Tor

[james_davis_nicoll]

Sample selected from here. In retrospect, picking 2011 because it offered fewer titles probably was a bad idea, given that most of these are not out yet. I am going from online descriptions. Corrections etc happily accepted.

That said, it may be that there's a discernible pattern here.

Title                                              Protagonist           Author
                                                    F     M               F  M

The Crippled God, Steven Erikson 	            X     X                  X 
Tiassa, Steven Brust 	                                  X                  X 
Up Against It,  M. J. Locke 	                    X     X
Leviathans of Jupiter, Ben Bova 	                  X                  X 
The Sea Thy Mistress, Elizabeth Bear 	                  X               X
The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov 	                  X                  X
Central Park Knight,C. J. Henderson 	                  X                  X
Among Others Jo Walton                              X                     X 	
All the Lives He Led, Frederik Pohl 	                  X                  X
Hellhole, Kevin J. Anderson, Brian Herbert 	          X                  X
The Gravity Pilot, M. M. Buckner 	                  X               X
Vortex,	Robert Charles Wilson 	                          X                  X
Hybrids, Whitley Strieber 	                       ?                     X 
Cryptum,  	Greg Bear                                 X                  X	                                                                       
Shadow Chaser 	Alexey Pehov 	                          X                  X
The Sorcerer's House, Gene Wolfe                          X                  X	
Demon Song, Cat Adams 	                            X                     X 
After the Golden Age, Carrie Vaughn 	            X                     X
The Unremembered, Peter Orullian 	                  X                  X
He Walked Among Us,Norman Spinrad 	                  X                  X
Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente 	            X                     X
Green, 	Jay Lake 	                            X                        X
Gods of Riverworld, Philip José Farmer 	                  X                  X   
The Lost Gate, Orson Scott Card 	                  X                  X
Legion, William Peter Blatty 	                          X                  X
The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson 	                          X                  X 
Dark Jenny, Alex Bledsoe 	                          X                  X
The Rise of the Iron Moon, Stephen Hunt 	          X                  X
Other Kingdoms, Richard Matheson 	                  X                  X
Lady-Protector, L. E. Modesitt, Jr. 	            X                        X
Home Fires, Gene Wolfe                                    X                  X 	
Puttering About in a Small Land, Philip K. Dick        ?                     X	 
I Don't Want to Kill You, Dan Wells 	                  X                  X     
Fuzzy Nation, John Scalzi 	                       ?                     X 
Iorich, Steven Brust 	                                  X                  X
Stonewielder, Ian C. Esslemont 	                          X                  X
An Embarrassment of Riches, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro 	  X               X
Farlander, Col Buchanan 	                          X                  X
The Unincorporated War, Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin      ?                     X 	 
The Season of Passage, Christopher Pike 	          X                  X
Sati, Christopher Pike 	                               ?                     X 
Land of the Dead, Thomas Harlan                     X
Conan The Triumphant, Robert Jordan 	                  X                  X  
Farseed, Pamela Sargent 	                    X                     X 
A Mighty Fortress, David Weber 	                       ?  X                  X  
The Trade of Queens, Charles Stross 	            X                        X     
One Second After, William R. Forstchen 	                  X                  X 	
The Wanderer's Tale, David Bilsborough 	               ?                     X 
Jaclyn the Ripper, Karl Alexander 	                  X                  X 
Secret of the Dragon, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman        X               X  X 	
Watcher of the Dead, J. V. Jones 	            X     X               X   
People of the Longhouse, W. Michael Gear,      
 Kathleen O'Neal Gear 	                               ?                  X  X	
The Dark Zone, Dom Testa 	                    X  ?                     X    
Storm of Reckoning, Doranna Durgin 	            X                     X
Up Jim River, Michael Flynn                         X     X                  X                    
Arms-Commander, L. E. Modesitt, Jr. 	            X                        X 
Able One, Ben Bova 	                               ?                     X  
Shadow Prowler, Alexey Pehov 	                       ?                     X
The Stainless Steel Rat Returns,Harry Harrison 	          X                  X 
Black Blade Blues, J. A. Pitts 	                    X                     X  
Dead Space: Martyr, 	B. K. Evenson 	                  X                  X 
Dimiter, William Peter Blatty 	                          X                  X
Discord's Apple, Carrie Vaughn 	                    X                     X
As You Wish, Gabi Stevens 	                    X     X                  X 
The Hammer of Darkness,L. E. Modesitt, Jr. 	          X                  X
Brendan,  Morgan Llywelyn                                 X                  X 
Total                                              19    43              14 52  
Unmatched                                          15    38

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

The people who employ you are probably not expecting that your evaluation will be path-dependent. That is, they hope you will give the same review to a book whether you have preceded it with a Stainless Steel Rat book or not.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

There's a mechanism in place to deal with this sort of issue.

[(Anonymous)]

The mechanism that springs to mind is that they make you read SSR, then read a review book, then SSR again, then the next review book. Et cetera. Your continued success as a reviewer is partially because this regimen has not driven you into gibbering madness.

--
NPH