Do you know Big Al? You should. Long a cult favorite among us heavy readers, in the past month readership on his site went from a respectable but indie-sized audience to major grade status. It happened when Big Al wrote a fair, but critical review of a woman’s error-ridden manuscript.
From that review:
spelling and grammar errors come so quickly that, especially in the first several chapters, it’s difficult to get into the book without being jarred back to reality as you attempt unraveling what the author meant.
On another day with another author, Big Al’s honest but mostly benign review would have been the end of it. But this author decided to jump into the comments and start hacking away at her reviewer. She accused him of not reviewing the correct copy, then started cutting and pasting 4 and 5-star reviews she had received elsewhere.
Big Al’s readers came to his defense, the author dug in deeper, it started getting nasty — you know how it goes on the Internet. Unfortunately for this author, the incident started getting some notice, which led to some more comments, which led to more notice, more comments…by the end of the week it was a feature story on Salon.
Big Al’s traffic went from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands. And then, because sometimes you get lucky, my book rose to the top of his review pile and I got a review from the newly famous Big Al.
From Big Al’s 5-star review of The Demon Queen and The Locksmith:
Throughout the book, it felt more like a fairy tale than a typical fantasy. I often found myself thinking the story was allegorical although, if so, I was never able to pinpoint why I felt that or deduce the symbolism. In the end it doesn’t matter whether this was my overactive imagination or not, because the story works so well. If escapism is one of the reasons for reading fiction then The Demon Queen and the Locksmith should allow a teen (or an adult for that matter) an escape from the problems of their real world life as they follow Kevin on his adventure.
Thanks Big Al. What a great review at a great time!
