To Comment or not to Comment

I imagine writers with huge sales don't read reviews, but I think most of the rest of us do. I have friends who've won national and international awards, but who can still pretty much quote, verbatim, from unpleasant reviews on Amazon. Personally, I use my first, and by some distance worst, newspaper review as a tool with creative writing classes.
Anyway, today I read a lovely review of my 2nd Seeker book, The Black Friar. It's the kind of review that makes you feel warm inside and think what a nice person the reviewer must be. The only thing was, the reviewer gently chastised me for resurrecting a real historical character - Isaac Dorislaus - 6 years after he'd died. The explanation is fairly straightforward - Isaac Dorislaus senior, the English Commonwealth's ambassador to the Netherlands was assassinated by Royalist exiles in 1649, but his son, also named Isaac, would become an integral part of the Protectorate's intelligence service in the 1650s. This is the kind of thing that it takes a great deal more ferreting about in a variety of specialist history books than I suspect most people have time for. Initially I put a comment with a correction on the post, but instantly deleted it for fear of appearing petty or stalkerish.

I can't guarantee that I don't take the occasional liberty - usually unintentional and I try not to take big ones. Only once did I knowingly take a big liberty - I invented a kind of crocus by which I had someone poisoned. Some of the species are poisonous, but unfortunately I couldn't find one that was in bloom at the time of year I needed it to be. The logical thing would have been to change the timing of the book - but I have only thought of that right now, 12 years too late! So, I invented a crocus that would be fatally poisonous, and would bloom when I needed it to. My subterfuge was only spotted when the Italian translator of the book - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton - sent me a despairing email: she had consulted every botanical encyclopaedia known to man or woman, and could find my colchicum mortis (the crocus of death) nowhere. Oh dear. Lesson learned.
The thing is though, once your book's out there, it's out there, and if you haven't made things clear enough to the reader, then it's too late.

The business of publishers sending out ARCs has shown me another side to this though. No spoilers, but the ending of the Bear Pit has something apparently unfeasible happen. In my original script, as submitted to my publisher, this was fully explained in the final few paragraphs. My editor felt the explanation unnecessary, and that the book was stronger without it. We debated back and forth but eventually, in a late night email after several very long and tiring days completely unrelated to my writing life, I said, 'Ok, you can cut it.'
There followed for me a few months of unease over it, another worried email or so, and then when the ARC reviews came in, some readers were incredulous, about the ending and didn't hold back on their incredulity. I'm very relieved that I do read reviews, and also that I didn't respond to these particular ones, but instead got in touch with my editor almost straight away - which was fortunate, as they were going to print the next day, and the book, as finally published, has my original ending.
The moral of the story? I'm not sure there is one. Reviewers must be free to say what they feel without having authors - friendly or otherwise - breathe down their necks. Authors can learn both from positive and negative reviews, and as time goes on you do develop a thicker skin for the very few that are downright unpleasant. I think.