I chose this story to tackle after the intensely-SF Masters of Luxor
because I fancied something different - though since I managed to avoid
spoilers I didn't know whether it was going to be a "pure" historical
or not. (Once I'd heard The Morisco, I'd have been very surprised
if it were otherwise.) Looking at my list of timeslips, they are
actually mostly set in the past so it's the SF entries I'll have to
space out for variety! Perhaps I shouldn't have started where I did, but
never mind.
I'm not keen on the cover of this one. The orange flames separating the
(blue-tinted) monochrome close-up on Ian and Susan from the ships on the
sea sounds like it should work, but in execution it just looks like a
hodge-podge. Normally I barely look at the covers of stories I only have
on download, but I was listening to part of this on a different
computer to my usual and Media Player was set up to display a large
image when playing. Perhaps other covers have similar problems, and I've
just not noticed.
There are no interviews at the end of this story - which is a shame,
because I wanted to know a little about what Marc Platt was thinking
when writing it - but we do get some music, and I realise I haven't
mentioned that at all so far in these reviews. It's not really
appropriate to the Hartnell era, but it fits very well with the setting.
I didn't notice it much during my initial listening, which is actually a
good sign - it's supposed to provide atmosphere rather than dominate.
This was a good story, and the fact that I only rated it a 6.5 was
something of a surprise. It reminded me of something I've noticed
before, that when I start reading/watching/listening to stories in a
particular medium my scores range widely; but as my experience grows new
ones tend to be rated closer to the middle. Basically, so long as they
are of reasonable quality, it takes more to impress me - or to throw me
off. This happened a while ago for TV and audio, and is just starting to
happen for books as well (I've currently ranked 86 of them).
Next I'll take a brief break from audio - I do like variety in my media! - and return to TV for a recon, of an unusual sort...
Published:
Date: January 2013
ISBN: 1-78178-061-9
Rating:
6.5/10.
Next Time:
The Urge to Live?
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