I’ve had a lot of reviews over the years, and I’m usually quite philosophical about them. The only one that ever really pissed me off was one in which the reviewer saw fit to reveal details of a major plot twist.

Why even do that? I mean, who are you writing for? People who’ve already read the story will have made their own minds up about it already and don’t need your two cents; and people who haven’t yet read it are going to be pretty disappointed when they realise you’ve ruined all the suspense.

Many people use reviews as guides when deciding which books or stories to read. Revealing huge chunks of the plot to them is the literary equivalent of walking out of the movie theatre and recounting the main points of the story to the audience queuing for the next screening. By doing so, you ruin their enjoyment of the movie.

Spoilers are so called for a reason. If a writer has laboured long and hard to build the story up towards a dramatic revelation, and you go ahead and blow it for the readers before they’ve even had the chance to read it for themselves, then you’ve spoiled the experience for everyone. If  you feel the need to reveal key plot developments online, please, please, please preface them with a spoiler warning.

On Dark Fiction Review, Sharon Ring has published an article that asks authors how they handle negative reviews of their work. My own responses are quoted below:

How do you feel about negative reviews of your work?
Negative reviews are always disappointing. Of course they are. If you’ve poured your heart and soul and time into a piece of writing, you want people to connect with it, and if they don’t, you’re bound to feel frustrated. Personally, I tend to mope around the house for a few hours, feeling sorry for myself. But at the end of the day, you have to take it in good humour. It’s all part of the game, and if you can’t take the odd negative review, you shouldn’t be a writer.

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Moxyland is set in South Africa, only a stone’s throw into the future, in a society where the difference between employment and unemployment can also be the difference between life and death; where the greatest punishment is to have your mobile phone disconnected.

Starting slowly, the novel introduces us to its four narrators: Kendra the retro photographer; Toby the vlogcaster; Tendeka the would-be revolutionary; and Lerato the corporate programmer. Telling their intertwined stories over the course of alternating chapters, they show us their world, and we get to watch with horrified fascination as they become slowly embroiled in a deadly conspiracy that none of them fully understands.

With her stripped prose and lack of superfluous description, Lauren Beukes gives us what we need to see the world through the characters’ eyes. They never feel the need to over-explain themselves, and each has a distinctive and recognizable voice. The pages whip by quickly, as the tension grows, and as readers, we’re only half a step ahead of the characters in piecing together the seriousness of what’s going on.

Lean, sharp, and tightly written, Moxyland keeps raising the stakes, from the opening chapter to the uncompromising finale. And with its electronic panopticon, it gives us a dystopia to rival 1984 or Stand On Zanzibar – a future horrifying for its very plausibility.

Moxyland is published by Angry Robot.

When I first saw trailers for James Cameron’s Avatar, I was worried. Big blue CGI aliens? It didn’t sound promising. But then yesterday, I saw Avatar on a big screen, in 3D, and it blew me away. I loved every minute of it.

Yes, the plot’s predictable – a conflicted and otherworldly outsider joins the tribe, falls in love with the chief’s daughter, beats the tribe’s most skilled warrior, and leads the tribe to salvation – but so what? It’s an archetypal plot, one that our ancestors have probably been recycling since the dawn of campfire storytelling. It’s the hero’s journey. It’s a basic story of primate tribe dynamics, and it runs through our myths, from the Greek legend of Prometheus, through early sci-fi, to films such as Dances With Wolves, and Pocahontas. To complain about its unoriginality is to miss the point, as Cameron isn’t crafting something entirely new: instead, he’s reinterpreting the myth for our times, incorporating contemporary elements such as “shock and awe” bombing and commercial environmental exploitation.

Continue reading “Avatar: Film Review”