My rating scale explained:
- 5 stars is a classic, is very entertaining and offers a lot food for thought.
- 4 stars, written well and also either is very entertaining or offers food for thought. Or something in between.
- 3 stars, your basic decent read, nothing spectacular. Usually solidly entertaining novel that you’re not going to read again.
- 2 stars, pretty lacking in some area, quite often the plot is subpar or writing is horrible. Also reserved for decent books I just don’t like.
- 1 star, only for the rainy days when you need firewood.
That’s gives you the basic ballpark of how the ratings interact with the reviews. The temptation to use more steps in the scale is huge, but then again how meaningful is the difference between 4 star book and 5 star book, if the scale is 1 to 10? The only use would be to get more accurate distinctions between books, but for most of you that is immaterial?
I will be doing another retro review next, but after my latest mega-order arrives from Amazon I’ll be reviewing some newer books. After reading some other blogs, it seems to me that there is a need for retro reviews as people seem to miss a lot of older genre books. Is it really that common to concentrate on just on sub-genre like epic fantasy?