Book sales and Amazon reviews

According to recent surveys, online shoppers love to read reviews.

In 2007 a PowerReviews/e-tailing group survey ¹ found that 68% of online shoppers read at least four product reviews before purchasing. Only 2% of online shoppers claimed not to read reviews.

Two other 2007 surveys emphasize the importance of user reviews. Forrester Research ² found that online shoppers want to see user ratings and reviews more than they want special offers or coupons, videos, personalization, or games. Avenue A|Razorfish ³ found that more online shoppers used user reviews than used comparison charts or expert reviews.

Do reviews affect book sales?

My book purchases are a relatively fixed volume: I buy as many as I can read. Do reviews shift which sites I buy from? Not much. I read newspaper and blog reviews, so I'm as likely to research books in a newsreader as on a bookseller's site. I imagine many shoppers like to research and purchase all at one site, but the Avenue A|Razorfish study showed a growing population using RSS feeds, so I'm probably not alone.

So how much do user reviews shift purchases from book to book?

In 2003-04 Chevalier and Mayzlin ⁴ studied Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com, focusing on whether specific books' sales were affected by:

• The availability or lack of reviews
  
• Whether the reviews were positive or negative.

Chevalier and Mayzlin compared book-by-book sales data from Amazon and B&N to test several arguments against hosting user reviews. The analysis may be a little out of date as Amazon’s review system keeps changing; I’ll interpose some links and thoughts along with their findings.

1. Motivation: Why review for free?

Steven Levitt of Freakonomics asks this question more specifically. What motivates the 1,000th reviewer to contribute? Hasn’t everything already been said?

That depends on what the reviewer stands to benefit. Many Amazon reviews are probably written simply as an outlet to gush or rant over a book. In 2003, reviewer Francis McInerney’s goal was to be mentioned in acknowledgments or quoted on a book jacket.

Even that 1,000th review may have some effect on sales. Chevalier and Mayzlin found that over time,

an increase in the number of reviews at Amazon.com relative to bn.com continues to improve sales at Amazon.com relative to bn.com.

In other words, Amazon's approach pays off: the interests of an active reviewing community can drive sales to the public at large. It's interesting that this effect was documented on Amazon, where the review community can be highly competitive. It may be that a contentious atmosphere within the review community is not visible or important to non-reviewing book-buyers.

2. Free-riding: Research here, buy there

I would guess that free-riding happens mostly in one direction: most users know to look for Amazon reviews, but fewer leave Amazon for B&N reviews. After all, Chevalier and Mayzlin show that most books have fewer reviews on BN.com than on Amazon and "BN.com’s total sales equal about 15% of Amazon.com’s North American sales" ⁴.

Because of free-riding, Chevalier and Mayzlin's analysis

potentially greatly under-estimates the effect of word of mouth on sales…. Barnes & Noble.com customers could read Amazon reviews, or, similarly, Amazon reviews could affect offline sales. In fact, the success of a recently released best-seller “DaVinci Code” was attributed partly to an endorsement by... Francis McInerney.

That's right: a lone reviewer like Harriet Klausner can be influential in book sales.

3. Five-star (in)credibility

Chevalier and Mayzlin speculated that authors might be able to review their own books, so positive reviews wouldn't be as credible. This issue hit the news in 2004 (during Chevalier and Mayzlin’s study), when Amazon.ca briefly outed a number of authors who had given rave reviews to their own works and one-star reviews to rivals.

Since then Amazon has instituted Real Names, refined reviewers' “reputations”, and built up the Amazon "community" in hopes that it would self-police. Of course abuses are impossible to prevent. In 2006 an Amazon UK Marketplace shop bribed a customer to change his review. The current flap involves an author berating and google-stalking reviewers.

Not all review trickery is driven by sales. Some Amazon users are motivated by Top 100 Reviewer status. Positive reviews are more often tagged as “Helpful”, which in turn increases the reviewer’s status in the Amazon community.

