Martin DayRezensionen
Autor von Wooden Heart
Rezensionen
The book starts out great: it's set in a psychiatric hospital, with parallel narratives in 1903 and 2003, and there's a very compellingly and disturbingly written history of a teenage girl practicing self-harm. Not the kind of thing you'd see in a Doctor Who novel post-"Rose," and not the kind of thing I associate with Christmas, but it sets the stage. The Doctor is suitably mysterious in this one, with lots of good lines. Things are set up well, with mysterious goings on at the hospital in both time zones...
...and set up is basically all that ever happens. On page 203 out of 281, the Doctor finally figures out what's going on... and then we're told that he, "far from proposing any plan of action, stated that he was still at the information-gathering stage." C'mon, Martin Day, kick this plot into gear sometime! As you might guess, things wrap up a bit too easily, and plus it turns out that everything's the fault of that overused Doctor Who standby, aliens who feed on negative emotion. A promising beginning, and some good touches here and there, and a nice companion-of-the-month, but a disappointing novel on the whole.
Thankfully, Penguin released a book of Christmas-themed Doctor Who short stories this year, so next year's read-- probably the last-- will be one with a direct connection to the season.
Next in the series of Bernice Summerfield Novels, and one that I'm afraid left me rather cold; the girl of the title is another archaeologist, caught up in espionage and ancient history, but it just wasn't terribly interesting apart from Benny herself, who is always fun. Even there, I was annoyed by the use of her diary entries purely to shift from tight-third to first-person narrative rather gratuitously, without really adding much to the plot or our understanding of the characters' perceptions of it.
One of the last of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, seems to have got rave reviews from a lot of people though I feel it is alright but not stellar. The Doctor is involved with two different timelines in the same mental hospital, in one of which he is ostensibly a mysterious patient called Smith. Supporting character Laska is nicely done, though at the expense of regulars Fitz and particularly Trix.
I found this rather a confused and slightly tedious tale, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe landing on a planet where medievalish humans are dominated by an anti-science cult and various subterranean alien races emerge to do battle or otherwise prop up the plot. The is one nice scene with Jamie and Zoe driving a hovercar together. And there is a nice continuity touch: the I in IMC originally stood for Issigri.
One of the last two Sarah Jane audio books, featuring the voice of Daniel "Clyde" Anthony and a story by Martin Day about a timetravelling steampunk android (the "difference golem") which needs to be sorted out by SJS and pals. I have not seen the last series of SJA so the character of Sky was new to me, but the story is well done and Anthony a decent reader who sensibly gets on with trying to convey emotion and character rather than imitating voices.
I found this book to be incredibly mixed up. The idea of the deserted spaceship was intriguing enough, especially when it was revealed that it was a prison ship. When the forest suddenly appeared, it was incredibly bizarre and as the story switched between the two, I found it got increasingly mixed up. It was as though the author had two possible plot lines, neither of which was enough for a book and so decided to combine the two. They didn't match together very well at all and it made for a very disjointed and confusing read. Even when all was revealed at the end, I still didn't understand quite how the forest related to the alien. The answers are really too long in coming, I had no idea what was going on for a large portion of the book and this made it difficult to maintain an interest.
The village reminded me of Brigadoon with its sudden appearance - and I did expect there to be a similar revelation about it. However, it also seemed to be entirely populated by robots as none of the characters there really seemed to have any emotion. This could possibly be explained by the ending but it's hard to tell if the villagers were written that way on purpose or not. The characterisations of the Doctor and Martha didn't seem particularly well done either. The Doctor was part wide-eyed simpleton part rambling idiot and generally not himself. Martha was annoying and kind of smug, and as most of the book seemed to be from her point of view, it got rather irritating. It was quite a disappointing book in the end, certainly not one of the better ones.
An Eleventh Doctor plus Amy audiobook, read by Matt Smith himself, set in Japan under the Shogunate. A fairly standard story - the Jade Pyramid off the title is an alien artefact with mystic powers in a village temple, and thus an object of desire for the local rulers. But it is written well, and Matt Smith is good at the voices (himself as the Doctor, Amy's Scottish lilt, and the senior villager) and at telling the story; plus nice music and sound effects in post-production. Worth adding to your collection.
