Unless you've been living under a stone for the last few years, you'll know about Harriet Klausner - she's the internet's most prolific book reviewer, with (according to Wikipedia) more than 15,500 reviews to her credit. She posts anything up to six reviews a day. Which would be irrelevant if her reviews were in any way insightful or even useful, but unfortunately because Harriet likes everything, without exception, her reviews are little more than extra noise in the system, a background hiss of blanket positivity.
I don't mean to be too hard on Harriet - I'm sure she's sincere, and really does read and critique six books a day. But when I was writing THE PREFECT, and needed a handy index by which to measure the prefects' ability to speed-read, the name "Klausner" couldn't help but jump to mind. Hence, the throwaway joke on P26 (UK edition):
"Sparver stood next to her console, scanning the information scrolling past on multiple panes. Thalia made light of her speed-reading ability, but her Klausner index was still much higher than his own."
The curious thing is, true to form, Harriet has now reviewed THE PREFECT and given it (knock me down with a feather) a five star review.
I can't help wondering - did she even notice that reference?