As far as I know, I rarely run across coordinated campaigns of positive reviews on Amazon. I'm leery of positive reviews because so many of them simply gush; there's often more information in mixed reviews. (Chevalier and Mayzlin found that three-star reviews were, on average, longer than one- and five-star reviews.)

At the same time I wonder if consumers tend to discount both positive and negative reviews. There's a large number of crank and bogus reviews on Amazon along with the five-star reviews.

4. Negative reviews may depress sales

It surprises me that consumers expect Amazon to act as an unbiased review site. On a website without user reviews, cherry-picking reviews would be business as usual. It's not in Amazon's interests to deceive customers, and I don't really suspect Amazon of grotesque conniving behind the scenes. Nonetheless, it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon removed negative reviews more readily than positive reviews.

Chevalier and Mayzlin provide some additional motivation for that idea. They found that one-star reviews (which are relatively rare) have more effect on sales than do five-star reviews. They piggyback this onto the credibility problem:

Although the author can post a large number of meaningless five-star reviews cheaply, he or she cannot prevent others from posting one-star reviews.

Mayzlin reiterated this finding in a February '08 NPR story, but didn’t mention an important wrinkle: their data were collected back before the Real Name program cut down on users with many accounts, and when Amazon displayed the most recent review first. It’s hard to say what these findings mean now that Amazon allows the user to sort reviews by star ratings.

Furthermore, Chevalier and Mayzlin's main analysis was of uncensored reviews. When they analyzed a smaller set of books for which Amazon had “pruned” the reviews, they found that new one-star reviews had no more effect than new five-star reviews. Was that "pruning" the same process that Amazon follows today?

On a positive note, Chevalier and Mayzlin also found that:

• Reviews are generally positive (more so at BN.com than Amazon.com)
  
• Consumers don’t just rely on a product’s average number of stars, but actually read the text of each other’s reviews

References

¹ PowerReviews/the e-tailing group. Social Shopping Study 2007. Nov. 2007.
1,200 people spending at least $500 per year in at least four online transactions.

² Forrester Research, North American Technographics Customer Experience, Marketing and Consumer Technology Online Survey. Q3, 2007.
A non-random survey of 5,366 US and Canadian consumers. Includes purchases of consumer electronics, travel and banking sites. Partial summary in Online Media Daily, Feb. 2008.

³ Avenue A | Razorfish. Digital Consumer Behavior Study. July 2007.
Only 475 respondents from a pretty high-tech group: 60% of respondents write or comment on blogs regularly.

⁴ Judith A. Chevalier and Dina Mayzlin. The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews. Yale School of Management Working Paper No's. ES-28 & MK-15 . First published online via SSRN, 2003. Final publication in Journal of Marketing Research 43(8): 345-354.

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E-books dry run

Lately all my reading time is during my commute. That's already too little time, so it's frustrating when I have to leave my book behind so I can carry a sack of groceries.

As a result I'm eyeing e-books, e-reader gadgets, and e-reader software on phones. Can technology help me read more? I'm not sure, but it's worth a try.

Unfortunately the options are overwhelming. I've bought a few e-books in Adobe PDF format, but reading them on the computer hurts my eyes. I like the Sony Reader's non-backlit screen and "page turn" buttons, but I want wireless. I like the Amazon Kindle's wireless but not the fees. Sometimes I don't have a Sony Reader-sized bag with me, just a phone. I don't enjoy reading for long periods on my phone, as the screen is small. I love to read paper, damn it, but paper is heavy. And bulky.

Yes, I have all the symptoms of analysis paralysis.

However, I've found a low-stress way to experiment. My library now offers e-books.

My library, font of technology

The best part of starting with the library's system is that they've already made some choices for me. They provide each book in Adobe and Mobipocket format. I know what Adobe looks like, so that leaves just one kind of reader software to try out. (Limited options can be a good thing!)

