Is it worth five stars?

Goodreads has a star rating system. According to the site, the stars have the following values:

·       1 star - I did not like it,

·       2 stars - it was ok,

·       3 stars - liked it,

·       4 stars - I really liked, and

·       5 stars - it was amazing.

At its most basic, the star system has four positive stars and one negative. If everyone gave every book five stars, the system would fail.  So I don’t know where this idea came from that your book has to get a five star review or it is a failure. It has made Goodreads into a world where sock puppet authors give themselves five star reviews and other authors attack readers who post a negative review. Really, people? Really? Aren’t readers your market? Be nice to them. Or at the very least, don’t attack them in an environment that is supposed to be for them.

I've talked previously about how not everyone will like everything you write and they shouldn't. If you see a book with a few reviews and they are all five stars, then there is something off.

Last night I watched Priest on DVD. It is based on a Korean manga and is a fantasy movie set in a theocratic world where humans and vampires are at war. You give confession in a line of automated booths that look like portable toilets.

Humans have selected and trained a group of elite fighters to defend them and they have heightened senses and super-fast reflexes. The world is a gritty, quasi western world but they have awesome weapons, incredible looking dirt bikes and it is all very stylish and very dark. The vampires are genuinely terrifying and like nothing you have seen before. Vampires, who are supposed to be wiped out, kidnap the priest’s niece. It stars Paul Bettany as the priest, Karl Urban as a wonderful bad guy called Black Hat, Lily Collins as the niece, Cam Gigandet as a local Sherriff literally called Hick (bwahaha) and the wonderful Maggie Q as a fighting priestess.

It is not a five star movie; it is what people might call a guilty pleasure - although I object to that term. Things that please us and do no harm should not be felt with guilt.

It gets a rating of 5.7 out of 10 on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes gave it 16%. Its budget was $60m and it made $78m worldwide, but was considered a financial flop and I doubt the obvious sequel will ever be made.

Would I give it five stars? Heck no. Did I enjoy it? You bet I did.