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A review by jrt5166
Fire Ant by Jonathan P. Brazee
1.0
Okay, so here's the thing: I was not in the best mood when I picked up this book, but I thought a Nebula nominated novella would be just the thing to cheer me up. I've read three of the other nominees so far and enjoyed them all. To my surprise, this one was not of their caliber. It wasn't terrible, but the writing felt amateurish and in need of an editor. The protagonist was a character I'd met a million times already, and the plotline itself was pretty basic military SF. There was nothing in the way of character development or larger themes.
So of course, I did some googling to figure out what I was missing that this mediocre novella could find itself on the Nebula shortlist. Was the writer doing something particularly innovative that I had not been clever enough to notice? Nope. Turns out this author is a member of some group called 20Booksto50k that put out a slate trying to game the system. Apparently they hope to prove that indy publishing can produce just as high-quality content as traditional publishing. That may be true for some works, but this book makes the opposite point.
On top of that nonsense, this novella currently holds a 4.25 rating here on Goodreads. Having read it, that struck me as... odd. I did some more digging. I visited the profiles of the first ten reviewers in the default view of the Community Reviews section. A quick look at their rating history showed something unusual - all but one of them gave an average rating of 4.0 or higher to the books they'd read, and eight of the ten averaged above a 4.5 (see below):
324 ratings (4.77 avg)
185 ratings (4.86 avg)
30 ratings (4.83 avg)
212 ratings (4.96 avg)
46 ratings (4.83 avg)
135 ratings (4.57 avg)
3 ratings (4.00 avg)
132 ratings (4.79 avg)
504 ratings (3.81 avg)
7 ratings (5.00 avg)
Even my Dad, who has made a commitment to himself to read only books he has reason to believe are excellent, averages at 3.79. Personally, I'm a bit less discerning in my selections and average about a 3.54. An un-scientific sampling of my friends shows most of us in the mid to high 3s, which is what I would expect. I just can't see how a large group of people could average in the high 4s naturally. Anyone who reads enough books will occasionally pick up things that turn out to be less than awesome.
I can only conclude that in addition to gaming the SFWA nomination system, these authors also artificially inflate each other's ratings with strongly positive bogus reviews. The group appears to be committed to increasing sales, which I understand. We've all got to make a living somehow. Where they lose me is their choice to do so not by striving to hone their craft and increase the quality of their work, but instead by increasing the quantity of self-published projects they put out paired with deceptive advertising tactics.
I don't like being played for a fool, and I don't like having my time wasted.
So of course, I did some googling to figure out what I was missing that this mediocre novella could find itself on the Nebula shortlist. Was the writer doing something particularly innovative that I had not been clever enough to notice? Nope. Turns out this author is a member of some group called 20Booksto50k that put out a slate trying to game the system. Apparently they hope to prove that indy publishing can produce just as high-quality content as traditional publishing. That may be true for some works, but this book makes the opposite point.
On top of that nonsense, this novella currently holds a 4.25 rating here on Goodreads. Having read it, that struck me as... odd. I did some more digging. I visited the profiles of the first ten reviewers in the default view of the Community Reviews section. A quick look at their rating history showed something unusual - all but one of them gave an average rating of 4.0 or higher to the books they'd read, and eight of the ten averaged above a 4.5 (see below):
324 ratings (4.77 avg)
185 ratings (4.86 avg)
30 ratings (4.83 avg)
212 ratings (4.96 avg)
46 ratings (4.83 avg)
135 ratings (4.57 avg)
3 ratings (4.00 avg)
132 ratings (4.79 avg)
504 ratings (3.81 avg)
7 ratings (5.00 avg)
Even my Dad, who has made a commitment to himself to read only books he has reason to believe are excellent, averages at 3.79. Personally, I'm a bit less discerning in my selections and average about a 3.54. An un-scientific sampling of my friends shows most of us in the mid to high 3s, which is what I would expect. I just can't see how a large group of people could average in the high 4s naturally. Anyone who reads enough books will occasionally pick up things that turn out to be less than awesome.
I can only conclude that in addition to gaming the SFWA nomination system, these authors also artificially inflate each other's ratings with strongly positive bogus reviews. The group appears to be committed to increasing sales, which I understand. We've all got to make a living somehow. Where they lose me is their choice to do so not by striving to hone their craft and increase the quality of their work, but instead by increasing the quantity of self-published projects they put out paired with deceptive advertising tactics.
I don't like being played for a fool, and I don't like having my time wasted.