The Curse of Fenric by: Ian Briggs

 

The Curse of Fenric was written by Ian Briggs, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 158^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Most fans attribute the novelization to Remembrance of the Daleks as the test run to see what original Doctor Who fiction can do in novel form.  It was published in 1990 and given no limit on its word count, something that fans were incredibly receptive to Aaronovitch’s style, so much that it would be reprinted in 2013 to represent the Seventh Doctor in book form for the 50^th Anniversary celebrations.  Fans forget, however, that this was not the only book given that commission: Ian Briggs was asked when adapting The Curse of Fenric to novelization form to also take advantage of an expanded word count.  This has the added effect of making this the longest novelization by wordcount to be published before the Virgin New Adventures began publishing and provided novelizations for The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, The Paradise of Death, and The Ghosts of N-Space which would be full novels.  Interestingly enough, the longest audiobook thus far of the Target novelizations is Ghost Light which is nearly 30 pages shorter than The Curse of Fenric yet the audiobook is two hours longer.

 

In adapting the script to television Ian Briggs was able to restore several scenes which were deleted as the episodes themselves overran and restore the structure to its original intent.  The four part version of the serial, while still brilliant, was a production Nicholas Mallett was unhappy with.  Notes were compiled by Mallett and composer Mark Ayres to eventually convert the story into a film version, something which would happen in 2003 for the DVD release, but Briggs also structures this like a film.  While there are the cliffhanger moments from the four episodes, they are not constricted by being in four 25 minute segments.  The story itself already lends itself to a novel format, with the perfect extrapolation for character expansion and taking some of the themes to be expanded in very important ways.  Perhaps the most interesting theme to be explored is the theme of sexuality, something that was there in the television story since Maiden’s Point is an important location and the Haemovores as vampires inherently make this sexual.  The novel makes a lot of the sexual themes explicit with several character additions, most notably Mrs. Hardaker having a dead child out of wedlock making her an outcast, and the relationship of Millington and Judson being of two repressed gay men ho have hurt each other because of the society they are inhabiting.  The former really makes you understand why Hardaker works as this spinster figure in parallel to Jean and Phyllis dying and becoming vampires as they are outcasts themselves.  Jean and Phyllis are essentially innocents in the story, sure they are implied to be sexually active characters which is why Hardaker is so hard on them and drives them to their deaths, while Millington and Judson are implied to have been helping each other.  Millington is especially portrayed as a man wracked with guilt due to being explicitly responsible for Judson’s accident which disabled him.

 

There are also additions to the character of Nurse Crane, while her role on television is important she does not get much focus, but here there is this added fear that she might be a double agent for the Soviets, explaining explicitly how the Russian soldiers were guided outside of Fenric’s supernatural assistance.  Briggs also adds five interludes in the form of historical documents charting the history of Fenric, the prophecies around Fenric, and the wolves themselves which make for interesting moments adding to the mystery.  The two taken for the history of Fenric that stand out the most are a mythic story a la One Thousand and One Nights exploring the first game the Doctor played with Fenric using an ambiguous incarnation of the Doctor (though it’s possibly William Hartnell or Tom Baker in the role and unlikely to be an appearance by the Other based on the characterization and using the moniker of the Doctor) and a reminiscence of Bram Stoker being inspired by stories of Fenric and the Ancient One for Dracula, both adding to the gothic quality of the story.   It also allows some name drops of the working titles of the story Powerplay, Black Rain, Wolf-Time, and The Wolves of Fenric.  Finally, an added epilogue helps complete the arc of the story for Ace (which on television ran throughout the season but is adapted to be a bit more self-contained as this is the climax of the arc and fallout revealed in Survival).  It is the origin for her fate in Set Piece, living in Paris in the 1800s to her heart’s content, possibly continuing the Doctor’s own work, though here meeting him briefly after they have parted ways.  Briggs also continues the thread of Ace being the first companion to be mature, explicitly having had sex and continuing the implied LGBT themes of Battlefield and Survival on television with attraction to Jean and Phyllis.  There are also scenes played from her perspective exploring her emotions surrounding her mother and growing up.

