Please don't take this the wrong way, but I honestly thought this section was a sop to those who wanted a dedicated author board on a newly-created general fantasy site, so I didn't consider the possibility that civil, polite discussions of negative reviews (or of reader observations) of the series were frowned upon. I understand putting a tamper on flame war bits, but your initial comment in this subthread seemed to equate this thread with much more nasty pieces that had been posted at wotmania and perhaps here as well over the past 12 years. Most other general fantasy sites that I frequent tend to have positive/negative aspects on authors' works, including inside subforums for those authors (provided of course that some sense of civility is maintained). But I guess interpretations vary between forums.



Or rather, it's a review of a series taken from a casual viewpoint. It's not his professional review blog that he's posting reviews of these books and several others, but his personal one where he's said in the past that he's going to be very conversational and not very formal in how he approaches writing the reviews. While that certainly is going to leave gaps there that those near-fanatical readers (you know, the ones who spend countless hours "theorizing" about elements that the vast majority of readers barely stop to consider for a moment) are going to pick apart, it is interesting to see what a casual reader (and especially, in this case, another published author and English professor) makes of the series. Some of the comments will be spot-on, others will provide bones of contention. Nature of the beast. Don't think he's a "troll" for giving his honest opinion and keeping it to his blog, nor would I consider myself one for thinking there are discussable points here, regardless of how much or how little one may agree with his points.