So far I've checked out three books. I can read them on both my computer and my phone. That's important to me. Reading on my phone alone is too irritating; I don't want to read on a phone at home. But do I really want to read on a computer screen at home? I already suspect that what I want is a paper copy at home and an electronic copy on my phone.

Apparently each book is mine for a few weeks and then "returns itself automatically"--a great feature that stirs my curiosity. I suppose I could stay up till midnight on the due date, watching my e-books return themselves. Will they vanish in a puff of smoke? Or maybe fade off my screen? I suspect they'll simply stop working, but I like the idea.

Tomorrow I'll try out this new system.

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The science of romance

This week is Time Magazine's annual Mind/Body special issue. The theme this year is "The Science of Romance".

Several of the articles articulate physiological and psychological patterns that I would love to see more imaginatively treated in fiction--and not only in romance. The body language of flirtation, and why we flirt while in a relationship. Why we develop cultural ideas--beyond the "good girl" notion--about sex on the first date. How online dating really works. Why the darker side of passion can be attractive.

Time's descriptions of the articles:

• Why We Love
  Breeding is easy, but survival requires romance too. How our brains, bodies and senses help us find it


• Why We Flirt
  That smile! That glance! That rapt attention! We flirt even when we don't need to. And that can be good.


• Marry Me
  Say yes, and you're in for more than love, children and a home. Better health and a longer life are part of the deal
  By Lori Oliwenstein


• Are Gay Relationships Different?
  Why gay couples have more equality and less tension at home--but still split up more often than straight pairs


• Crazy Love
  Our partners may be obsessive, possessive, even dangerous. There's a reason we stick around--often at our own peril
  By Steven Pinker


• Love Letters [not available online]
  A peek at what real people write when they're falling in love


• We Just Clicked
  Online matchmaking sites in the U.S. are eyeing millions of singles in China, India and beyond. Will love translate?


• Young Love
  Romance is a grand pageant. Your debut may not come until you're in your teens, but you spend a childhood rehearsing


• Romance Is An Illusion
  Could something that feels so real be a mere trick of the mind? Sure, when the survival of the species is at stake
  By Carl Zimmer


• Love Lines
  One-liners on love:

  'Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.'
  DOROTHY PARKER, poet and writer



• To Our Readers
  Romance makes us giddy--€”or flat-out crazy. Our science team breaks down the chemical, sociological and evolutionary reasons

Famous Pairings

• Famous Couples
  A gallery of some of the twentieth century's great romances


• Star Pairs

Love among animals

• Wildly In Love
  Humans aren't alone. Romance appears to roam among animals too


• Wildly In Love
  A collection of amorous animals with illustrations for TIME by Dugald Stermer

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The book title's secret meaning

Lately I'm struck by common themes in book titles. All publishers want titles that stand out, but some of the recent trends are pretty strange, and they cut across romance, literary fiction, and nonfiction.

The romance novel's tabloid titillation

For the last few years the Harlequin/Mills & Boon romance racks have been filled with ever-hokier titles. I find the new titles silly and even insulting--but they sell. In 2007, Jennifer Crusie found these titles on seven out of ten of Waldenbooks' top selling romances:

• The Future King's Pregnant Mistress (Penny Jordan, Harlequin Presents)
  
• The CEO's Scandalous Affair (Roxanne St. Claire, Silhouette Desire)
  
• The Boss's Demand (Jennifer Lewis, Silhouette Desire)
  
• The Prince's Ultimate Deception (Emilie Rose, Silhouette Desire)
  
• The Millionaire Boss's Baby (Maggie Cox, Harlequin Presents)
  
• Taken: The Spaniard's Virgin (Lucy Monroe, Harlequin Presents)
  
• The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge (Kate Walker, Harlequin Presents)

(These titles are a relatively recent trend. In Harlequin Presents titles from the 1980s and early '90s few heroines, and few actions, were "owned" by the hero, and titular "virgins" were fairly rare; Brittany's Castle was as likely a title as Taggart's Woman.)

