lkh_lashouts | PRO reviews?

I know the Kansas City Star did a review of one of her more recent Anita Books, I however wasnt able to get a hold of a copy but I recall that the title of the review indicated a rather lack luster rating

The few "positive" reviews I have seen are more politely neutral than anything, in the vein of "Fans of Hamilton will be delighted with this steamy addition from the NY Times best-selling author!" I've also seen a lot of reviews from the St Louis Post-Dispatch on the back covers, if for no other reason than they're probably trying to drum up interest for local authors.

They also tend to focus on the sensationalistic aspects, with notes like "sexy," "erotic," and "amorous." (Seriously...that's the only word quoted in a Publishers Weekly review in Danse Macabre. BURN.) Basically she's praised as light, unchallenging adult airport reading fare, at best.

That's the professional critics. In general, professional writers seem to suscribe heavily to the "If you can't say something nice, for God's sake keep your mouth shut" policy. The few who have admitted to reading her (P.N. Elrod, Andre Norton, Jim Butcher) mostly recommend her early works (Butcher still praises her, but then she pretty much jump-started his career, so he's allowed a little blind idolatry), and have been pretty silent the last few years, although their reviews are still used on her books.

Speaking as a newspaper reviewer, I can tell you that I've given her books a neutral rating, as

freyalorelei mentions below. To be perfectly honest, while I've found her recent books to be boring, I haven't felt moved to "slam" on them. I guess there's just nothing in her books that incites me to that kind of review. When I reviewed The Harlequin, I said that there might be a teeny bit of hope for the series, but that on the whole, the book was a whole lotta nothing.

Now, when I reviewed Talia Gryphon's Key to Conflict, I flat-out called it the worst book I'd ever read. So that should give you some frame of reference for what pushes my buttons book-wise. ;)

"Fans of Hamilton will be delighted with this steamy addition from the NY Times best-selling author!"

I always equate that with the old favourite 'have a great summer' line from Buffy, where that's all people write in the yearbook because they don't know the people they're signing for and don't really care. It covers all sins, and they don't have to actually read the book.

Fair enough. Not nice to bite the hand that feeds you and all.

I have no idea if that's true (and I doubt we'll ever know for sure, for the above reason), but I wouldn't be surprised. Hamilton has no doubt inadvertently launched a lot of careers inspired by her "style"--you know, the supernatural mystery/romance genre that's been infesting book shelves lately. (Nothing against it, but dude...it's practically taken over the sci-fi/fantasy section. I like crime-fighting werewolves and whatnot as much as the next person, but variety plz kthx?)

Ha, yeah. (Or my favourite, "Don't ever change!" Which, WHAT? You really want to stay exactly as you are in high school for the rest of your life? There isn't even a level in Dante's Hell for that!)

I wish it was more crime-fighting werewolves and less ditzy and/or totally fashion-minded blondes and the hard-as-nails notamonster that they fall for. Oh, and there's some little mystery they have to clear up. So much of it isn't even paranormal romance--it's just chick lit with a different kind of tortured hero.

Then the ones that are more urban fantasy get lumped in with romance because there's almost always romantic elements. Genres are kind of messy right now.

I believe there was one professional review posted a few days before release of the Harlequin that basically wrote that the book was ill-conceived on every level. Excellent reading, that one.

Ye gods. Talia Gryphon makes part of me want to roll over die just thinking that some who writes so horribly got published not once but twice. The other half of me is sure that the book will be a rollicking good time. More dumbass Gillian Key and her vagina that's like one of those blood pressure machines in the pharmacy! More vampires that dress like a cross between RenFair actors and Liberace. But lamer! More blatant kissing of LKH's butt like she was some literary big-wig instead of a tired hack! Hooray for editors that have had one too many hits of the crack pipe and green light stuff like this.

[...] her vagina that's like one of those blood pressure machines in the pharmacy!

You win the internet. How would you like it delivered to your front door?

Andre Norton read LKH?!

Based on that hokey pen name she chose, I'm guessing she's a Mercedes Lackey fan. Is it true that she used to be a bodyguard for LKH? Did Darla edit for her, too?

According to a blurb on the back of the old-style paperback of The Laughing Corpse, yes. Also Jayne Anne Krentz, Diana Galbaldon, and J.D. Robb (isn't that a nomme de plume for Nora Roberts?). The last positive author review dates back to Obsidian Butterfly; after that they get very generic and vague: "steamy," "hot," "a thrill ride sure to please fans" etc. etc.

