Sword Man on a one-star Goodreads rampage!

Returning to the blog for a minute – and no, my novel isn't going well at all, thanks for asking! – to note that Goodreads has got itself an amusing new anonymous member, going by the moniker of Sword Man, who has been handing out one star reviews like he or she bought a big box of them at a fire sale.

See if you can spot a connection between the people whose books are getting slammed:

• The Taken, Sarah Pinborough
• Torchwood: Into the Silence, Sarah Pinborough
• A Matter of Blood, Sarah Pinborough ("Really badly written")
• Zombie Apocalypse, Stephen Jones (ed.)
• Mammoth Book of Zombies, Stephen Jones (ed.)
• Mammoth Book of Vampires, Stephen Jones (ed.)
• Shadows Over Innsmouth, Stephen Jones (ed.)
• The Art of Coraline, Stephen Jones 
• Department Nineteen, Will Hill
• The Deluge, Mark Morris ("Weak")
• The Silent Land, Graham Joyce ("Dull Characters and an unoriginal setting")
• TQF36, Stephen Theaker [and John Greenwood] (eds.)
• TQF Year One, Stephen Theaker (ed.)
• TQF Year Two, Stephen Theaker [and John Greenwood] (eds.)
• TQF Year Three, Stephen Theaker [and John Greenwood] (eds.)
• TQF Year Four, Stephen Theaker [and John Greenwood] (eds.)

Most of the reviews were posted on October 16, with a few more added today after I started following his/her reviews. S/he has also voted two of Sarah Pinborough's books onto the Worst Books of All Time list.

But you'll be glad to hear Sword Man is not all negative!

Sword Man has, just in case you haven't made the connection to the BFS awards brouhaha yet, given five star reviews to Sam Stone ("She calls hersle the New Queen of Vampire Ficion on her website and I'm inclined to agree"), Raven Dane ("Well written and a golly good read") and Rules of Duel from Telos.

The highlight for me is the one-star review of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction: Year Two, which states:

"This man really has no clue at all when it comes to reviews and reviewing. It seems to me that Theaker enjoys writing self-indulgent twaddle - nasty gibes - and spends most of his time writing negative, not informative reviews. I haven't seen one he's written that I would say I agreed with."

The funny thing is that there are no reviews in that book. None whatsoever!

Sword Man strikes – and fails!

The irony is that this is exactly the kind of behaviour that seems to have got the BFS and its awards into hot water into the first place. So while Sword Man may feel like s/he is hitting back, s/he is really just confirming that people were right to suggest that there might be a bit of a problem.