Regardless of how the new titles sell to romance aficionados, they project a certain image. Even many romance readers are put off by the strange focus on virginity, the outdated idea of the "mistress", the national stereotypes, the consumerist and social-climbing dimension, and the overuse of possessives. Isn't it enough that he's a Greek tycoon/Spaniard/CEO who owns half a continent? Must he own the heroine and her virginity too?

But perhaps that's being too literal. Crusie makes an interesting point about why these titles appeal:

These are National Enquirer titles with promises of tabloid excitement–a pregnant king’s mistress, we’ve got the pictures!!!–mini-synopses with the good parts highlighted

It's true, the titles rarely reflect the style of the story, only a bare-bones setup. So perhaps the title is meant to convey excitement rather than content. The basic tabloid formula is a celebrity, a possessive, and a sex-word or shock-word: "Christina Aguilera's baby shocker!" Sure enough, we have a match. (If you think The Boss's Demand doesn’t have a sex-word... in the context of those titles, it’s pretty clear what the boss’s demand is—and it ain’t coffee.)

The celebrity tabloid interpretation also fits Harlequin Presents' recent Tips on Writing, which enjoin the author to

Remember the values that underpin the Presents series – such as, wealth, luxury, sophistication, escapism and a good dollop of passion

Historic shockers

In a 2006 NY Times article, two Harlequin executive editors pointed out that stand-out titles are harder to come by in voluminous genres :

Romance, mystery and other genre books are particularly likely to have recycled titles, because of the vast numbers that are published and their brief lives in the public's memory — meaning a name can be brought back within a few years.

But there are other ways to create dramatic tabloid titles. Sheer strangeness is pretty effective. In the 1940s Harlequin started their numbered paperback series with some distinctive titles, including:

• The Manatee: Strange Loves of a Seaman (Harlequin #1, Nancy Bruff, 1949)
  
• Maelstrom: A Brutal Saga of Love and Violence (Harlequin #3, Howard Hunt, 1949)
  
• The Golden Feather: Flight From Bondage (Harlequin #31, Theda Kenyon, 1951)

These titles are certainly attention-getting. In fact, the older Harlequin titles would fit perfectly in today's popular nonfiction, where the more obscure or in-your-face the title, the better. Nonfiction is full of disgusting, unlikely, goofy, or mock-helpful titles:

• A Pictorial Book of Tongue Coating
  
• The Professor and the Madman
  
• People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders - and What to Do About It
  
• So Your Wife Came Home Speaking in Tongues? So Did Mine!

Sidekick makes good?

Tabloid frenzy among romance readers can't be the whole explanation, because this trend in titles crosses genres. In The Guardian, Judith Evans lists a number of titles that use possessives but not shock-words--or perhaps a different kind of shock-words:

• The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
  
• The Editor's Wife (Clare Chambers)
  
• The Abortionist's Daughter (Elizabeth Hyde)
  
• The Pilot's Wife (Anita Shreve)
  
• The Firework Maker's Daughter (Philip Pullman)
  
• The Kitchen God's Wife (Amy Tan)
  
• The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards)
  
• The Gravedigger's Daughter (Joyce Carol Oates)
  
• The Alchemist's Daughter (Katherine McMahon)
  
• The Ringmaster's Daughter (Jostein Gaarder)
  
• The Zookeeper's Wife (Diane Ackerman)
  
• The Emancipator's Wife (Barbara Hambly)
  
• The Senator's Wife (Sue Miller)

Evans theorizes that these titles

[play] to another motif that pervades our culture - that of taking the neglected sidekick and making them the main attraction..... A handy formula for a magazine feature is "X gets all the attention - but why don't we focus on the far more interesting and neglected Y?" ...

