Steve LaForest's Reviews > The Black God's Drums

Wow - what an absolutely amazing read! While I am much more of an SF fan than a fantasy enthusiast, I was entirely carried away with this novella - stayed up late reading, and woke up in the middle of the night to finish it. I would rank this novella right up with my favourite fantasies, including "Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Raven Tower" by Ann Leckie and "Not Long Before the End" by Larry Niven.

While it might be argued that there are some SF elements here, I would place this work squarely in the fantasy realm. I was not pleased to discover that it had somehow "magically" made its way into my favourite SF on a website - as it is NOT SF.

My rating system:
The Goodreads system is out of 5 stars, and does not allow you to use half-stars, so highest rating is 5 full stars, next-highest 4 stars, etc. -- and lowest is 1 star. I did NOT want to space these ratings equally, giving just as much precedence to low-quality mush as to really good works. For that reason, I laid out my system as follows:

I begin with one star being equivalent to a rating of "D, E, F" or below. Progressing upwards, I add 1 star for each step, up to the maximum 5 stars, which is equivalent to a rating of "A"+. I reserve 1 star for BOMBS, there being no option of zero or negative stars. As a result, I maximize my rating space for good books, and don't squander half or more of that rating space on books that are of marginal quality.