Sales in the UK are still great, even though To Honor You Call Us has slipped from #1, 1, and 2 in its various categories to #3, 3, and 3. Apparently, lots of people are taking the plunge enticed by the new lower price. I’m getting very encouraging fan mail from that part of the world as well, indicating that the book is appealing to readers across the pond. There is only one fly in the ointment–the book just got a one star review on Amazon’s UK site. Sometimes, I wonder what possesses people to write stuff like this. It’s so vile, I’m goiing to let you read it in its entirety:
[One Star] Unreadable, 3 April 2014
This review is from: To Honor You Call Us (Man of War, Book 1) (Kindle Edition)
Too badly written for the plot to be relevant imho. The author’s struggles with sentence construction made me wince. There are an awful lot of bad, cheap books on Kindle ime – especially in genre fiction – and often plenty of underserved five star ratings for them alas.
Now, I know that I am not the greatest prose stylist in the history of the English Language, but I’ve never struggled with sentence construction. I would be very interested in seeing which sentences he thinks are badly constructed, especially since the text was worked over by half a dozen professional editors, including Michael Shohl, one of the best in the business. And, to call it “unreadable” is nothing short of an outright lie. Anyone who thinks a book that sold 10,000 copies in self publication even before it was professionally edited, and then got picked up by a major publisher, is “unreadable” is full of shit. If he can’t read it, then he’s too illiterate to be writing online reviews.
By the way, none of the professionals who have read this book ever said anything about it being badly written. Some of them had other issues, but none with the basic writing. Maybe this guy just doesn’t get that he doesn’t know anything about English Composition. Who knows? In any event, it’s just a shame that people who are considering whether to buy this book will be confronted with the worthless opinions of this despicable troll as the most recent review, at least for a while.
Those of you who found the prose something other than “unreadable” might wish to lodge comments in response to this review. Here’s the permalink to where you can find it. http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3K1E0MG0C4EBS/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00DQUKZMY
H. Paul Honsinger 
It was my pleasure to comment on that review and give my opinion.
Don’t let it get to you, it must be frustrating to have a book that you have put so much effort into being attacked and being unable to respond but that is what your fans are for!
You’re captain of this ship but let us be the X/O.
Hph, as I said before, when some pseudo critic commented negatively on book one, there will always be someone who feels compelled to go against the grain, and say something negative, even if not relevant, or totally off the wall like the sentence construction comment. As a voracious reader if SCIFI, seldom read reviews, and even when I do I make my own decision on what’s good and bad. I think few people are influenced one way or the other on books, now if it was a product I might consider the evaluation as it compared to other reviews ( as when I bought a road bike a while back).
I think the sales numbers speak for themselves – if not, then here’s my review short and sweet; “Terrific book, fine writing, believable characters, interesting stories – can’t wait for the next one! Buy it you will love it?
By the way, I did leave a comment on Mr Time Traveler’s review…
Thanks. I’ll never know how many sales that jerk caused me to lose, but I’m betting it is at least a few hundred. There was a big dip right when his review went up and sales are only slowly recovering. My ranking went from 1 to 4 overnight. It has now climbed back to 3