Reviewing with River

I think it's important to remember, that even if you fork out a few thousand real-world dollars for a well established, reputable editor to review your work, anything beyond mechanics is going to be subjective. Even with mechanics, editors will differ from each other.

I think the trick really, is to be sympathetic to what the author is trying to achieve, rather than be blind to it. You don't want to change their style, you want to help them develop it.

I'm going to wander off-topic for a bit, but there is a point, so bear with me. I once gave a lecture in the Netherlands to some of the best programmers in the world. I began by asking them why nearly all their programs were password protected. The answer they gave was 'to protect the program, to stop someone gaining unlawful access to it'.

I then told them that it didn't matter about the code - nobody could read the code, it was all compiled into machine language anyway. What they were really protecting was access to the data. In any software, data is king - it's all about the data.

Similarly, we should never lose sight of the fact that fiction is all about the story. The story is king, and everything else is simply the way we try to reveal the story to the reader. There are good ways and bad; there things you should and shouldn't do. Helping the author find that sweet path through the jungle is our main task.