I’ve been getting reviews back from Beta readers as mentioned in the previous couple of posts and I was pretty excited to get my first review back from a boy!! ; p

The review made my eyebrows shoot up. Almost everything he questioned was different to the previous reviews. So I thought I’d write up my own wildly unscientific theory on it all *grin* Here are my thoughts.

Boys like blueprints. The first monster description according to my male reviewer needs to be more detailed.
This reminded me of how my father loves the Jean Auel’s Earth Children series. The intense descriptions completely enthrall him. Unlike the sex scenes which he flicks through *hee* actually me, mum and dad love this series and you can tell when we hit the x-rated scenes. The pages get flipped. It’s what makes me so hesitant about sex scenes… Eeek lost my train of thought – back to the differences.

Boys like blueprints and the more detailed the exciting and weird stuff the better! Girls are quite happy to have a series of ‘descriptive’ words to create their own images, even if it means everyone has a different view of a monster. Boys however want to be able to practically build the creature/item and argue over the minute details. A good example of this is the reviews on books 8 & 9 of the Sookie Stackhouse series were the male reviewers are positively vicious about mistakes in certain names. Apparently Charlene Harris doesn’t use an editor (I really hadn’t noticed.. but then I’m not a boy ; p) and these reviewers weren’t impressed..

Boys like new and exciting creatures. I had a complaint about using Centaurs cause they are too common. This one made me blink (and I don’t care I love’em ; p). But then if I think to the reviews of Avatar I guess I should have seen this coming. Here in NZ there were more than a few snide comments about the creatures on Avatar. For their lack of originality. I was dumbfounded by it cause I think the creatures are WOW but more than one boy was exceptionally unimpressed by the six legged horses.. On the bright side I have lotsa freaky creatures appearing in Book 2 & 3 – book 1 is just The Arrival people!! Give the girls a chance to see the world *lol*.

I am thrilled no one complained about the names I created. Course I probably shouldn’t have said that (touching wood! Touching wood! – and NO not that kinda wood! Ugh such disgusting minds ; p)

I’m hoping to find a couple more male reviewers out there (any offers?) so as to compare some more of my ‘scientific’ thoughts *grin*