But it seems the debate between being Nice and being Mean in reviews are both founded on a false premise: that it is necessary to establish a tone prior to acting, or, rather, that a review is not a reaction to a creative work, but an essay itself with a purpose.
That purpose may be to (on the nice side) make consumers of the review feel good about doing so, or to get the creator to pull-quote the reviewer on the cover (or, even better, ask them for an introduction to the next installment). Or the purpose may be to (on the nasty side) pursue a particular aesthetic ideological argument regardless of the work in question (X is per se rubbish, therefore if this work is actually enjoyable, it is X and so must be called rubbish), or to come across as snooty and superior (perhaps in pursuit of a book deal).
What I want from a reviewer is honesty and perspective and humility.
The honesty part comes in describing how they enjoyed the book (or not), what they liked, disliked, found memorable, found forgettable.
The perspective part is perhaps some placement of the book within intellectual or literary traditions, in the context of the author's other works, and so forth. Here's where some of the meta-commentary comes in, but it is (or should be) divorced from the first part. You can like a book (or even parts of it) and still find the overall message or tradition or form to be problematic. You can find an author's corpus to be, net-net, triffic, but still disagree with aspects of a particular work.
The humility part is perhaps the hardest, because a reviewer is, per se, espousing their opinions (perhaps with a smattering of facts to go alongside). But the reviewer has to realize they aren't really-truly speaking ex cathedra on matters of aesthetics. "I didn't like this book" does not equal "This was a horrible book". "I liked this book" does not equal "This is an instant literary classic." It's hard to include a few overarching comments, but accept that not everyone is going to share your opinion, vs. feeling (or, worse, asserting) that anyone who doesn't is a dolt.
But, ultimately, it comes back to the first item. Be honest. If you're writing an review for some other reason than to share your thoughts and opinions and even perspective on a given work, you're a hack. If you're doing it to cultivate your public image, or to seek future work, or to advance some cause, you're doing a disservice to the consumers of your review. It's fine to have a voice, to have a perspective, to have an opinion. It's not fine to trash a book (or laud a book) (or movie, TV show, game, piece of art, etc.) for the sake of doing so.
Reshared post from +Angela Craft
"An intellectual has a solemn obligation to speak out negatively against ideas or books that he or she believes will have a pernicious or misleading effect upon people’s understanding of important things. To do otherwise would be cowardly and irresponsible." – Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic
Bigger Than Bambi
Be nice or else: In an era when literary feuds lack grandeur, writers argue about affability.