Black Static

Those who never write anything negative. It's an ego stroke culture and they all want to be masseurs. When sending them stuff to review, writers and publishers should ask about 'extras'.

Those who presume to give constructive criticism. They want to be editors but nobody asked. The purpose of a review is to help potential readers make up their minds if a written work is something they want to spend time and/or money on, not give writers handy hints on how to do better next time.

Those whose reviews are full of snark and nothing but snark. They're writing reviews as displacement activity because they couldn't hack it as doms on the S&M scene.

Those whose reviews are incomprehensible. If you read a review and afterwards don't have any idea what the book is about or even if the reviewer liked it or not, then the odds are good that they don't know either. But they want to be thought clever.

Those who constantly reference themselves and their own work. It shows they're not very well read.

Those who use their reviews to proselytise for a political party. Their opinions are after the fact. Fiction is all about telling credible lies, and it's a given that whichever party is in power has already mastered this.

Those who frame their reviews like a series of sound bites. They're already thinking about the mass market edition and imagining how their words would look on the cover. They too want to be on the NYT Bestseller list.

Those who make sweeping generalisations. They're always wrong.

Those who confuse their opinion with fact, unless they're writing something wholly laudatory about Bruce Springsteen, which I'll allow. Please don't query me on this, as you'll be shocked at how quickly the conversation will go downhill and how ugly it will all get.

Those who keep criticising the same writer over and over again. If they pan three books in a row then you've got to ask yourself why they're still reading that writer, what agenda is in play. As Felix Leiter said: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and third time it's enemy action.

Those who confuse writing a review with drawing up a plot synopsis. They've lost it.

Those who are forever discovering the next Poe, Lovecraft, King, whoever. With such people, the chances are they couldn't discover the back of their hand without the aid of SAT Nav. All great writers are unique. It's only the mediocre ones we get to clone.

Those who write in series of supposedly witty aphorisms. They were touched by Nietzsche at an impressionable age, but now as adults they're just pissed that Stephen Fry has more followers on twitter than they do.