Talk:Ibis trilogy

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Ibis trilogy/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 05:28, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay, let's take a look. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:28, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• It's generally useful to succinctly define unusual words or phrases so that readers don't have to click through to another article, such as girmityas and Thirteen Factories
• This is off the GACR, but the duplicate links script shows a number of duplicate links through the article
• You've done a good job summarizing the content of the books in one paragraph - this is really difficult to do and it feels elegant here
• The third para of "Synopsis" isn't really synopsis, it might fit better in "Background" or even under the Language section in "Themes"
• Ref 6, from Culture Trip, does not strike me as reliable - it's a travel site. What are their qualifications for providing literary criticism?
• The first paragraph of the "Historical background" section is a fairly close paraphrase from the LA Review article it cites, which is not good. It's also not great that it's sourced solely to a literary review. I would suggest rewriting, with citations to scholarly works of history.
• Generally a background section wants to be the first thing in the article, because it sets the reader up to understand the rest of the content. I would move this section up and revise it to introduce all the relevant concepts (this is a good place to explain things like girmityas and Thirteen Factories)
• Not GACR, but the sandwiching between the quote box and the image in the Background section is unattractive
• Most of the subsections of "Themes and style" feel underbaked
• "and style" implies that there will be analysis of the writing style, but I don't see any
• "and been proposed as blurring the line between historical fact and fiction" is awkwardly phrased. It's also not that unique - plenty of historical fiction incorporates a great deal of historical detail. Does Ibis do it somehow more, differently, or better than others? Otherwise this comes across as fluff.
• Another instance of close paraphrasing:
  • Our article: "The series' themes stem from the asymmetrical relations that arose through the opium wars, including abundance and poverty, intimacy and exclusion, chance and fate, and authority."
  • Original: "all stemming from asymmetrical colonial relations during the opium trade. These themes include: abundance and poverty, intimacy and exclusion; hybrid languages; authority and self-deception; chance and fate; the ineffable."
• It's too close to be acceptable. You need to rephrase in your own words, or directly quote the author in the text.
• "With a narrative that spans the Indian Ocean region, the trilogy has been suggested as proposing the region an alternative space for discussing colonial history, as a region with extensive international trade." I have read this sentence three times and I have no idea what it is trying to communicate.
• I can only access the abstract, but "The Articulated Space of the Indian Ocean in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy" describes the trilogy as a modern epic of sorts, which seems like a significant notion, but it is not mentioned anywhere in the article. This feels like an underutilization of the source.
• "Water" is sectioned off as a "key theme" but only has one sentence from the author describing how it is so. Do any other critics have thoughts about water as it relates to these books?
• In "Language", you assert that Ghosh "manipulates and uses different languages", citing what appear to be two solid academic sources (without reading them in depth) about language in these books, but don't provide any examples of how he does this. Particularly, I would like to know how mixed languages relate to themes of "ineffability".
• I might also point out that "hybrid languages" is not really a theme in the technical sense of being a message or idea expressed via the narrative.
• "has described this multilingual mix as "zubben"." what does this even mean? What is a zubben? I understand that it is a word he invented, but what does he use it for? What does he define it as? Was it adapted from another language?
• Our article about Chrestomathy describes it as a sort of primer for learning languages, but the usage noted here seems more like a standard glossary. Does the source touch on the difference? Was it a deliberate choice of his to adopt the Greek term?
• "Ecology and environment" - a single-sentence subsection. This needs more depth.
• The pull quotes in "Reception" are far too long. We need to summarize reviewers' opinions. Pull quotes should be reserved for punchier bits or things that can't really be paraphrased
• I'm not sure we need reviews of the individual books here (thinking of Kidd's 5-star review here). The books have their own articles where that belongs. This reception section should focus on critical reception to the trilogy as a whole or the books in comparison to one another (Vaidya's critique is useful where Kidd's isn't, because she's comparing the books)
• I revised the "Future" section a bit and removed the subsection for TV as it was too small to be necessary

I'm going to be honest, I think this must be a quickfail. These are not minor quibbles. The article is a long way from meeting the broadness criteria, and includes at least two instances of very close paraphrasing. There are likely to be more from the sources I can't access. This will need significant revision and expansion before it can meet the GACR. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.