So far, so encouraging; weak women emerge from the sidelines; victims get the limelight. But I'm sceptical. For a start, there's no reason - in this day and age! - that the woman shouldn't be the time traveller, Greek tycoon or gravedigger herself; the retro aesthetic that takes us back to a more or less imaginary age of alchemists and ringmasters also takes us back to a time when women were stuck being sidekicks and stalwarts.

I'm not so sure these titles are out of joint with the times. Some of these titles evoke a family that's out of step with societal expectations--a timeless topic that's especially apt in times of social change.

I also quibble with Evans' sense of currency. These days a woman can be the time traveler, but those changes have happened quite recently, generationally speaking. Many women still alive today grew up in a time when they didn't expect to be the alchemist or the breadwinner for the family. Women who stand in the limelight are still outnumbered in part (though not entirely) because lifespans are long.

However, the second paragraph in that quote sparks my curiosity. As Evans asks, "Why are we so obsessed with fantastic returns to such social arrangements? And are literary novelists who do so really any different from romance writers who dream of being overwhelmed by an untamed desert sheikh?"

Further reading

Evans mentions The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy, which “introduces pithy and perceptive characters like Queen Herod, Mrs Rip Van Winkle and Frau Freud”. I’ll look for a copy.

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Fantasy and romance, gaming and girls

Since reading C.L. Wilson's Lord of the Fading Lands, I've been thinking about fantasy romance. In my teens I read fantasy with central romances, and lately I've read romances set in fantasy worlds. This year Fading Lands rocketed up the USA Today list; obviously it's a successful combination of genres.

I asked a male friend, an avid fantasy reader, whether he sees more romance--or more interesting female roles--in fantasy these days. His response took me down a path I'd never thought about:

If you want to know how fantasy is changing look at roleplaying games (RPG). Back when I started Dungeons & Dragons it was the stereotypical teenage dorks in a basement. We didn't know jack about relationships....

You could barter but you never really developed relationships. There literally weren't rules for how characters could have sex. You could roll a 6 and do some magic or a 2 and get killed but you couldn't have sex....

These days it's more realistic. A lot of those guys if they're still into it write their own games.... You can get rules for sex now but mostly teenage boys are into that.... I don't play the same way with my wife sitting there. Even if she wasn't there I know about real sex now so I wouldn't waste a good roll ripping off some character's clothes. I guess that makes me officially old.

(I'm not a gamer, so my edits may have introduced some nonsense. He's a detail guy, so I simplified greatly.)

D&D sex guides

A quick google confirms that there is now a rule book for including sexual elements in D&D:

The first chapter... provides an overview of various facets of sex such as humor, sexual orientation, fetishes, prostitution, pornography, commitment and infidelity, chastity, pregnancy....

New uses for existing skills include Appraising a potential partner, Bluffing to connect with someone, Knowledge about various topics, Perform (sexual techniques).... New feats include... Disarming Looks, Limber....

One female dungeon master has written a lengthy guidance on incorporating lust and full-fledged romance into Dungeons and Dragons:

The romance that has dominated so many of our fairy tales can come to life in a roleplaying game and it can expand roleplaying options exponentially. Characters in D&D can fall in love..., get married, have trysts and children. One of the ways that a DM defines their game is by deciding how much love and sex they'll allow....

There are very few references to sex in any of the new mainstream D&D books. There is an out of the way reference in the Forgotten Realms setting book (cassil root and narrowroot are herbs which can be used as birth control for limited periods of time.) There is some mention of prostitution in the Book of Vile Darkness. Every now and then mating habits and gestation are discussed in regard to the many different races and creatures....

She goes on to discuss the implications of race and class for divorce (the long-lived elves might not expect faithfulness over hundreds of years), the use of magic spells to enhance sex, and other topics.

Video: D&D fantasy romance

My googling also turned up several funny videos by Youtuber FearofGirls, depicting two RPG players' attempts to introduce romance into their game.

