The robot's prose is priceless. Just the other day, she used
"intercede" instead of "intervene" and ended up with
something incomprehensible. The robot has a three paragraph
template:
[I] A bit of description from the publicity materials.
[II] A second bit of description from the publicity
materials, not always related to the first bit.
[III] Extravagant praise straight from the blurbs.
I have a little program that generates better stuff than
that, but pans about 80% of the time. It's also unpredictable
(random, in fact), therefore more interesting.
As to fans reviewing, there's nothing wrong with that
provided that the review is well written and makes a
reasonable case, either for or against the book.
Unfortunately, the robot does not do any sort of comparative
descriptive analysis, let alone a critical analysis. You
could give the robot a copy of Light in August or The Sun
Also Rises and the result wouldn't be that different from a
review of a bad romance novel.
In any case, it's a great achievement: context-free
reviewing.
Now let's talk about something serious: who are the
outstanding mystery reviewers of our day? Does the category
even exist? It just occurred to me that the robot is filling
a void.
Regards,
MrT
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