices about my reviewing tone and style for our fanzine and to me it's a SUPER fundamental skill to have some sense of "Adri's feelings and baggage and when she ate lunch" separate from "thoughts about this book I am reading"

Deleted my first version of this tweet because I have no idea where this thread is going - but, like what I'm saying here is that having awareness about what a book is trying to do independent of your reactions is what allows for generosity and a good critical response.

And that self awareness is particularly fundamental when reading things from different spaces, because putting something up on an individual blog vs. writing with a fanzine vs. writing with a respected semipro or prozine comes with positioning and expectations.

I do still invoke Adri's feelings, including irrelevant ones, in SH reviews (e.g. gushing over author notes in Wole Talabi's Incomplete Solutions) but I draw a much clearer line between doing that and engaging with the text. It's what's expected of me in that venue.

With SH, I have a safety net in that there is an outstanding editorial team who also take responsibility for ensuring that reviews are fair to the texts they review. At NoaF, its part of my responsibility to provide that to our own contributors.

In conclusion I don't think I've said anything that isn't screamingly obvious here, but I guess my point is: we are going to end up codifying this into Rules for Reviewers, but I'm not sure what rule I would draw from this except "isn't it obvious you shouldn't do this shit?"

Do other people not worry, constantly, about how they are perceived by others and what they owe to the people around them when they write or edit things? No? Huh.