My reviewer's (s)creed

Let's get something out of the way right from the start: reviewers aren't always right, and I'm no exception to this rule. In particular, my reviews don't represent the final word about any story. One thing I've learned as a writer is that everyone approaches a story from a different perspective, and that any given reader may fail to appreciate the writer's perspective or enjoy their style, even if (by nominally objective criteria) it's a decent story. Thus: anything you read at this site represents my personal perspective as a reader, not some version of a critic's revealed divine wisdom or absolute truth.

That being said, I use several criteria when I review fiction:

I want to dig into what an author’s doing behind the scenes to create a compelling story. That’s useful for anyone who wants to write fiction and for anyone who just wants a deeper appreciation of the story.
I want to assess whether they’ve succeeded on their own terms (telling the kind of story they seem to want to tell) and on my terms (whether I enjoyed the story). That’s a balancing act between their needs and mine, and to the extent that this is possible, I try to be objective enough to tip the balance towards the author’s goals.
I want to explore any interesting philosophical or scientific issues they’ve raised.
I try to pay attention to whether the author got the basic science right. As a recovering scientist, that’s not a trivial issue for me, and it determines whether I consider a tale successful science fiction, science-oriented fantasy, fantasy, or just an outright failure. For a story in which science plays a minor role, I at least want the story's internal logic to add up.
I try not to be cruel, but there is some shit up with which I will not put.

I never try to fit a story to the Procrustean bed of lit-crit or literary theory ab initio. I always read the story first and ask myself whether I liked it and whether it worked for me. I may then borrow from what I know of this body of theory to help explain why it did or did not work for me. But I always start with the story first and subject it to the criteria in this (s)creed; I do not start with any theoretical criteria and ask whether a story works from that purely artificial perspective.