My Book is not for You (allegedly)

Last week (or something, I don’t know how time works). I posted THIS bloglet about bad reviews being good, actually. My view is that a good bad review is one targeted to fellow readers. It’s less about sweeping value judgments on the (ostensible) objective goodness or badness of a book, and more about helping fellow readers find the books they love and spare them from the books they won’t. Even a “bad” negative review of my book might be what convinces somebody to read it, and vice versa.

At the time, I didn’t think I had any negative reviews—a popularity thing, not a quality thing—so I had to write one for myself. Here’s a chunk:

The concept of trains and mortifiers and stuff was cool, but there wasn’t nearly enough detailed explanation of how everything in the Hereafter worked or where it was, and I hated how there’s still questions left unanswered by the end. I didn’t know who ANYBODY’s father was. A map and appendix detailing the ge0graphy, history, and geneaologies of the Hereafter would have been helpful—like Tolkien. Also, I was picking up some pretty gay vibes??? Admittedly, that’s not NOT like Tolkien, but still! 

Turns out, I did have negative reviews! :D I just hadn’t found them yet. Now, I’m going to respond to the basic gist of them, but not because I’m offended or something. It’s just because I think (hope) this mess will be helpful to anybody wondering if Hereafter Lies is for them or not and mostly for me to see if it’s true that “yOu’lL fEeL dIfFerEnT WhEn yOU hAve NeGAtiVe rEvieWs.”

Funnily enough, these two negative reviews weren’t entirely reducible to one sentiment, but they did both strongly emphasize the same one—and they felt negatively about the same quality that a positive review lauded me for (it’s almost like different people like different things or something—nutty!):

TOO MUCH LEFT UNKNOWN. MYSTERY REMAINS. WORLD BUILDING INSUFFICIENT. WORLD FEELS UNREAL.

Yes! You did it! The fact that the Hereafter is left vague and its structure unclear such that it feels unreal is *scrambles for megaphone*

A FEATURE, NOT A BUG.

Reviews that compare/contrast Hereafter Lies with a similarly themed YA book could maybe be helpful… buuuuuuut it’s comparing bagels and doughnuts. There are some fundamental differences germane to the genre recipe—think of “amount of easily digestible exposition/explanation provided” as sweetness level. Bagels just aren’t (with some exceptions—yeah, Canada, I’m looking at you) sweet. Bagels that aren’t sweet aren’t bad bagels. A review pointing out that this particular bagel isn’t sweet is providing valuable information to both potential readers who only enjoy doughnuts, and bagel eaters. A review claiming that bagels are not as well written as doughnuts because they aren’t sweet is a tad misguided in my bigger-than-my-stomach eyes (oh man I want a bagel so bad right now—and I wouldn’t say no to a Canadian one, either).

I might make a sweet bagel one day—like a maple nut situation, maybe? Hereafter Lies is a salty bagel. If you go into it expecting a doughnut that won’t confront you with a readerly discomfort that echoes the larger discomfort of sitting with your own mortality and the basic incomprehensibility of your own and your loved ones’ post-mortems, you are setting up yourself—and that salty, haunted bagel—for disappointment. Cuz this salty, haunted bagel’s gonna confront you with a readerly discomfort that echoes the larger discomfort of sitting with your own mortality and the basic incomprehensibility of your own and your loved ones’ post-mortems. That’s generally not the prerogative of doughnuts (or so it’s been explained to me… but I recall contemplating mortality quite a bit as a YA so… *shrugs into the void*).

In Hereafter Lies, the way everything functions is intentionally obfuscated. Crucial information about how the Hereafter operates is hidden from our protagonist. Realizing this is part of his journey, and thus the reader’s journey.

There is a reason I picked this one quote in particular and slapped it on the back cover as a vibe indicator for prospective readers:

It really isn’t in the fΩcking file, turns out. The question is WHY isn’t it ever in the fΩcking file? Said WHY is a specter haunting us for an entire-ass series. We are gonna be chugging along on this ignorance train for quite a fΩckin’ while. That may mean the book isn’t for you. It doesn’t mean the book isn’t good. It doesn’t mean the book is good. But it’s the book that I set out to write, and the one you’d be reading: the one where it’s never in the fΩcking file.

I love a good map, me. There was no map. I will not be adding a map because I don’t want you to know how everything is laid out. I want you to feel like the world isn’t real. I want you to feel confused and in the dark. If, for you, those are horrific feelings that echo the horrors of contemplating your feelings of alienation and inescapable mortality, YES. GOOD! Because this is—shit, where’s the fΩcking—*pats around for megaphone*

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE HORROR/DARK FANTASY ASPECTS OF THE BOOK, AS FORETOLD BY THE PROPHECY BOOK CATEGORIES.

Horror can be many things and evoke many experiences. Some land, some don’t. My book’s snail-like, series-wide horror might not land for you. It might land six miles south of what I was aiming for—maybe in a cushy mound of accidental brilliance (sticky bagel fingers crossed). Some people enjoy (or “enjoy”) reading some flavors, and not others. Connie Willis—sci-fi OG and blurber extraordinaire—very generously wrote of Hereafter Lies: R.I.P. in the same sentence as Shirley Jackson (horror OG; blurber status unknown).

