With everybody getting offended, it’s hard for creative people to find bad guys

We all know that the entertainment world, deprived of Islamist bad guys for its movies (since real Islamists might respond with real killing), having been reduced to demonizing corporations, recycling Nazis and, when all else fails, dragging in space aliens.  Books, too, are feeling the pinch.

I was trolling through Kindle’s free books the other day looking for stuff to read. Unless I’m quite obviously not going to read the book (Paleolithic cook books aren’t my thing), I click over and check the best and the worst reviews for a book. The best reviews tell me about the book; and the worst tell me about its flaws. Any book that gets scathing attacks because of bad grammar, wooden dialogue, whiny heroines, etc., never finds its way onto my Kindle.

Today, I found a “one star” review that raises a point I’ve never thought about before: the book is unfair to witches. As best as I can tell, the book is a sweet, but silly, romance/ghost story but, somewhere in the book the writer said something mean about witches and got this negative review:

5 of 49 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointed, April 15, 2013
By GW Alumna (Planet Earth) – See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: Keep Me Ghosted (Sophie Rhodes Romantic Comedy #1) (Kindle Edition)

Let me first say that I’ve enjoyed Cantwell’s books immensely. And I enjoyed this one for about the first third. Then the problems started. The problem in this book, the malevalent ghost, was identified as having been evoked by witchcraft. I don’t take insults to my religion lightly, and this is the last Cantwell book that I will ever read. Just imagine if some dastardly ghost had been invoked by islam or judaism. We didn’t even get the dignity of a capital letter for our religion. I am very disappointed in Cantwell. I thought she was better than this. It was just a cheap shot that was totally unnecessary. Surely she could have created an antagonist without insulting people.