Taste and Critique Subjectivity

It’s always interesting to see the varying ways reviewers see a story.  No, I’m not advocating, and never would, engaging with reviewers online.  Doing that makes you look petty and can become a time-suck.  All I’m talking about is seeing how people look at the same story in different ways(proving, yet again, that reading tastes are subjective).

This came back to me again as I read a pair of reviews for Homecoming.  The first one, from someone who didn’t care for it, said, “The novel is written as a set of journal entries from a not engaging narrator chronicling humanity's return to Earth after thousands of years of exile among the stars. As sci fi, I found it unbelievable as the author appears not to have a full grasp of the sheer distances involved (I will always give a pass to what version of FTL travel is use because of its necessity for story purposes) and frankly how to run a naval style battle. Never fear though because Future Humans have technology out the wazoo as the narrator tells you from page one. To call any of the characters cardboard is an insult to hard working packaging materials, and conflict is never built up so the stakes are not higher at the end of the book compared to the beginning. Frankly, the part that was the sample from Amazon was the highpoint of the book and quality wise only goes downhill from there. Too bad because I think the germ of the idea could have been interesting if better developed but as it stands now, I was mad to have spent the time finishing the book.”

Obviously that wasn’t the warmest of reviews.  However, the next one said, “Great book! I didn't expect the journal format, but I enjoyed it. I really liked the premise, and I liked the fact that the main character was a historian trying to come to grips with the idea that the history he knows might not be the history that happened. The human race in the book seems incredibly arrogant and unfeeling toward other life to the point where it seems unrealistic, but then you sit back and consider their history and how their booming population, now in the trillions, makes a few million dead people seem like a rounding error to them. The author doesn't spoon feed you the information, which I like.”

As I continued pondering these disparate reviews, both made me laugh, but only in conjunction.  Each one individually has things to take away, but when looked at together, they show very different takes on the exact same story.  What it tells me is, once again, write a story you would like, for some will enjoy it(if you have a smidge of talent), and some won’t.  But when you try to write to please others in ways that aren’t organic, your story will feel artificial.  If the reviews were uniformly negative, it would be a trend to examine, but when some enjoy and others don’t, it tells me that reading tastes vary, and tailoring a story to what you think the audience wants rather than the way you want is a futile exercise.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t listen and try to improve your craft, but it does say that you have to evaluate criticism on your own to see if it makes sense, and that applies to both critical and laudatory critiques.