Depends on the nature of the review and how exactly it impacts your decision making, doesn't it? There's a wide difference between not getting something just because of people saying "it is bad" without elaboration and not getting something because of reviews pointing out specific aspects of a work that you don't care for even when done well, for example. I mean, I've even avoided something in the past because of a positive review that highlighted key aspects that just utterly turned me off from the product. But yeah, if it's a well-written review that actually runs through the work in such a manner that people can actually use the review as part of making an informed decision, that's completely valid and the entire point of reviews in the first place.
Yes. If you'd like to see an example of a bad review of a total waste of paper, please see my review of Paul Gillebaard's Moon Hoax. Probably the worst book I've read in decades; the only reason I finished it was out of desperation for the author to make good on even so much as one of the contracts he made with the reader (e.g., in the very first chapter, a contract to give the Chinese an honest-to-God adequate motivation to make a clandestine far-side manned moon landing with a weaponized industrial laser programmed to shoot down all orbital traffic that fails to give recognition codes). Even with Tasha Yar's pointless death at the pseudopods* of Armus, at least the pointlessness itself was the point; when Gillebaard killed off the aging Russian cosmonaut (even though he was almost certainly in a Russian Sokol intravehicular suit, fully capable of holding 5 PSI against hard vacuum, not one of the glorified G-suits NASA called the LES), he did so without accomplishing anything the least bit constructive to the story. DRG has not, at least in the present opus, broken any contracts with the reader. Neither has he done anything to leave the reader confused. The ultimate story purpose of what I mentioned in spoiler tags has not been revealed, but he has another book in which to do that. The only annoyance is that the conclusion of the story is a few months away (and that's better than a few years away!) _____ *If we had strikethrough here, I'd have said, ". . . at the hands pseudopods . . ."
Trekcore gave SoF a good review: http://trekcore.com/blog/2015/07/review-star-trek-ds9-sacraments-of-fire/
I've been working my way through the ds9 relaunch recently, so I finished the mirror universe arc pretty much as this book got released, which was great timing! Overall I liked the book - I thought the framing of the plot worked well to tell both parts of the story, and I'm looking forward to the next one. I've never particularly disliked any of DRG's character development / plot developments, but the one thing I do find frustrating is the constant recapping of whats gone before. Having a recap of something significant in a previous book or episode is one thing, and makes sense - repeatedly going over the same information gets pretty tedious, particularly when he starts telling you what just happend in the book your reading! Overall I think this could have been about 100 pages shorter, and lost nothing.
Hmm. December 2015 release for Ascendance. Presumably, it was already at least in galley proofs (if not already printed and at the bindery) by the time I made my speculation (in spoiler tags) of what I'd find, rendering (I hope) the "story idea" prohibition moot for that speculation, and for the ones that others built on mine. Of course, that presupposes linear time.
Average My biggest problem with this book is it feels like 75% of it is recapping what happened in previous books. Nothing really happens until the final 50 pages or so. As such, I had a lot of trouble finishing the book. Very boring. At this point, I wish they would simply drop Sisko. His overall story arc since 'Destiny' has been awful imo. I get mad reading his chapters because of how the author has ruined him. On the plus side, the parts of the book that actually move the story along are very interesting. I liked the amount of pages Kira and Taranatar got. More Odo was nice. Overall I think the book is meh, but I'm looking forward to 'Ascendance'. I'm figuring on a much better story with all the "previously on DS9..." out of the way.
Sacraments of Fire is on Locus Online's bestseller list for October. Yay! http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/2015/10/locus-bestsellers-october-2015/
It's a literary fanzine devoted to science fiction; I'd never heard of it either, but apparently it's been around since the late 60s and it's a multiple Hugo winner.
So the New York Times it is not then. Any port in a storm though I guess. And I wonder how many people were like me, bought the book, started it and put it down and left it on a shelf as it was just recapping stuff that really did not need recapping and no real story after one-hundred pages or so.
Ok I liked the book itself but I don't like the direction Sisko's story has been going in the relaunch books. Turning him into Picard with shades of Vaughn and stripping him of the Emissary role are incredibly bad ideas. I like Picard, and I like Vaughn but they should be keeping Sisko unique not trying to force him into a shape he isn't. As for the False work The Prophets say they are of Bajor so maybe the falsework has something to do with how they became the Prophets?
Man, I'm not done here yet, about 100 pages to go, but this one has been a bit of a struggle. There has been way too much recapping of what's gone on in the past. Some of it has been very useful since it's been almost 2 years since some of The Fall came out but this goes a bit overboard. There's a seen where they need to remind us 3 times in 4 pages or something like that that Taran'atar doesn't need ketracel-white. Then around page 250 we're told where Altek came from so now we're recapping this book.
Taran'atar was introduced nearly fifteen years ago, so it's entirely possible some readers might have forgotten or not know at all about the ketracel-white.
And mentioning it once would make sense, mentioning thrice in four pages does not. - It's just a way to just up the word count with pointless recapping. My copy is still on the bookshelf where I left it and have no intention of picking it up again. I really should of sent it back to Amazon and got my money back.
This one ended a lot better than it started. I just felt like not much was happening the first part of the book but people talking or thinking as a way to recap what went on previously. But around 250 or a little later things started to pick up and I finally felt like things were happening. Even though this book ended strongly I can't say I'm looking forward to the next one with any kind of excitement. I'm just not. I hope it's better and David R. George has a great track record but this one just didn't leave me wanting more.
That its exploration could lead to progress in the Federation's and Tzenkethi's research of artificial wormholes. It might also lead to a better understanding of the jaunt drive.