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

Nominator: DrOrinScrivello (talk · contribs) 17:09, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: MCE89 (talk · contribs) 21:44, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Hello, I'll take this review. Looks like a nice piece of work from an initial read — will add my comments within the next day or so. MCE89 (talk) 21:44, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Added my comments below. The only thing remaining is the spot checks, so just ping me when you're done with this initial round of comments and I'll do those. MCE89 (talk) 23:10, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review! I've addressed most of your suggestions, and will tackle the last couple shortly. I'll give you a ping then. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 14:44, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@MCE89: I think I've now addressed everything below. This was a lot of really helpful feedback and insight, thank you. Take a look when you can and let me know what you think. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 18:25, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@DrOrinScrivello: All looks good! No issues on the spot checks, so there's just the one remaining question below about how the book's timespan is described. MCE89 (talk) 21:37, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@MCE89: I addressed that below, hopefully to your satisfaction. Thanks again for the thorough review, the article's in a much better place because of it. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 21:48, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thank you for the interesting article! Passing this now. MCE89 (talk) 22:03, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Images are relevant, well-placed, and appropriately captioned. The book cover has an appropriate NFUR, and the two other images are properly tagged on Commons.
• No copyright issues apparent on Earwig. Will do further checks for close paraphrasing as part of my source spot checks.
• No issues with stability.

Most of these are suggestions only, please feel free to disregard or push back on any that you disagree with. MCE89 (talk) 23:10, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

• The book examines times during the past few centuries when certain individuals have become deified by a group of people — A few thoughts on this sentence:
  • "Past few centuries" feels a bit vague, you could consider replacing this with "last 300 years", "since the 18th century" or similar
  • I'm not sure either "certain" or "by a group of people" are really adding anything to the meaning of this sentence
  • Is it worth adding a few words explaining "deification"? I'd imagine that this could be interpreted in multiple ways, so a gloss at the start of the article might provide useful context for readers (e.g. ...instances where people have become deified, or regarded and treated as gods)
    •  Done
• draws parallels from the historical events to the modern political and religious climate — "Draws parallels between [X] and [Y]" is a bit more idiomatic than "draws parallels from [X] to [Y]"
  •  Done
• The book, which was short-listed for... — I don't think "short-listed" is strictly incorrect, but the more common form would be "shortlisted"
  •  Done
• This is mostly just a personal preference, but I'm not a big fan of expressions like with The New York Times calling it... or The Guardian believed..., as they make it sound like you are attributing the opinion to the publication rather than to the reviewer. I'd instead suggest something like with a review in The New York Times calling it
  •  Done

Background

• became discouraged that no one would be interested in buying the work — I think this is missing a couple of words, perhaps became discouraged and began to worry that no one would be interested in buying the work?
  •  Done

Synopsis

• As with the lead, I think providing a very brief definition of apotheosis might be useful at the beginning of this section
  •  Done
• The philologist Max Müller, for instance, based many of this theories regarding world religion on reports of the deification of colonists in India, despite never once traveling to that nation — Does this sentence belong in the synopsis? It feels like highlighting this contrast between Subin's approach and that of earlier researchers could be useful in the reception/analysis section, but I'm not sure it really fits here
  • She actually discusses this in the book, so I think it's relevant in the synopsis. I added "She notes that..." to the beginning of the sentence to make that clearer.
    • Got it, that looks fine then
• Jamaicans had become enraptured by a biography...in the other". — This ends up being quite a long sentence, you might want to consider splitting it in two.
  •  Done
• ...he called for Emperor Hirohito to reject his own apotheosis — "Reject his own" reads as a little ambiguous here, is this referring to Emperor Hirohito's own apotheosis, or to MacArthur calling on Hirohito to reject MacArthur's apotheosis?
  •  Done, hopefully at least.
• due to his time as a prisoner of war in Kabul in addition to finding his brother's tortured body in the Khyber Pass — To make the two parts of this clause mirror each other grammatically, you could consider: due to his time as a prisoner of war in Kabul and his discovery of his brother's tortured body in the Khyber Pass
• the colonial masters he represented: — Suggest a full stop instead of a colon here
  •  Done
• I'm a little confused about the contents of the third section of the book. The article Age of Discovery gives an approximate date range of c. 1418 – c. 1620, which would exclude Cook's expeditions. The source says that the third section is about "the Americas and the age of exploration". But the article suggests that it's about Cook's time in the Pacific. I'm probably missing something obvious here, but would you be able to clarify what region and time period this final section of the book is about?
  • Subin discusses a handful of other explorers in the section, which is indeed generally about the Americas (with Hawaii I guess being loosely defined as such by that source). She (and the article's sources) focuses more on Cook, though, which is why I did the same in the article. I have added a little bit more info in an effort to make it seem less like the entire section is about him.
    • Got it, makes sense. That suggests that "roughly 300 years" isn't quite the right timespan though, right? Should this be replaced with something like "since the Age of Discovery" or "over the past centuries"?
      • I'm fairly sure I didn't pull that figure out of thin air, and I think one of the two sources at the end of that first Synopsis sentence says 300 years, but unfortunately the Gale database on the Wikipedia Library isn't presently working and I can't access those two sources. Either way, you make a good argument that 300 years doesn't quite make sense, so I adopted your suggestion of "over the past centuries".