In Episode 1, we meet Elite Game Master Doug and his best friend Raymond (a.k.a. the barbarian Krunk). These two have long since abandoned the commercially available games to create their own. Doug says his games have "themes and subject matter [sex and gore] which, quite frankly, would simply be too strong for your hobbyist gamer". (Note that "hobbyist" is an epithet.)

Here's a short outtake of Doug and Raymond's attempts to add fantasy girls and fantasy sex to the game:



At the end of Episode 1, Doug and Raymond are intrigued with the idea of playing against real girls. In Episode 2 the girls arrive and the mayhem takes a new turn:



I like the blend of sincerity and mockery, and the way the budding-romance subplot shapes the game as the game shapes the romance. The romance, of course, turns out to be pure fantasy, but the final plot twists make some clever points. Dangerously Adorable Productions seem to know their subject awfully well ;)

All of Episode 1, and many more outtakes, are on the FearofGirls Youtube page.

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C.L. Wilson: Lord of the Fading Lands

• On Amazon
• Author's website
• Excerpt (PDF)

Erin Galloway of Dorchester Publishing was nice enough to send me an advance copy of Lord of the Fading Lands. I’m glad she did--Wilson has a gift for storytelling, and her prose is polished. I was disappointed by the book’s reliance on well-used tropes: the romance is straight out of Christine Feehan’s Carpathian playbook and the fantasy setting is more detailed than innovative. Nonetheless, for a debut novel it’s striking, and I’ll gladly try another book sometime.

Rainier Tairen Soul, King of the Fey, is several thousand years old and a part-time fire-breathing giant winged cat. The last time he ventured out of the Fading Lands, he destroyed half a continent. Now a vision sends him back into the world, seeking a future for his people.

Ellysetta Baristani is the adopted daughter of a woodcarver in stodgy, pious, unmagical Celieria. Ellie appears to be simply a preternaturally nice mortal girl, but Rain recognizes her instantly as his other half. Women don't get to choose their marriages in this world, so it's up to Rain to convince the Celierian king to release Ellie from another man’s claim. Claiming Ellie and politicking distract Rain from investigating a nebulous conspiracy, but it appears that that conflict will happen in a later book.

Alpha and orphan

Ellie and Rain are familiar romance character types—so familiar that based on an excerpt, Laura Vivanco pegged the characters:

the hero was a type I’d read many times before. He’s the most powerful male in the world, he’s capable of violent rages, he has a very tortured past and he falls in love with an innocent, much younger woman. He’s so possessive he frightens her, and he reacts instantly to any threat (perceived or real) against her….

The heroine’s an orphan who’s something of an ugly duckling (perceived as ugly by her adoptive culture, coming into her own power), under threat and in need of rescue…

Wilson sometimes sacrifices character development for reinforcement of these standard traits. Instead of how Rain reacts to the world, we’re told what he wears; instead of who he is now, we get his powers, his tragic history, and generalizations about the Fey.

The built-up world

Wilson’s attention to detail is laudable, but sometimes less might be more. For example, an important courtroom scene includes a lengthy description¹ of Rain’s clothes. It doesn’t say anything new—we know he's handsome, wealthy, and powerful—so rather than the fashion report, I’d like to see the legal and political interludes developed farther. These scenes are crucial to illuminate inter-kingdom politics, and to explain the villains. (The evil Mages merit more discussion--thus far, they're simplistic villains for villainy's sake.)

Sci fi and fantasy author M John Harrison propounds a different approach to worldbuilding:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding. […] Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there.

and

Substitute imagination for exhaustiveness, and inventiveness for research.

Harrison is often provocative, and here he stakes out an extreme view, but I agree to a large extent. Not every world must be built the same way, but in Fading Lands I wanted a better balance of emotional and political explication versus décor. The detailed description also slows down some key scenes, which may be one reason some readers find Fading Lands slow going.

