On Giving Bad Reviews
About fifteen years ago I worked for a magazine whose primary function was to review products, venues, events, etc. I didn’t last. The reason why was because of a brief conversation I had with my friend Chase. He pointed out that the magazine had never once given a bad review of anything and was more a PR mouthpiece for new flavors and products than a serious critic. He was right. So, I didn’t go back.
Adam Faraca, author and reluctant critic
6/14/20253 min read
In researching THE COLORS WE BLEED FOR I searched every corner of the internet for any scrap, any hint of a detail, any trace of reputable information about men who lived over a hundred years ago. My Italian was rusty, and the process was not easy. Some sources were really good, some were still good but were anecdotal and could not be 100% verified, and a couple were bad. Like so bad. Like maybe a child used AI and copied Wikipedia almost verbatim to write a book to trick a teacher, not expecting an adult doing literary research to buy it bad. Not saying that happened, but… there is strong evidence something like that may have happened. I didn’t include anything from that source in THE COLORS WE BLEED FOR, but I did write a scathing review for what was going to be my first negative review. Until I thought about it and was over 50% sure I would be putting an actual child or a young man who completed the work as a child on full blast.
The point is, I do have to give bad reviews now and then, or I am no better than the people who only regurgitate PR pieces. This has led to a bit of soul searching. What if the author or creator is dead? What if they’re not? What if I do somehow insult a child (I mean I doubt it, but anything’s possible)? What if the creator is an unknown person or a person who has some unique life experience or circumstance unknown to me, and I look like a dick for criticizing somebody who overcame adversity or some random life event? What if I criticize a person more well-known than me and need their help later? What if I make enemies and feud with my new enemies?
I am also known to be a contrarian. I could easily see myself giving a negative review of something that is popular, or a positive review of something that plays to largely negative reviews. For instance I love the movie Death to Smoochie. I think it is some of Robin Williams and Edward Norton’s best work, by far. It is dark, it is a masterpiece. It bombed. Hard. Roger Ebert said it was one of if not the worst movie he’d ever seen. I fucking love it. Not because I am a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian, but because deadpan black comedy is my wheel house. I also don’t watch Star Wars, Marvel, basically anything big budget meant to make a billion dollars and be the number one movie of the year. It is not that I don’t enjoy explosions and visual f/x. I do, but the time it takes to notice every easter egg and detail is just too much of an investment for me.
I don’t know what my first published negative review is going to be. I thought I did, then I realized that the book was so bad that me trashing it and giving it 0/10 would likely hurt the feelings of somebody whose book nobody was going to read or have the intention of reading ever again anyway. Plus, I think it is Google print on demand so I doubt anyone else is ever going to pay (fairly extravagantly) to have another copy made.
Hit me up on social media if you have ideas for negative reviews. Be sure to sign up for my email list for updates for THE COLORS WE BLEED FOR and don’t hesitate to give an honest review when it comes out. And check out Death to Smoochie. You’ll either love it or hate it. That’s what makes it good. And, yes, I know I intentionally used bad AI for the image for this post. I don’t use it for writing, or for commercial purposes, but I can laugh at bad AI. I’m not even sure we are going to live long enough to “figure out” the rules, ethics, and accountability of using AI, but I do hope we can all laugh at it soon.