See, the fact that the lines between what should be two specific genres--urban fantasy and paranormal romance--have all begun to bleed together, no pun intended, is indicative of what LKH hath wrot. (Wroth? Wreaked? Bah.) She started out as one and gradually shifted into the other, and now the two have become inseparably muddled.

It's like the difference between Janet Evanovich and Jim Butcher. I don't read her, but my mother is DEEPLY into the Plum books, and from what I've gathered they're rather fluffy chick lit. Not that there's anything WRONG with fluffy chick lit, but when it's lumped in with darker, more violent books, then it becomes frustrating to weed through the masses to find what you're looking for. They're like romantic comedies, light and chatty, with an endearingly quirky female lead. Some of them are more in-depth, but some of them, like LKH, are basically Harlequin novels with superpowers.

Honestly, I've tried flipping through the nine zillion parurban romantasy clones, and I can't get more than five pages into them because they all seem alike. I know there are a lot of devoted readers of the genre, but I can't keep the books straight; they all kinda blur together. I think I finished a couple Rachel Caine books (she friended me, and that makes her Awesome), but that's about it.

Wrought?

THANK YOU. Gah, my English major cred, it hath failed me.

Didn't he say that he wasn't going to criticize her because she was a fellow author?

Well, either way, I sort of get the vibe that his best criticisms of her work are simply taking the same basic elements, and writing them far better than she ever could (EX: oddly dressed, black-curly-haired incubus vampire, tiny feminine-looking woman in a predominantly male profession, etc).

That's sort of the impression I got, that they were usually polite but don't praise. Does she get a lot of press from mainstream publications, since she's a bestseller?

Didn't she praise Darla for getting her into the biz, and with a contract?

It wasn't LKH?

If you haven't read Janet Evanovich's books, you really have no place to speak on them. Comparing them in any way to LKH is absolutely completely and utterly insulting.

The Stephanie Plum books may be "fluffy chick lit" but they are witty, hysterical, very well written, captivating, action packed, with very well formed and well thought out plots. All of her characters have so much personality and are so well developed that when you read about them you can actually see them like they are real people, which is something very very few authors can do.

And while her heroin has a thread of complicated relationships weaving throughout her books, she absolutely never lets that overwhelm the greater plot. None of the Stephanie Plum books are anything like harlequin novels. They are mysteries, pure and simple. They may be funny mysteries, but they are still mysteries - where the conflict is the most central aspect of the plot. And some of the mysteries are VERY intense, even while having some of the humor present.

Janet Evanovich does have some Harlequinesque books out, which are actually re-releases of romance novels she wrote almost twenty years ago, but they are completely separate from her main series.

Please don't review or pass judgment on books you haven't read. You can end up misleading people, and you can also end up missing out on some really good reads based on pre-conceived notions.

Sorry for the long rant, and I hope I didn't come off as mean or like I was jumping all over you.

They both started with the same agent, and I think he landed the agent after speaking to LKH at a con - dunno if that's part of it all.

From glancing at Amazon reviews, it seems to me like the same blurbs are being used over and over again on the new books. Diana Gabaldon's comment about LKH's "fertile imagination" seems to be a reoccuring one, as does one that says "LKH keeps getting better and better." Not sure who/where that's from though.

How bad is Talia Gryphon's book, seriously? I keep thinking it might so-bad-it's-fun, like Sunny's books and that tempts me to read it.

I should have clarified: When I compared some of them to "Harlequin novels with superpowers," I was NOT specifically referring to Evanovich's books; I mean the urbanormal romantasy genre as a whole. It was originally a separate paragraph. (I know that Plum herself does not, in fact, have superpowers and is pretty much a normal human being with an...unusual job. And a hamster. I've been tempted to read the books for the hamster alone. Because...dude! HAMSTAH!)

I do know that Evanovich a) can actually write (her books aren't my thing, but the style is more disciplined than LKH) and b) isn't nearly as heavy on the romance as LKH. Mom keeps tittering over how "dirty" they are (Mom's a lightweight :D), but even from a light perusal I can see that they're nowhere near Harlequin level.

