A question occurred to me as I sat down to write this: why does a novel get roughly the same number of words in review as a short story? It takes a lot longer to experience, so why haven't I got more to write?
I think the answer lies in the nature of my reviews and the nature of books. A novel has more room for plot, for characters and for the setting than a short story - but I don't describe any of those in detail. This is partly because I don't assume that my readers have read what I'm reviewing (unlike my TV reviews, where I'm guessing most will have seen them) and partly because I find enough to waffle on about without potted summaries. As the preceding 127 words prove.
On with City at World's End, then, and let's start with the cover. It's very blue, and - to be frank - a bit rubbish. The artist has obviously chosen to give up on realism in order to display the main features of the setting (the threatening moon and the vast ship at the heart of the city) dramatically, which is fine; but the resulting image is badly balanced, full of features that look less dramatic than the description in the text, and, basically, it doesn't work. In fact, the best bit of the cover to me when I saw it was the name of the author, since I had a lot of good things to say about Bulis' writing when I reviewed The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Which also had a poor cover, now I come to think about it.
Still, a cover's just a cover when all's said and done, and you don't have to look at it for long (in fact, most people will see the spine far more often), so what about the story?
As regular readers will have gathered, I like mysteries; and this is a particularly good book for those. Rather than having a big one at the start and then avoiding solving it for the bulk of the story, Bulis keeps handing us solutions but introducing new mysteries at the same time. What's with the dummies? Where is Barbara? What is happening with Susan? Where are the missing NC2s? What is the thing with the red eyes? The list goes on, and I lost track of some introduced early (to which I thought I knew the answer), allowing me to be surprised at the end. A very neat trick.
Also good are the main characters' voices, though the dialogue is perhaps not quite as sparkling as in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The supporting cast are mostly stereotypes, and it feels like there's less of an excuse for that this time; and while the ideas behind the setting are good it turns out to be duller than it sounds. The story also gets pretty violent towards the end, which is justified given the context but still a bit of a turn-off for me. On the other other hand it's definitely a page-turner that kept me wanting to read more, and it made me care about what happened to some of the locals as well as the regulars.
So, a mixed bag. One thing I noted as I read was how my imagining of the action changed. Possibly prompted by the cover, I saw the prologue with 1980s graphics (or maybe 90s - there was a touch of the Babylon Fives about it); but once we got into the main story I pictured it in black and white, until the final couple of chapters when colour came back. Perhaps this was the tone of the writing? Certainly the parts I saw in monochrome were the kind of image I could imagine being attempted in the 1960s (although, frankly, they couldn't have pulled it off), whereas the others would have been impossible.
Actually, some parts of the story were eminently achievable. I know this because they were achieved! There are a number of events that are straight repeats from televised stories. When Ian opens a door and nearly falls down because there's no floor the other side, for example, or Susan getting hurt early on, or a regular (this time Barbara) groping along a darkened tunnel, or the Doctor having an animated discussion with a fellow scientist... I suspect this was a conscious decision, but either way I don't know quite how I feel about it. It was quaint the first time, but grated slightly after that.
Overall, a fun read that I would recommend - but with caveats. It's in no way a bad book, but it somehow didn't quite live up to my expectations.
An Expanding Universe, Part 6: The Past Doctor Adventures
As mentioned last time, a key feature of Who book publishing is the way it has switched between the BBC and other houses. One of the transitions followed the 1996 TV Movie, when the corporation decided to bring it back in-house. They were fairly canny in how they did this, taking a lot of the features they saw as good in Virgin's line (along with several of the writers), and even some of the plotlines. One key idea was the split into ongoing 'current Doctor' stories (the Eighth Doctor Adventures replacing the New Adventures) and 'past Doctor' stories (PDAs replacing MAs), though the PDAs were less distinguishable than their predecessors. 76 were published between 1997 and 2005, when the BBC decided to concentrate exclusively on the new series.
Published:
Date: September 1999
ISBN: 978-0563555797
Rating:
Mine: 6.5/10.
2011 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 6.13, 43rd out of 76 Past Doctor Adventures, 178th out of 286 overall.
Next Time:
That's two future stories in a row, so let's go for something different. How about considering Who Discovered America?
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