 

Overall, The Curse of Fenric is a perfect example of a novelization expanding upon a television story and making it work as a story and novel in its own right, not being afraid to change things from its source material and just letting the story be explored more than a visual medium ever could.  It is a riveting read from start to finish and perfection on an already brilliant story.  10/10.

Frontios by: Christopher H. Bidmead

 

Frontios was written by Christopher H. Bidmead, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 91^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Christopher H. Bidmead novelized all three of his television stories for the Target novelization range fairly close to their original airdate, Frontios being the closest, published not even a year after the television story was aired.  This is interesting as while this certainly isn’t out of the ordinary it marks one of the first times the majority of a season’s stories would be put out within the year making the writers have less time to actually flesh out their stories.  This might be why Frontios is a story which takes most of its cues from the original television stories without any real sense of expansion.  The Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough still arrive on Frontios outside of the general remit of the Time Lords which scares the Doctor and finds the last of the human race struggling to survive.  People are being eaten by the earth, the current leader of the colony is losing his mind, and there are things beneath the surface which cause a race memory to emerge in Turlough.  The plot beats are there so it is really interesting to see how Bidmead’s prose develops a very stark story with scientific and desperate themes and how he turns up the pulp horror vibes.  Under script editor Eric Saward there really isn’t a whole lot of pulp in Doctor Who, yeah there is danger and dark themes (especially in Season 21) but in Frontios on television the direction by Ron Jones is one of those directorial styles which are just fine and the script only plays up the desperation.  The production design also is really lacking, especially with the Tractators and the Gravis which are clearly trying, all of the actors are trying (especially the Gravis), but they just don’t work.  The novelization of Frontios allows the desperation to play out with a lot of the dialogue being stark and simple, giving it a ragged feel for all of the characters, and by the time the Tractators, their technology, and the Gravis appear Bidmead makes the shift to horror work really well.  It’s really only a book that’s let down by not making any plot changes, the stuff with the Time Lords is even made more explicit as a threat while not amounting to anything.  They just get a few mentions because it’s apparently dangerous for the Doctor to be here.  Same with Turlough and the race memory, we don’t get any further idea of Turlough’s past, just this tidbit though Tegan is a lot of fun in the book, especially when she’s on her own.

 

Overall, Frontios as a novelization works about as well as its television story outside of being a bit longer and still not doing anything to explain why the Time Lords might want anything.  Turlough doesn’t get depth but the colony itself has more life and the horror elements are actually played up throughout.  8/10.

Full Circle by: Andrew Smith

 

Full Circle was written by Andrew Smith, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 71^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

It’s always been interesting to me that in 1980 Barry Letts, John Nathan-Turner, and Christopher H. Bidmead allowed Full Circle to enter production.  Not because it is some terrible story that should never have seen the light of day, on the contrary it’s quite a good story about cyclic evolution and bureaucracy interfering in societal development, but because it was submitted by Andrew Smith who was only 17 at the time.  A teenager writing for a professional television project is something you wouldn’t really expect, but since the Doctor Who production office accepted open submissions and Letts, Nathan-Turner, and Bidmead were looking for new talent (only two authors for Season 17 would have contributed before, David Fisher and Terrance Dicks, both having ideas ready to go and easily adaptable to the vision plus Dicks’ close friendship with Letts) Smith’s proposal was accepted on its strengths in the form of Full Circle.  What makes this especially interesting is that two years later a 19 year old Smith would also write the novelization, his only novel.

 

The novelization of Full Circle is another perfect example of how Doctor Who changes from television to prose, mainly in expansion.  On television, despite being four episodes, the story is actually quite short with the middle two only coming to 22 minutes instead of the more common 24 to 25, though the story is bookended by 24-minute installments.  A lot of the expansion to the story doesn’t come from adding any events, but Smith really gets to show off his skills as a worldbuilder.  While on television the bureaucracy of the Starliner’s society is there, in novel form it is brought to the forefront since you get a lot of the internal motivations of the other Deciders.  Take for instance, Draith chasing Adric in the swamp before Mistfall, on television we don’t actually get much of who the character is but in Smith’s novelization he feels more caring for Adric, trying to catch him to help and calm him.  Or for instance the bond between Adric and Varsh, who don’t actually feel like siblings for much of the television series, but here there is a tender bond between the two and the symbol of his rope belt is also vitally important to who Adric is and why he joins the TARDIS in the end.  Finally, you have the Marshmen themselves are actually given a culture and language whereas on television they were just sort of there.