My point being that they're lumped in together with the darker, grittier stuff; although technically speaking they're shelved in the mystery section, they're often recommended for fans of LKH and the rest, when the two are actually quite dissimilar, and it all boils down to bad marketing. In fact, it's gotten to the point where the mystery, romance, and sci-fi/fantasy sections are all overlapping.* This new genre encompasses all three, with varying emphasis on each one, and it's grown so large I half-expect it to have its own section in bookstores in the future, because at this point it's just confusing for readers.

*LKH used to occasionally be classified as horror, too, but I think we all know those days have come and gone.

The "better and better" quote is from the St Louis Post-Dispatch. I guess they figure they ought to support the hometown girl. That or they wrote the quote ten years ago and Team LKH has been recycling it for every new book.

Well LC was early days.

Erm, who's this Talia Gryphon? *feels out of the loop*

I'm of the opinion these days that most of those reviews aren't actually from the authors. I can't help but think that, though the authors get paid for the use of their names, they don't actually read the books and review them, for the most part. Especially considering how utterly absurd some of those little blurbs are.

Good thread. I've been wondering about this for a while. When Anne Rice's books got worse, I was puzzled at first to see that they still got positive reviews. Then I figured out that the publishers were just posting quotes from, or passages from, older reviews which talked about better books or her work in general. I'd say that, with the likes of LKH, it's a suspicious sign if you see a book jacket citing a review that doesn't mention an author's current book by name. And in AR's case, when I finally did track down one website's review of Blood Canticle, it wasn't entirely complimentary.

Another reviewer perspective on LKH: my boyfriend used to write for Holland SF, and they tore her books to pieces. I think this was the early Merry Gentry stuff...

A TROO FAN who got herself published. Blah blah blah the fey LOVE LKH because of how she portrays them (they LIKE being portrayed as glittery and sparkly and totally oversexed? Whatever floats your boat, I guess...) blah blah blah liquefying panties. That's all you need to know, I think.

Look at earlier books and compare the quotes on them. I think her earlier reviews are getting recycled. I have seen some reviews on the Internet about LKH. There was one review of the Harlequin that made me feel like LKH must be wincing someplace as the reviewer gave her a figurative punch to the gut. I can't remember where I saw it, but I'm sure if you did a search for the Harlequin and reviews you'd probably find it. The review was an SF review blog, I think.

... Actually, there are some good comparisons- Joe's scar switches sides of his face constantly, Stephanie's mother's name changed in between books at least once, Ranger grew like 6inches mid-series...

Granted, none of those are quite as severe as having your main love interest forget how old he is (JC) or someone's skin color changing from purple to brown, but JE does have some consistency problems just like LKH.

And those intense mysteries often get sacrificed for the humor just as much as LKH's mysteries get sacrificed for sex. It's really frustrating to read the Plum books and see Stephanie get into some dark, horrendous situation and be saved... by slapstick. And then the next book, after her umpteenth near-death-experience or kidnapping, she STILL won't learn how to use a gun or get serious defense training or remember her mace or... yeah. How many books in is it now?

It's a little like Anita constanly deciding she will learn to control the ardeur but never actually learning to control the ardeur.

All that aside, I do love the Plum books. They are fluff and fun and all that, but sometimes their lack of follow-through really does remind me an awful lot of LKH.

I am a member at the big George R. R. Martin discussion board. There are a lot of people there who keep literary review blogs and websites. Most of them...are NOT complementary about Hamilton's writing.

"Yes I meant for Stephanie to come off as dumb as a box of rocks
Is that what JE meant to do? Because it is what she's doing right now, at least when I read them.

From what I remember from the website and fan forums, JE isn't comfortable with upping the violence and all that or making Plum darker, but she totally did that, just that she writes around it constantly. Is this a problem of series writers? Do they inevitably end up taking a series some direction that they aren't comfortable with writing and forcing it all over the place to get around this? (*points at LKH and the fear of ghey/ the introduction of the Worst Plot Device Ever aka Ardeur*)

In short if the author didn't want to keep writing both those characters would be dead from stupidity.
Sad, but true.

SFX (UK fantasy/sci-fi/horror) mag seems to err on the side of polite, although I don't think she ever got five out five stars in the rating scale. They seem to have stopped reviewing her books though, because I haven't seen one for any of the Merry Gentrys past A Stroke of Midnight (I think), and none for Anita Blake since...the one after NiC (so years, really. My apologies, as my brain appears to be failing me).

