Phoenix Book Reviews

...Which brings us to Phoenix Book Reviews. The contributor is not a professional writer, but could very well be and she writes for the love of it and for the love of their subject. In the "about me" section of the site, you discover that Nikki will read pretty much anything, purely for the sheer joy of reading, and has been doing so since she was young.

Of course, this is all very well, but if the site is no good, you're left ...
...Yes, not only does Phoenix provide you with the incentive to spend money, it makes it easy. All I know for sure is that my Bank Manager is going to hate this site. In fact, the next time I get one of these nasty letters from her (you know the kind, "Dear Customer, you have no money"), I'm going to write back, giving her the URL for this site, with a little note that says "Well, YOU resist!"

Navigation is supremely ... more

Book reviews eh? There are loads of places on the net you can find them, but are they any good? You have the professional book reviewers, who generally write well, but have often been given a book to review that they wouldn't normally read so their heart isn't in it. Or how about on Amazon? People who have bought a book they liked, or didn't, and who want to tell you about it. "That was really great!" or "that was really s..., er, not great!" are often the order of the day. Concise, but not much use. Even on Ciao and Dooyoo, book reviews can vary from being in the style of Amazon, to being as long as the river Amazon. I fall into the latter category, I’m sad to confess.

Ideally, what we need is a book review website, written for book lovers, by book lovers. Which brings us to Phoenix Book Reviews. The contributor is not a professional writer, but could very well be and she writes for the love of it and for the love of their subject. In the "about me" section of the site, you discover that Nikki will read pretty much anything, purely for the sheer joy of reading, and has been doing so since she was young.

Of course, this is all very well, but if the site is no good, you're left with another meaningless website. Given that Nikki is neither a professional writer nor a professional web designer, there is a case for genuine concern about the way this site would turn out.

Apart from an unwieldy URL (http://www.angelfire.com/ns2/phoenixbookreviews/Home/index.html), there are very few negative things you can say about this site. The speed of loading is the first thing that catches your eye. It should be fairly quick, as most of the pages are mostly text, but whenever you click on a link to go to a page it's with you almost immediately. This site moves quicker than a teenager at mealtimes, even on a dial up connection.

What you get first is a front page giving a brief introduction to the site, and a few links down the left hand side of the screen for where you want to go next.

Unfortunately, due to ill health restricting Nikki’s time to work on the site, the “New this month” and “Competition” sections aren’t as up to date as they used to be. From previous experience, I can vouch that the “New” section was always updated every time a new addition was made to the site and the competitions were frequent and easy to enter and, unsurprisingly for a book review site, the prize was usually a book of some description. The other sections of the site that you might expect to be affected by Nikki’s absence aren’t, as the links for the US and UK top sellers link to the Guardian newspaper’s book pages.

But, it’s all about the books, and this is where the site really delivers. The reviews are split into fiction and non-fiction, and clicking on either link brings up a number of sub-categories.
Clicking on one of these gives you a list of reviewed books alphabetically by author surname, in much the same way as you'd find them in any high street bookshop. You can also select the authors list, which gives you the full spectrum of reviews on the site, with each marked as a fiction or non-fiction book. There are links to out of print books, a relatively new addition to the site, so less full than the others, and the reviews are much shorter than over the rest of the site.

There are also links to Guest Reviews, some from people whose work you may have read on Ciao or Dooyoo, although they have been specifically selected by Nikki to review books based on her own “no spoilers” rule and for the quality of their own writing. The “books for Sale” link is fairly empty, and gives no clue as to how you actually purchase the book, although as a link to E-Mail Nikki is fairly prominent, it would be fairly easy to ask for details.

As an additional joy, and as a slight break from the book reviews, there’s a list of author interviews. Again, Nikki isn’t a professional interviewer, but she’s concentrating generally on asking writers about their writing. There are a couple of points where you get the impression that Nikki was a little overawed in speaking to someone relatively famous. But there are names interviewed that most avid readers will recognise with Stephen Booth, Karin Slaughter and Robert Llewellyn (yes, he of “Red Dwarf” and “Scrapheap Challenge” fame) perhaps being the foremost amongst them, although there are also reviews by and an interview with John van Der Kiste, whose novel I reviewed recently.

However, with a book review site, it’s the reviews you come for. The reviews themselves, as you would expect from a writer of this quality (and if you've ever read her reviews on Dooyoo, you know what I mean) are superb. They are kept concise, but still contain all the information you need to decide whether the book would be for you or not. The site introduction indicates her intention not to spoil any book by giving away too many plot details. True to her word, she doesn’t. I'm not even sure how Nigella Lawson's cookery book ends, so dedicated are they to this cause. But you don't want to know anyway, you want to read the book and find out for yourself. Phoenix’s power is in the way it sucks you into the book, and then makes you want to go out and buy it. Like a Wild West cowboy with his six-shooter, my fingers keep wanting to draw my wallet from my pocket and blaze a trail through town.

The site is all in black on a beige background, in a font clear enough and large enough to read without straining your eyes. Unfortunately, they're written in such a style that you want to read the next one, and the next one, until you've got eye strain anyway. Only it's RSI of the eyes, not overwork. All reviews have a picture of the book at the top, in case you feel the need to go hunting for it, and the bottom of the page provides ISBN numbers, the RRP and publisher details to make finding the book that much easier. There’s also a little Amazon link, should you be unable to resist making a purchase. Yes, not only does Phoenix provide you with the incentive to spend money, it makes it easy. All I know for sure is that my Bank Manager is going to hate this site. In fact, the next time I get one of these nasty letters from her (you know the kind, "Dear Customer, you have no money"), I'm going to write back, giving her the URL for this site, with a little note that says "Well, YOU resist!"

Navigation is supremely easy. From any page of the site, there is a link back to the homepage, or to any of the sections I've described. With the speed of the site, this makes getting from one place to another on the site a quick and painless experience. It doesn't make dragging yourself away from the site any easier, though!

In just a few short years, the site has grown immensely. There is little happening currently, due to the ill health of the site owner, but there is still plenty to keep you going in the meantime. Although events such as this can’t be helped, it is a concern about any one person site in that something like this can slow down or halt the progress of the site. There is also no search function, although perhaps this will be added at a future date and with such simple and speedy navigation, this omission is only of minor concern. The URL is quite long, so having found it once, I would recommend adding it to your favourites, as it’ll save effort when you go back. And, if you like your books, you’ll be going back, trust me.

If you like to read, this is the site you want. The only worry would be for those who are a fan of the recently modern, and fast growing, chick-lit and bloke-lit genres. Neither holds much interest for Nikki, so neither really gets a showing on site. But for fans of most other genres, Phoenix Book Reviews is a gem. There are great reviews of great books, and everything is easy to read, both to the eye and to the mind. The addition of author interviews is inspired, as it adds further interest to the site and apart from one slightly annoying advert that takes up space on the left hand side of the page whenever you view a page, there are no pop-up adverts and even this can be easily closed or gotten used to in time.

Don't forget to sign the guest book before you leave, if you haven't been there before. This, incidentally, is the only page on the whole site that takes more than a couple of seconds to load. But, bear with it for a moment, and let Nikki know how brilliant she is, and to wish her well and a return to adding to the site real soon. It's no less than she deserves for providing this excellent little site.

I can only hope that my Bank Manager will forgive me. 

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