A Seventh Doctor / Ace novel set before Survival, thus outside the New Adventures continuity which I am used to. Despite the fact that Keith Topping is a co-author, I thought it was rather good, a sort-of sequel to The Awakening and to a lesser extent The Dæmons, with occult practices in a remote English village connecting both to ancient aliens and the highest levels of today's government; lots of good moments for Ace and her Doctor, and managing to engage with the genre of The Wicker Man while still being more or less a Doctor Who story. Two things I didn't like: the scene-setting seventeenth-century dialogue in the opening chapter is terrible (though oddly later chapters do it better) and there seemed to be a geographical delusion that Liverpool is the nearest large city to Wiltshire. But apart from that it worked for me.
Pretty good story, not so great characterization. Martha was way off - the author apparently forgot that she wouldn't freak out around dead bodies or jump to wild and hasty conclusions about them. The climax was a bit short on explanation but overall it was well-paced and interesting.
More importantly, where the hell did the people come from? There's a village on the other side of the forest. They have some problems as well, namely that their children have started to go missing, and this mist stuff has been slowly encroaching on the village's territory. If it covers the village, everyone might die. The Doctor and Martha have to figure out what's going on, save the village, try not to get eaten by monsters in the forest, and get back to the TARDIS, which is still on the ship . . . It's a tall order.
I really did like this one, even though I had a hard time sleeping after reading it. It wound up being a little complex, but the characters were interesting and the story seemed pretty innovative.
A decent story of the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones landing on an apparently deserted spaceship which suddenly acquires a woodland complete with frightened natives, disappearing children and 'orrible monsters. Lots of familiar elements (and a reference to Beowulf, though that is not taken too far) but with some extra energy in the mix. Good stuff.
A good mystery with a pleasing resolution.
In some ways a very First Doctor-ish story: the crew land in Kiev in the year 1240, with the city about to be attacked and sacked by the Mongol hordes, and its defenders internally divided about how best to respond. However there is an element from later Who as well: under the city lurks an alien killer, working to its own agenda. Lots to like in this book: the descriptions took me back to my visit to Kiev in late 2005, and there is much good characterisation - even the bad guys have comprehensible agendas, and everyone gets something to do (the Doctor, at one point, riding off to plea for peace with the Mongol horde). Also, while Salvation was in part about belief, Bunker Soldiers addresses religion - the defenders of Kiev are weakened by tension between bigoted Christians and loyal Jews. About half the story is told in the first person by Steven, a tactic used also by Juliet E. McKenna in her novels (at least, in her novels that I have read). I've been very critical of this approach in Doctor Who novels elsewhere, it nearly works here, but not quite for me. (Also NB that the liturgical language of Kiev was not Latin.)
Yeah, yeah, I know that almost all of the text is also available on-line. But there's nothing like dead trees (especially if you are in the middle of a long plane flight). This is a great compilation of odd facts about the series, including most particularly an attempt to introduce consistency to such matters as the Doctor's age, his academic qualifications, the histories of the Cybermen and of the Daleks, and Mars. Interesting to see the foreshadowing of two of the Ninth Doctor's more memorable lines - "Hairdryer!" ("The Web Planet") and "Run!" (Second Doctor, passim). And there's a certain amount of "Yeah, that was my favourite bit".
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Martin Day's novel is a book that is more successful than it has any right to be. The premise and setting draw upon elements from over a half-dozen Doctor who stories, all of which executed them in more refreshingly entertaining ways. The level of bloodshed is almost shockingly high, thanks to a threat that is very atonal for the Doctor Who universe. That Day pulls it off as well as he does is thanks in equal parts to his plotting (which keeps things moving at a decent enough pace and introduces enough elements to engage the reader) and the way in which he layers his antagonists, many of which display a degree of nuance that makes them different form the one-dimensional baddies that they might otherwise have been. While the end result may not rank among the best of the Missing Adventures series, it is one that makes for an enjoyable, if occasionally graphic, read for fans of the franchise.