Edited 2007-12-06 18:15 (UTC)

How bad? Gryphon makes Sunny look like Tolstoy. For an example of what you are in for: 1) on the first page, she calls an Opel and Opal (editing provided by Darla Cook) 2) Point of view may switch up to three times on a single page 3) the bad guy is Count Dracula 4) Dracula sends evil henchmen to jump out of the backseat of Key's car and yell "Boo!"

That doesn't even begin to cover the comedic value found in that book. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the sequel to her literary monstrosity even as I hope that someone at ACE lost their job over her.

i'm not courageous enough to read that book, but for anyone interested here's the dedication page:

On the chance that anyone else reads this page, those mentioned are indeed deserving of dedications, medals, awards, canonization and significant hoopla.

For my mother, Eleanor, who told me I should write and didn’t criticize my choice of genre; my remarkable sons, Justin and Forrest, whose unending patience about my time on the computer and unswerving love allowed this book to be written, and for just being great kids who are proud of their mother.

Laurell K. Hamilton, Christine Feehan, Stephanie Burke, Robin Owens, Sheila English and Rosemary Laurey. I am so grateful for their encouragement, friendship and being invaluable mentors to an unknown aspiring writer.

Ginjer Buchanan, my wonderful editor. A simple, heartfelt “Thank you” for believing in me.

Joe Veltre, my agent extraordinaire. Joe, I don’t know how to thank you. You are amazing.

Darla Cook, my incomparable line editor and dear friend, without your help this truly would not have gotten off the ground. Also, to Ann Tredway, thank you. You started this. I blame you. *Wink*.

Special thanks to: Charles Randolph, Sgt. U.S. Army Special Operations Command; Jon Eppler, Sgt. U.S. Army Reserves Intelligence Analyst; Steven Mills, Sgt. USMC, Retired, for their invaluable help with technical consultation, military influence and approval.

And especially, to my best friend, Ali Houghton-Garrett. Your enthusiasm, loyalty, friendship and encouragement have been invaluable every single day.

Talia Gryphon

Both Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb are pen names for the author... Her real name is Eleanor Robertson.

IIRC, from my various times on the LKH mailing list, Jim was working on The Dresden Files while praising LKH for the most part. I never thought of TDF as being a "response" to LKH or Anita Blake at all and I never got that vibe from Jim. That said, I was off and on that list so often that I might have missed something. The thing would implode into flames every five months or so and I hate being in the middle of flamewars when I don't have a dog in the fight.

And those intense mysteries often get sacrificed for the humor just as much as LKH's mysteries get sacrificed for sex.

I read SP more for humour than the mystery (if I wanted hardcore mysteries I'd read Agatha Christie or something) so I don't see how that's a problem. Unlike LKH's sex, the comedy is actually done well (although LKH's sex is quite comedic). The book is marketed as a crime/comedy and I think it contains enough of both to merit the genre labels. LKH on the other hand...

I'm not sure that Mrs. Giggles counts as a professional review, but I enjoy the heck out of her.

Talia Gryphon review

http://www.mrsgiggles.com/books/gryphon_key.html

LKH review-Micah (she seems to have given up on LKH, but this one is a gem)

http://www.mrsgiggles.com/books/hamilton_micah.html

"Wrotted" or "wrotten" sounds more appropriate.

I LARP with a friend of hers who has read the next book. Gilian becomes a sex therapist for the Phantom of the Opera. As much as I hated the last book, I'm with you Amii on getting this one for total comedic value.

You kid? You kid, right? I hope heads rolled over signing on this hack at ACE. Hahahhahaha. This is going to be funny. When is this thing coming out?

I have come to the conclusion that the LKH stories are simply suefics, written by suethors and the who cycle of bad writing gone to the public.
If this is correct, we will find that the general rules of the suethor come into play.
1) There is no stopping them.
2) Their motivation comes from their sock puppets (and in this case, their editors and publishers.)
3) No matter what you drop on them, throw at them or drop them into, a fic will soon appear shortly thereafter, and they will proceed like nothing ever changed.
Now that you know the three basic rules, does it go far enough to say the LKH doesn't need reviews and rewards to keep writing?

Cool! I didn't know that! :D

A few years ago there was a review in Entertainment Weekly that was........... (what is the word I'm looking for...)
Lukewarm? Less than flattering?
It sent her into a tizzy.

from Entertainment Weekly:

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1564594,00.html

but I think there was a whorenita one as well.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,442463,00.html

Less than flattering.

PRO reviews?

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reviews

a review from 2006

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