Truemates, lifemates, fated love

In the Elloran world, fate and race determine much of the characters’ lives. Every Fey character is noble and gifted; every Celierian character is ordinary. This robs the diplomatic conflict of tension: the Celierians are too far outclassed by the Fey. Ellie’s special qualities are evidently due to her non-Celierian blood; even her father’s business success has a non-Celierian cause. The Celierian women come off particularly poorly. Their lives are dictated by fate, race, and whichever man claims them, and they’re not notably charming, admirable, intelligent, or honorable: they’re perfect pawns for the men of the story.

The lack of outstanding female characters, and the emphasis on fate, are also clear in the romance. Wilson says her “truemates” concept is not the same as Feehan’s “lifemates”. I see no essential difference between the two, though some readers disagree with me. Like Feehan’s Carpathians, Fey men are fearsome warriors, but each kill adds darkness to their souls, gradually deadening their emotions. Like the Carpathians, Fey women are gentle; Ellie fits right in, as her sweetness heals all wounds and even inspires a Fey bodyguard to pledge himself to her. (It’s a little much; not even Feehan’s women save the souls of men other than their mates.) Like Feehan's Carpathians, there's some lip service given to the importance of the woman making an emotional choice but the outcome is never in serious doubt.

Fading Lands also reminds me of Ann Maxwell (Elizabeth Lowell)’s Timeshadow Rider (1986), a space-fantasy romance about a made-for-each-other couple from an all-powerful race with an animalistic side. However, Maxwell’s book is explicitly about overcoming cultural conditioning and sets up a more clearly worked-out tension between fate and choice.

Wilson is a good storyteller, and I enjoyed Fading Lands, though I found it heavy on genre clichés. Many romance readers will enjoy the alpha male/sweet female relationship, but on the fantasy side the mythology and characterization seem rather standard and un-innovative. It didn't strike the sweet spot for me, but it was an engaging read.

Grade: B-
(I'd give it a C+ for carrying forward so many bad-old-days-of-fantasy conventions, but it's really no worse than average in that regard. Besides, it's a B+ for storytelling. Storytelling and voice mean a lot to me.)

---

¹ From Chapter 6:

Tall, lean, and searingly handsome, Rainier vel’En Daris exuded the dark, dangerous beauty and mystery of the Fey race as he strode down the blue carpet. His black leather tunic and snug leggings seemed to absorb light, while his bristling collection of Fey blades were so highly polished that they reflected light back with almost blinding intensity. Black boots, tooled with scarlet and purple tairen, crossed the length of the throne room in smooth, ground-eating strides. A scarlet sash embroidered with taired worked in gold thread draped from his left shoulder to his right hip, just below one of the two crossed bands of Fey’cha daggers, while a chain made of fist-sized squares of gold, each set with large Tairen’s Eye crystals, hung from one shoulder to the other. A golden crown circled his head, each of its six points topped with a small globe of priceless Tairen’s Eye crystal. Even without the crown, no one who saw him could fail to recognize he was a King. He carried power as effortlessly as his broad shoulders carried the purple-lined black cape that billowed out behind him.

Tags: book, review, fantasy, romance, magic

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Kit Whitfield: Benighted (Bareback)

• On Amazon
• Author's website
• Excerpt

Benighted (Bareback in the UK) is a striking and well-written novel set in a grim alternate reality. Whitfield depicts rampant social injustice and a culture of chronic violence. The emoting is on the heavy-handed side, but the main character and the world are engrossing.

Benighted is a modern-day story, but grounded in an alternate history dating back to the Middle Ages. Lycanthropy is the norm, and every full moon the population turns wolf. Society copes with its animal side repressively, imposing full-moon curfews and lock-ups.

Far worse off are the tiny minority who are born disabled, unable to change. These non-lunes or “barebacks” are despised and disadvantaged from birth; as adults, they’re pressed into dangerous work “dogcatching” for the government, sent out at full moon to round up and pen loose wolves.

