Review Rating System
Tales from Absurdia follows the Goodreads five-star format of reviewing, with a few tweaks for clarity.
No review format is perfect, but this method produces the most honest and reflective critique of a book. Below, you’ll find a full breakdown of the criteria.
Essential
An Essential rating is the highest accolade on Tales from Absurdia.
This is for a book that leaves a strong lasting impression, or challenges previously held beliefs.
Recipients of this rating include The Sound Mirror and Mrs Death Misses Death.
Highly Recommended
A Highly Recommended book is well written, explores interesting ideas in a satisfying way, and wholly memorable.
A 
text has to really stand out from the rest.
Leonard & Hungry Paul and 12 Bytes are fine examples of this.
Decent
A Decent rating is a positive endorsement.
A book does some things very well, and others less so. Perhaps the book explores some really intriguing ideas, but they aren’t developed as fully as they should be. I may still recommend this book, but only to the right audience.
A good read nonetheless, but not quite enough to leave a lasting impression.
Disappointing
Disappointing means that a certain level of expectation was not met.
A ⭐⭐ is not entirely without merit but it ultimately fails to capture this reader’s attention.
On that point alone, I would not recommend a ⭐⭐ book.
Avoid
Avoid is fairly self-explanatory – I really didn’t like this book and I don’t recommend you pick it up either.
Fortunately, I don’t give out too many of these out, but memorable recipients of the ⭐ club include Paolo Coehlo’s pitiful The Alchemist and The Thursday Murder Club.
