Where do you go to find reviews of BL products?

[grailkeeper]

I went through a long period of reading anything BL pumped out. I read some great books, many adequate books and many many terrible books. Ever I read the "Gildar Rift", I decided I was going to have to become a lot more selective.

 

Advice from my local GW turned out to be a bad way of selecting books ( my court case for flagrant false advertisement for recommending the Damnation of Pythos as a "decent read" is pending).Reviews online tend to be polarized greatest/worst thing ever style 1/5 star reviews. Its either all hype or memes about how terrible something is.  If I go just by authors I know to have a good track record means I'll miss good new authors. Good reads is a start but can be a little short on detail.

 

Where do you go to find honest, impartial, reviews of BL books and products- preferably by someone who reads widely outside of sci- fi?

Edited September 16, 2017 by grailkeeper

[Knockagh]

https://www.trackofwords.com/posts/black-library-reviews/

 

Track of words is a great site. Guy who runs it works hard. You might not find everything but it's by far the best out there

[R_F_D]

What Punishing Pete said. @Never_born (Track of Words) does decent spoiler free reviews!

[A D-B]

Where do you go to find honest, impartial, reviews of BL books and products- preferably by someone who reads widely outside of sci- fi?

 

Amazon tends to be the best bet, and you can easily tell decent reviewers from their, ah, "less-gifted" and more biased kin.

[Roomsky]

A combination of Goodreads (simply for a wide-audience reaction), Tymell's Horus Heresy reading order, Purpleheresy (though he's much less active nowadays) and Bellarius, who you can find on The Good, The Bad, and the Insulting. I've never found him especially biased against 40k (I'd steer clear of his Star Wars stuff though), and while he liked Pythos, he's probably the harshest reviewer of BL product I'd still call "fair". 

 

It's harder to find a reviewer who covers most of the BL releases in general who isn't far too kind, in my honest opinion. That said, HeritorA and Darkchaplain both make excellent points in their full reviews even if I think they're skewed one way or the other.

 

Of course, you could always read my most excellent reviews, which are B&C exclusives. Phoebus is a pretty good reviewer.

[Taliesin]

Goodreads, Amazon and Track of Words. I used to read some of Purple Heresy's reviews as well but recently the candle seems to have gone out a bit for him ( in a way it's understandable as he's read everything released).

 

But reading the reviews here on the B&C is the thing that I oftentimes like the most. The only downside here is that some people sometimes venture into outright plot spoilers which can make reading somebody's impression of a new book a real bummer. The upside here is the variety of opinions and the fact that real fans of the series made their home here and it's great to read what people think of a new release.

Edited September 16, 2017 by Taliesin

[veterannoob]

https://www.trackofwords.com/posts/black-library-reviews/

 

Track of words is a great site. Guy who runs it works hard. You might not find everything but it's by far the best out there

@Grailkeeper       yeah, agreed. I interview the authors but that's not a review all the time IMO so I turn to Track of Words, Goodreads and sometimes this section of B&C. Sometimes in prep for author interviews I turn to these 3 channels so please let me take this opportunity to give mad props to ToW & all of you contributing to Goodreads and this forum. *insert "we're not worthy" emoticon here* 

[ChildofFang]

He's quite good when he appears on The Imperial Truth podcast as well ;)

[Bellarius]

I'd steer clear of his Star Wars stuff though

 

I apologise for nothing when it comes to Aftermath.

 

That said, I am trying to make the time to focus on more positive works of that franchise, if only to offset the negativity of writing those pieces.

[DarkChaplain]

And neither should you. Those books almost gave me an aneurysm. I still can't manage to muster the courage for Empire's End after how dreadful Life Debt was.

[HeritorA]

There are a lot of good reviewers in the web ocean.

Dark Chaplain does decent reviews and Track of words (@Never_born (Track of Words) too - through both of them sometimes 'like' specific books too much due to their own predisposition to some authors/characters.

 

In general there are Goodreads and Amazon. Some of us (authors especially) prefer Amazon due to the rating system and achievements for the authors. Also Amazon more frequently visited by US readers.

Some of us (reviewers/readers) prefer Goodreads. Especially UK/European Union readers - they are more frequent where.