Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Summary: I believe that the author or one of his supporters is artificially increasing the user review rating with bogus reviews and/or phantom accounts. I purchased this book because of it's 4-star rating thinking that with 40 reviews, the majority couldn't be wrong. I should have paid more attention to who was giving the reviews and what else they'd read. When I took a deeper look into the ratings themselves (unfortunately after purchasing this book) I discovered what can only be described as suspicious authenticity at best, and downright fraud at worst. Read on... As I write this review there are currently a total of 41 reviews for "Trudge: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse," including this one. The review ratings break down as follows 22 5-star 6 4-star 4 3-star 4 2-star 5 1-star Pretty good for the author right? I mean, you can't please everyone and the majority seem to really enjoy this book. But here's the suspicious part: Of the 22 5-star reviews 8 are written by users who only reviewed 1 or 2 books in all of Amazon's library. That's it, one or 2 reviews of all books ever purchased on Amazon. And can you you guess who these reviews were for? I'll give you hint... the author's name starts with Shaw and ends with nChesser. For the record these users are: Wwilloww DeusExMachina Bill Dillard Hal L Aspen Cowboys #1 Andrew Paternoster KrazyGingerSnap That's right, 8 of 22 reviews that give this book 5-stars are written by users who have only reviewed this or "Soldier On", another of Shawn Cheeser's novels. In all fairness 2 of the 1-star reviews were written by users who only reviewed this book, as was one of the 4-star reviews. Why do I bother to bring this up? I'm an avid Amazon shopper and like most Amazonians (?) user reviews are a major influence on what I ultimately decide to purchase. I appreciate all the time and effort real users put into writing reviews so when I discover something as questionable as these reviews I feel that the right thing to do as a member of this community is to expose what I fear is a blatant manipulation of the system. Also, I didn't think this book was very good, but that's just the opinion of one user which is why I have only left one review. If you care to read it, I've entered it below. The writing itself is overly cliche and unoriginal, as are the characters. While I do give the author credit for his attempts at realism the political vitriol kinda spoiled it for me. It's not that I disagree with it, it's that I feel thinly-veiled, politicized jabs added nothing to the story. I would have enjoyed this book much more had they not been tossed in unecessarily throughout. I understand my review will possibly garner some strong responses which is why I have tried to remain objective and stick to the facts.