 

That being said, Full Circle is far from a perfect novelization.  It does improve on the worldbuilding, but there really isn’t as much capturing the personalities of the Doctor, Romana, and K9, they’re kind of background characters in the story already, Romana being taken over by the spiders in particular really feels like a damselling made worse here by the way Smith writes it.  Still it is a genuinely great time of a novel but is still a little uneven in places from being written by a 19 year old based on a story written by a 17 year old.  8/10.

Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment by: Ian Marter

 

Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment was written by Ian Marter, based on the story The Sontaran Experiment by Bob Baker and Dave Martin.  It was the 45^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The Sontaran Experiment is the odd one out for Season 12, only written because Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe decided to only use one six-episode serial per season so a two episode gap was created and filled by Bob Baker and Dave Martin writing a story meant to be made cheap and on vacation.  The story is a simple runaround on Earth with a Sontaran called Styre performing experiments on humans to continue their war with the Rutans and enter the Milky Way, made less interesting by Kevin Lindsay’s ill health and Tom Baker injuring himself so the battle at the climax is underwhelming.  It was also a choice for novelization that apparently nobody would take except for Ian Marter who of course starred in the story as Harry Sullivan, which should tell you all you need to know about The Sontaran Experiment.  Because of this you would expect Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment to not work as a novel, but interestingly it's a lot better in prose form than it ever was on television.  Ian Marter certainly understands that a lot of the ideas for Sontaran technology has potential and that potential is grown, the robot scout is an actual threat and not just a really flimsy prop that trundles on wheels, but hovers above the ground to stalk its prey which creates this great tension.  The pit that Harry falls in is actually a pit, though there is some humor added as the Doctor berates him for falling into something that’s essentially out in the open.  Styre, renamed Styr, himself is upgraded to an almost cyborg-esque creature where Marter uses the prose to make him sound more terrifying than any Sontaran has ever been, which in turn makes the danger actually feel real.  Sarah Jane’s torture in particular goes to some dark places as her psyche is explored and deconstructed so her fears can create a genuinely chilling chapter.  This is still done in the Target novelization format, and Marter also doesn’t let the story overstay its welcome as this isn’t like other two-part story novelizations which somehow find ways to stretch the format to its limits, the prose is only about 120 pages and the audiobook is 3 hours and 6 minutes.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment is a great example of the Target novelization format being used to take a story that on television is incredibly bland and make it into something genuinely engaging.  Sure it’s not going to be one of the absolute best Fourth Doctor stories, but it makes the story worth engaging with and experiencing in this way at least once.  7/10.

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters was written by Terrence Dicks, based on the story Carnival of Monsters by Robert Holmes.  It was the 28^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

To me Carnival of Monsters has always been one of those Doctor Who stories that some seem to underestimate.  It’s sandwiched between The Three Doctors and the massive two story epic Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks so it kind of gets lost in the crowd of the tenth anniversary celebrations, but it’s a story that I have always had a soft spot for.  Now, a review of that story is still forthcoming though something I intend to eventually write along with the rest of Season 10.  Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters, likewise, is a Target novelization which has kind of been lost in the novelizations published around it: immediately before are titans like Doctor Who and the Space War, Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks, and Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars while after it is Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom and the first Hartnell novelization since Doctor Who and the Crusaders, Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth.  So it is interesting to see that while Terrance Dicks was already scribing several novelizations (of the five listed he penned three), Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters feels somewhat special.  The novelization doesn’t so much as add things to the events, sure there are some minor alterations, the sonic screwdriver being absent and some of the descriptions of the Drashigs, but this is one that while clearly written based on the scripts but like Barry Letts’ decision to cut the final shot on repeat, there is a genuinely interesting few changes from Dicks to make Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters work.

