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Amazon's rating system is, in large part, broken. How many terrible books have we seen that got 5-star ratings from the author's family and friends, for instance? I've heard of the same family-and-friend packs giving one-star "revenge ratings" to books written by people who were honest about those disasters, too. There are sites I trust for book reviews (MR being one of them) but Amazon ratings aren't one of them.
I still can't forget the guy who gave a one-star rating to a large fish tank because he found it difficult to pour all the water out of it and sterilize its contents every week -- something which, as any tropical fish keeper can tell you, would give him a permanent case of "new tank syndrome" and never, ever an established tank. This probably explained his dead fish. I've seen books rated up because readers liked other books by that author, and rated down because they hated them, irrespective of the book in question. I saw a very good book light rated down by someone who bought some other item from one of the vendors who sold that book light (not that light, and not that vendor ... no, it doesn't make sense to me either) and it didn't work. And that's just touching the surface. The text of individual reviews can be very useful, but the overall star rating seems to be heading for "useless" with jato assist.
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