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My guess is they think their book is So Important that people will buy it unread.
A few years ago, I spotted a very brief trend to encase mass-market books in heat-shrink plastic. The books remained on their shelves, unsold. Eventually they were remaindered, still pristine. The idea failed for obvious reasons: people don't buy books when they don't know what's inside.
That's what authors like the one in question are doing. They want you to buy their book without ever seeing them.
And holy mother of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (does the FSM have a mother?), that person expects you to pay for the privilege of reviewing her book as she requested? People who want reviews send out ... wait for it ... review copies of their books, movies, whatever, to reviewers in the hope that they'll get reviews. They don't require the reviewers to buy their books, or tear off the first few chapters and send them that. (and they expect people to have read the whole book, not just a few chapters, and in fact often get highly irate when reviewers don't)
I'd review what I have now -- which is nothing. I'd tell readers that. I'd tell them that the author wants me to pay for the privilege of reviewing the book, and won't even let me read a sample without paying.
Then again, I'm a curmudgeon.
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