Jackson is a master of many things, but she’s a fΩcking iron chef at cultivating dread and unease and uncanniness. Feeling like you are not at home in this world—especially when you are, quite literally, at home. The subtly creeping realization that everyone else knows something you don’t, and you don’t even know enough to know if you’re in danger but something feels very off in a way that you can’t quite explain to anybody without sounding crazy. Maybe that’s how they want you to feel. (Or do they?? Is that just you being crazy?? This is how it’s always been, after all—what if the really untrustworthy one is you??? What if the reason this world feels wrong—feels unreal—is me???)

To say nothing of, say, the horror and dread at the very notion of death and the finitude of your being and the being of those you hold most dear? That old so-and-so? Who’s got several legs, one of which is the opaque veil (VALE??) between you and whatever it is (or isn’t, who knows) you become (or don’t become, who can say!) after you die?? That you have no way of knowing wtf is going to happen to you?? Or not?? Or those you love?? Or what didn’t happen to them?? THE EPISTEMIC RIFT THAT IS YOUR MORTALITY?? HER??? *hurls megaphone out the window at a squirrel with a peculiarly judgmental aspect*

The way everything functions is intentionally obfuscated. Crucial information about how the Hereafter operates is hidden from our protagonist. Realizing this is part of his journey, and thus the reader’s journey.

I’m going to leave you to do that math on your own. I’m too tired and bisexual. And if I expend too much wordy-bops on explaining what I was going for, well… I probably can’t (or didn’t) actually achieve what I was going for. The irony of this entire blog post is not lost on me and largely just exists as a time-capsule for Future-me at this point.

I’m also no Shirley Jackson, folks. Sorry. You probably noticed. Whether or not I was actually successful in any of this shit I was trying to pull needs a different set of negative reviews to suss out, maybe. But given the negative reviews I just read, I feel pretty confident ticking off the CULTIVATE SUBTLE SENSE OF UNEASE box in my bullet journal. So thanks! (Not sarcasm.)

There are oodles of books that deal in the Tolkien or Herbert style of world-building, or the shōnen anime style of “Here, let’s take a break mid-battle so I can painstakingly explain the metaphysics of my ghost-punch no jutsu.” And that’s fine! It’s a style of writing, not necessarily good or bad writing. If you like that, hurray! But if you think anything other than that is objectively bad writing, I disagree. And if you only like the sort of ready-to-hand world-building you can write a whole-ass wiki about while waiting for the train, and feel like anything other than that is not for you, then my books are probably not for you. (And by “probably” I mean absolutely reaping not—life is short and expensive, save yourself some fΩcking time and money #SelfCare.)

The fact that you the reader don’t know everything that’s happening in the world is not the same thing as me the author not knowing. There is a difference between world-building that is only gradually and subtly (if ever) revealed across book/s, and world-building that is nonexistent.

Me? I go feral for that subtle shit. I hate info dumps. I hate being spoon-fed information. That doesn’t mean those things are bad writing or that readers who prefer it deserve a bad grade at reading. But I write books that I want to read, and I want to read a miasma of uncanniness, historical deep cuts, dudes in plague doctor masks, slowly simmering Queer sexual tension, and dad jokes. So I wrote Hereafter Lies about it.

For me, what makes that uneasy ignorance bearable (and even enjoyable) is knowing that the characters are going through it with me, and I really fΩcking enjoy their company. It almost makes all those other freaky boat rides that I must take across the world’s epistemic rifts—like that Big Ol’ Mortality Thing—feel a little less lonely. As Dickens writes in A Christmas Carol:

“I have always thought of time spent reading death-centric genre fiction with an element of horror and mystery that holds my belief in perpetual suspension and disrupts my sense of place in the world as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when all these motherfΩckers seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of those poor fΩckers below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of fΩcknuts bound on other journeys.”

Or something.

You might feel totally different about raisins in your bagels. Or you can feel total samezies about enjoying the ride just so long as your fellow-passengers flΩat your boat, but not enjoy these particular raisins I mean characters in Hereafter Lies. That bit is less easy for me to predict, my mortal bean. Hopefully, some future heroes will come along with reviews to the tune of, “I loved this or that character—they reminded me of Scribbly Blap from the Whoodiwatzit Chronicles but with more Smurphelblat energy,” or, “I haven’t felt a disdain for a character this profound since I first encountered Whomevra of Fmrr in the BripityBrap Saga.” And you, gentle reader (being well-read in both BripityBrap and Whoodiwatzits), can gauge if these characters will make you want to scream at my book in a positive, or a negative sort of way.

These now-existent negative reviews did enjoy the characters. They’re just not into the same sorts of rides I’m into. But it still brightened the fΩck out of my day to read that (unpleasantly lost though they were), the reviewers still enjoyed the characters.

So, I can’t tell you if Hereafter Lies (or any of my books) are for you. Hopefully, this helped some. If not, maybe some other readers can help you out someday—whether via positive, negative, or whatever-the-fΩck review.

Because *wrests megaphone from squirrel’s acorn-forged grip*—

bad reviews are good, actually.

Read in Peace, ya fΩckin’ Smurphelblats.

Elijah

P.S. I can’t imagine doing this every time I read a negative review. That’s a lie, I can—won’t, though. But I figured since I’d just posted about negative reviews being good but alas I had none, I should, ya know… follow up on that. Walk the blog or whatever.

P.P.S. Now I have negative reviews but no bagels—sweet or salty.

P.P.P.S. Or doughnuts.

P.P.P.P. :(