Kirkus Review live

The good folks at Kirkus gave The Valkyrie a pretty darned kind review, I'm happy to say. You can read the full text at https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/deborah-l-davitt/valkyrie-davitt/; they quite deliberately don't want me to do more than copy a small percentage of their text. I posted that small section to the Reviews page of this website.

Most Kirkus reviews don't go beyond 500 words. So it's difficult to compare their review to one written by the Midwest Book Review. The MWBR goes into greater depth about what the reviewer liked and didn't like. Kirkus strives to give an overview of the book so that a random librarian has some sort of general idea of the book's topic, but doesn't require that someone read a great deal to get a feel for the book. And then they give a general qualitative statement, and some thematic information, too.

Basically, Kirkus as I understand it, started off as a periodical for librarians and perhaps teachers. "Should we order this book for our collection or not?" was the question that needed answering. And now they serve a much wider function, but still in that original style.

So, in essence, you can't compare reviews that come from different impetuses. The MWBR seems to come from more of a "books you might be interested in, check them out!" perspective, and has as its audience people who are browsing the shelves, as it were. Kirkus has as its first and foremost audience, the people collecting books to put on those shelves.

You could argue that the people who are browsing the shelves should be the ones assembling the collection, but if we did that, imagine what libraries would look like.

Or, rather, don't. Go look at the internet. That's a pretty safe comparison. ;)

At any rate, the review is up, and I'm very grateful for it! Thank you!