Today I got my first negative book review on Amazon. In a way it’s kind of exciting, because it means someone beside a friend read the book! It is bad form to respond directly to a review, but I feel it is important to say something here, because I want to help set people’s expectations.
Here are the key points from the review, along with my response:
- need explanation of how their world got into such trouble — It is our world, set only a few decades into the future. The optimists among us look to technology and “innovation” to fix a bevy of very serious impending problems. What if that doesn’t pan out?
- few real crises/characters are passive — Civilization collapses over several decades, and billions die. What would you do? Probably exactly what you’re doing right now.
- could use editing to tighten it — True. If any good editor out there wants to take on the job, let me know!
The book SuSAn is long and slow, covering the lives of several characters from youth to death. The love story at its heart is not simply torrid passion (though there is a bit of that). It is about a machine and a human working out their relationship. They represent humanity’s romance with technology. When our machines finally have a mind of their own, will they love us back and rescue us from the consequences of our actions?