The story is told by Lola May Galley, a dogcatcher and legal representative for lune offenders. When her colleagues are attacked by both wolves and humans, Lola fears she’s next.

Benighted society

Whitfield presents a very effective dystopia, with a lot to say about power and privilege, and clear analogies to modern social injustice. Non-lunes are only one percent of the population, but they’re crucial to maintain lune society’s compartmentalization of their wolf natures—a Faustian bargain dating back to the Inquisition years:

Luning, already regarded by the Church with the suspicion that sex, childbirth, and all the other carnal upheavals the human frame fell prey to, became a matter of panic. The Inquisition came down hard; they went on the hunt. The Dominicans, the founders of it all, took up their nickname like a banner: Domini Canes, the Hounds of God, appointed to run down Satan’s wolves. Protestants, who by then were killing Catholics with equal fervor, declared luning to be an unregenerate state, because you were incapable of faith while under its influence. Pious citizens who feared temptation to sin, or frightened citizens who didn’t want to find themselves at the stake, take your pick, but people began locking themselves away. […]

We were useful, back then. People needed us.

That’s Lola: intelligent, bitter, and well aware of the ugly sides of the law she serves.

Despite the themes of prejudice and alienation, this is not an epic struggle of good versus evil. It’s Lola’s book, and she lives in a moral grey area—as do her lune clients. Lunes rarely remember their wolf experiences, and civil trials permit what amounts to a sleepwalking defense: I did it while I was a wolf; I don't remember it; I wouldn't have done it otherwise. The lunes’ inability to police themselves makes it hard to imagine a "save the world" happy ending; the world of Benighted remains screwed up, and the focus stays on Lola’s struggle to stay alive and sane.

Not likable, but sympathetic and reliable

Lola is frankly a bit of a pill. She has to be tough to survive her job, but she’s also inconsistent, self-centered, and prejudiced. She’s a thorough pessimist, and a nervous wreck—certainly not the tiresome "plucky heroine triumphs over adversity" female character type, but is she too hard to like? Not in my judgment. Lola’s not precisely an unplucky sad sack, and she’s no villain, but she’s a character on the cusp. Will fear harden her attitude into outright persecution of lunes, or will she continue trying to walk the line, defending lunes in court and treating them as humans--except at full moon?

I find Lola more sympathetic than likable—or perhaps likable by Anne Lamott’s liberal definition: "someone whose take on things fascinates you", who’s flawed in understandable ways, or who has the survivor’s "certain clarity of vision". Lola’s rough edges are understandable, and I appreciate seeing a complex female character facing significant moral dilemmas.

The over-bright side

The writing and the messages in the book are not subtle. Lola has been abused in every imaginable way—the litany is overwhelming. Her downward spiral is relentlessly dark, while the happy-sunshiny scenes with her infant nephew and her lover, Paul, can be maudlin.

Paul especially is too good to be true. His entry into Lola’s life is overly serendipitous and he’s infinitely patient with Lola’s freak-outs. He does, however, make a significant contribution to the story: Paul’s hippie-dippy quest for self-knowledge provides a faint hope that lune society could change.

Benighted is not the typical werewolf novel that’s flooded the market recently. I imagine it could be shelved under literary fiction, science fiction, or horror. Like my favorite speculative fiction, Benighted alters today’s world just enough to create pointed social commentary, and it’s refreshing to see writing that makes me empathize with a challenging character. The dénouement is rather a let-down, much like a mystery in which on the last page the sleuth deduces the presence of some unseen hand directing the action. However, the provocative climax is what’s stayed with me.

Grade: B for Lola's melodramas, the "unseen hand" ending, and some clunkiness in describing her relationships. An A for an interesting voice, a fascinating world, and a provocative, memorable story. Overall, A-/B+.

Tags: books, reviews, horror, fantasy, alternate history, speculative fiction, werewolves

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