The following is a guest post from Peregrine North, a longtime friend. She gave me this review to publish back in March. Now, I’ve had a lot of life hit me in quick succession, which is a good chunk of why this blog has been so neglected, but that doesn’t make it any less my fault that it’s July and only now am I getting around to posting it for her. She’s certainly reminded me enough times, and I kept putting it off until after the next crisis. One crisis turned into another, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon, so I’m squeezing a few minutes in now to do what I should have done months ago.
You can find Peregrine North at her website, along with her music. If you’re in the right geographic area, you can even hear said music in person.
In my review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I decided to focus on my primary interest as a writer: characters. Instead of being a movie review per se, it’s more of an exploration of the arcs and plotlines surrounding the various characters or groups of characters in the film, with looks back at The Force Awakens and the original trilogy. For me, character creation and development are the best part of story writing, and excellence in these departments is critical to any good story. Let’s see how The Last Jedi scored. Continue reading
against review requests: namely, I never do them anymore. I can’t tell you how many requests I get for reviews from authors. The problem is that some authors proved we can’t have nice things; so, to avoid any appearance that accepting review copies means I am guaranteeing a favorable review, I just don’t accept them anymore.
The first season of Agent Carter met with a lot of mixed press, mainly focused on whether it was misandrist messagefic. In the end, those issues were resolved, 
I’ve been busy, as evidenced by how little I’ve been posting. I’ve even been neglecting ![20151222_000616[1]](https://novelninja.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/20151222_0006161.jpg?w=258&h=460)
Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity.
Whenever I talk characters and worldbuilding, at conventions or in classrooms, I always recommend several books. One of them actually isn’t a book at all, and it’s the only one that I mention in both contexts.
Novel Ninja 
How to Review
One of the many things I’m behind on, especially in regard to this site, is my pile of review to-dos. That doesn’t mean manuscripts; it means books I’ve read (or listened to, in the case of audiobooks) and think are worth talking about.
But a review is actually a delicate sort of art, and — as readers here well know! — I tend to be more on the verbose side. That actually isn’t the way I should be doing it, and as I get back into the swing of things I need to watch that. Part of it is that because this site exists to focus on writing advice, I like pulling out lessons; but that isn’t always the best use of a review even for here, even if the only people reading the reviews are authors looking for tips and tricks.
So what does go into a good review? And what’s the difference between a review and a critique? Continue reading →
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