Analysis

• deft handling of describing history repeating itself — This wording is a little convoluted, perhaps something like account of history’s repetitions or deft handling of historical recurrence?
  •  Done

Reception

• as in describing how readily... — Should this be such as in describing how readily...?
  •  Done
• As a general comment, I found the division between the "analysis" and "reception" sections a little hard to track. I think these sections could be made much more effective if you combined them and re-structured them a bit more thematically. For instance, you could start with a paragraph on the general reception of the book, then a paragraph on what reviewers said about Subin's analysis of race and connections to the modern day, then a paragraph on what reviewers said about her analysis of colonialism and empire. At the moment all of those things are there, but they feel a bit scattered throughout both sections.
  • So this is kind of funny, because the reviewer at my other non-fiction GA specifically requested analysis separated out from the Reception section, which is how I've tended to structure my articles since. I agree, though, that the Analysis section here bled too much into what could be considered reception, so while I've kept the sections separate for now I have moved some material from Analysis to Reception and added a bit more to Analysis, in the hopes of making the delineation clearer. Let me know what you think.
    • Ah, fair enough. I think you’re right that it wasn't really the two separate sections that I was having trouble with, it was just the fact that a lot of the material in “Analysis” really felt like reception and vice versa. But yep, that looks much better now.

• Source reliability is all good. Interviews with the author are used appropriately for background, and the remaining sources are all reviews of the book in reliable publications
• Reference formatting and layout meets GA criteria. I did notice though that a lot of the sources are missing URLs — definitely not a GA requirement, but I'd encourage adding those to allow readers without ProQuest access to more easily access the sources
  •  Done I typically work largely from The Wikipedia Library which is inaccessible to non-editors, and while I always try to include as much bibliographic info as possible, it somehow didn't occur to me that links to paywalled source websites are still helpful. And in searching for and adding them, I discovered that some are actually free to access, so how about that. Thanks for the suggestion.
• Breadth and focus look good. There are no obvious gaps in the article's coverage and no instances of excessive or tangential detail

This table checks 8 passages from throughout the article (19.0% of 42 total passages). These passages contain 9 inline citations (18.8% of 48 in the article). Generated with the Veracity user script. MCE89 (talk) 21:37, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reference #	Letter	Source	Archive	Status	Notes
She had previously released the book-length essay Not Dead But Sleeping and covered the Arab Spring as a contributing editor for the arts and culture magazine Bidoun.
4		musicandliterature.org
Subin examines the situations when these men were deified and attempts to explain why the "accidental god haunts modernity".
3	b	ft.com
Jamaicans had become enraptured by a biography on Selassie that had appeared in an issue of National Geographic, exalting the emperor as the latest member of a lineage that went back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
7	b	the-tls.com
As Nicholson rose in the military ranks he became known as a brutally violent man – he used a severed head as an office decoration
6	d	nybooks.com
She also recounts the story of Captain James Cook, who arrived in Hawaii while its inhabitants were celebrating the holiday of Makahiki.
7	c	the-tls.com
Cook overstayed his welcome, however, leading to his gruesome death at the hands of the natives – a death, some Christians said at the time, that was a divine punishment for Cook's acceptance of his deification.
7	d	the-tls.com
11	d	newyorker.com
Accidental Gods was short-listed for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize.
14		englishpen.org
The New Republic called Subin's voice "stylish" and "playful" and praised her ability to draw connections from her deified subjects to modern conversations of race and "anti-colonial resistance".
9	b	newrepublic.com