# Talk:Siren Queen

@Chiswick Chap @LEvalyn, I was surprised to see this article rated as GA with no expansion on what was noteworthy about its Reception. What did reviewers comment on? What were the highlights of the book? There are enough reviews to include that as part of the article's basic breadth. czar 12:52, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

The 'Reception' here is just the general comments; you will see from the article that 'Major themes' covers and analyses what the reviewers thought in detail by theme. The coverage there is more than sufficient for a GA. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:43, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
The Major themes is covering analysis of what the novel is about, which makes sense when available. But the Reception is meant to cover the subjective experience of the reviewers, which there is plenty of in the reviews. I.e., the review raises a theme within the book but the reviewer also personally related or resonates with the theme or says how effective it is and that's part of the book's cultural coverage. czar 15:57, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your careful attention to the quality of book articles. I'm not sure how strongly I disagree here, so I want to think this through and revisit the reviews I was working from.
My own first take is that this particular book didn't get much reception -- it didn't even get a review in Kirkus! More broadly, I tend to feel it's usually unencyclopedic to quote or otherwise dwell on the "I liked it" part of reviews. I prefer to write about reception with secondary sources that are about reviews rather than being reviews, like "Tokutomi Kenjirō's Hototogisu: A Worldwide Japanese Best-Seller In The Early Twentieth Century?" for The Cuckoo (novel). I don't think a reception is obligatory if it wasn't noteworthy; see A Spy on Mother Midnight.
When I go back to the reviews, here is everything I can find that is about evaluating the book rather than providing the material that went into the "Style" and "Major themes" sections:
Strange Horizons: After blazing onto the SFF scene in 2020 with The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo has gone from strength to strength. ... Nghi Vo is far too good a writer, though, to slip into pure allegory. ... Siren Queen is the clearest illustration you could ask for that Nghi Vo won’t be a one-hit wonder of a novelist. It’s a book packed with memorably spiky characters, keen insight, luxuriant prose, and eerie fantastical detail that lingers in the mind like a vividly unsettling dream.
Locus: Simply on the basis of its memorable charac­terization, elegant style, and a vividly detailed sense of place, Siren Queen might work pretty well as a mainstream novel. ... [the ending] serves as a capstone to the dogged quest for self-determination that makes Lilu, a multiple outsider in a rigged system, one of the more appealing fantasy heroes of recent years.
Reactor: Nghi Vo is the kind of writer who starts off remarkable yet somehow gets better and better with each book. Her short speculative fiction made her mark on fiction, her novellas demonstrated her sheer talent, and her novels have taken alternate history to new heights. Siren Queen is the best thing she’s written thus far.
Lightspeed: Vo crafts a smart, sexy, and engaging tale of fame. ... The theme that speaks the loudest to me throughout most of the book is of finding queer community and living in a way that aligns with who you want.
Publishers Weekly: Vo’s spellbinding latest (after The Chosen and the Beautiful) solidifies her position as a force to be reckoned with in speculative fiction. ... Her dazzling voice, evocative scene setting, and ambitious protagonist make this a knockout.
Looking at it, that could support about two sentences, one saying that reviewers thought it continued the successes of her earlier, shorter works (SH, Reactor, PW), and one saying they liked the characters, setting, and prose (SH, Locus, PW). The queer community bit from Lightspeed feels undue in reception but I'll check that I nodded to it in "Outsider status and monstrosity." I'll work on adding those two sentences, since they might as well be there now that I've done the reading, but I agree with Chiswick Chap that for this article, this information wouldn't be make-or-break for GA status. I think very little has been said about the reception of this novel, and much more has been said about its style and themes. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:33, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
Surely two sentences on their own would rarely ever make or break GA status, but it is a conspicuous absence. I think that adding two sentences allays the breadth question. (To the unrelated point, agreed that it's also reasonable for older books to not have had any Reception, but in my experience usually that's just asked/acknowledged during the review.) In any event, thanks for humoring me. czar 22:46, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Hah, this must be another one of my blind spots from considering everything post-1850 to be "recent, verging on newfangled" -- the absence was totally inconspicuous to me. I will keep this in mind for future book articles, especially newfangled modern ones, and I did mean it when I said I appreciate your careful attention to quality! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:02, 13 January 2025 (UTC)