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By Joshua S Hill

or, A Moron’s guide as to why I’m not going to summarize the book for you!

In a day and age where providing someone a Tinyurl to something I’ve written saves me from having to continually repeat myself, I have decided to explain what a book review actually is. With any luck, it will allow me never again have to explain why I haven’t summarized the entirety of a book, and why you are an idiot if you expect me to do so.

To start with, let us look at the very word, review. My Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus says this about the word review;

“a critical appraisal of a book, play, or other work. a retrospective survey or report.”

And under the thesaurus of the word review there is no sign of the word summary, or anything that would appear underneath the word summary in a thesaurus.

So what does that tell you?

Moving on, let us look at what the purpose of a review is, from a logical standpoint.

Picture the scene: you are looking for something to read, and so you head to Amazon.com. You find some books that are “similar” to other books that you have read, and so you want to find out about the book. So naturally you scroll down to the “Customer Reviews” section, and have a look.

When you get there, do you want to know what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the book, or whether getting to the end of the book is fun, easy, difficult or interesting? Do you want the entire book lessened to four paragraphs, or would you prefer that the reviewer tell you that the storyline is worth reading, and doesn’t make your eyes bleed?

That is the purpose of a review.

A review is there to whether the author has writing skill and imagination, or managed to get through on imagination alone. It’ll tell you whether the story lets you lose yourself in the margins of the book, or whether you are drawn out by inaccuracies, or even by something that makes you think. A good review will enlighten you as to whether the story has good characters, or 2-D characters with no more life than a worm on the end of a hook.

So no, for the last time, I will not summarize the book for you. In fact, I’m going to tell you as little as humanly possible about the overall story, because otherwise you’re not going to read it! And if you do, you’re going to rue the day that you read my review, because I will have ruined the book for you.

Imagine what would have happened if someone had told you that the Fool and Amber was the same person… oops!