 

The plot is the same, however, Dicks has rearranged some of the scenes which changes much of the pacing of the story and makes it work as a book and not as a television serial.  Instead of opening on Inter Minor, we open with the Doctor and Jo arriving, helping create an actual sense of mystery that the S.S. Bernice might not actually be a ship in the alien ocean.  This also allows Dicks to explore the dictatorship on Inter Minor, not by adding new characters or a plot of revolution of the Functionaries but by exploring our three officials and exploring how they react to the chaos the miniscope brings.  This slows some of the things down and makes some of the novel feel a bit of a drag, especially as there are sequences that are just functional in communicating the events of the story, perhaps because Dicks was already writing quite a few scripts and didn’t have as much time to explore what he could do in each one, especially with Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth bringing the First Doctor to a brand new generation of children, it means that this book suffers slightly.

 

Overall Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters is still great, it’s a story that has always been underrated and the novelization continues to understand what makes Robert Holmes’ script work.  There are some improvements especially in Dicks converting to prose in the Inter Minor segments, but the Doctor and Jo’s plot is one that honestly works better on television as while you can hear the characters they aren’t given as much of an inner life as the rest of the characters.  8/10.

Superior Beings by: Nick Walters

 

It took several novels but finally after so much time we have a second good Fifth Doctor novel to be published by BBC Books.  Nick Walters’ third Doctor Who novel takes the Fifth Doctor and Peri to an apparent utopia, a garden planet perfect for exploring Peri’s skills as a botanist and give them a vacation.  Perhaps what makes Superior Beings work is that the Fifth Doctor and Peri for the first time have perfect characterization.  This could be because Big Finish Productions had been releasing Doctor Who audio dramas for over two years by the time this novel was released, indeed Red Dawn was already released and Justin Richards’ characterization seems to be the blueprint for making a Fifth Doctor/Peri relationship work and I suspect as editor he was able to bring Walters on board with the proper characterization.  The Fifth Doctor in particular shines more like the older Davison’s portrayals, with some added snark at direct moments which cut through what had been quite the bland portrayal of the character up until this point.  The opening chapters with the Doctor are a delight as here he is brimming with life and emotion, and Walters makes it feel like shackles have been lifted now that Tegan and Turlough have both left.

 

It is actually Peri who perhaps shines the most throughout Superior Beings, as Walters decides to explore just what someone growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Maryland would actually be like.  Peri as an “American” on television wasn’t really a thing, Nicola Bryant is attempting an American accent and John Nathan-Turner’s baffling and borderline abusive forcing the accent on the actress is well documented (even when she wasn’t performing plus Bryant recently coming out to document the backhanded abuse of power by Nathan-Turner), and after Peter Davison left before the end of Season 21 the character was quickly shifted from a plucky college student to this jaded woman trying to deal with a Doctor who is very unstable.  Walters really picks up on the pluck throughout the novel to expose her to the wonder of the universe, even if Superior Beings is a book which is quite dark throughout.  Heck, this is a book where Peri is propositioned for sex through a cultural misunderstanding, the people on the planet are in such bliss that there genuinely wouldn’t be a reason for people not to engage in sexual behaviors.  There’s also so much violence, and the book itself ends in a very dark manner with a lot of the characters dead, yet you never get the sense that Peri is losing her sense of wonder.  It’s very much an are you kidding me, there’s still a whole universe to see and of course it can’t get any worse.  This doesn’t mean Superior Beings doesn’t have it’s problems, the plot itself has this tendency to meander in places and the characterization of the supporting characters genuinely leave a lot to be desired, but the main threat of the Valesthke is wonderful with this sinister religious undertone as there is a sense of things possibly being bigger.  The title itself is a bit misleading however, implying some sort of genetic engineering plot which doesn’t really happen.

 

Overall, Superior Beings is honestly a book I can recommend if you actually want good Fifth Doctor content.  The characterization of the regulars is the best the BBC Books has to offer and Nick Walters brings this great tension and suspense to the rest of the book which makes it all worth it, despite some issues with things not quite adding up to their full potential.  7/10.

The Inheritance Cycle: Eragon by: Christopher Paolini

 

Let’s take a minute before I get into this book to discuss Star Wars: A New Hope and the work of Joseph Campbell.  Joseph Campbell was an American writer whose literary work and analysis is most well remembered for focusing on the nature of stories and story structure.  The Hero with a Thousand Faces is where he first referred to the hero’s journey and the monomyth (a term taken from James Joyce).  These concepts essentially posit that every story has the same structure and characterization from the point of a protagonist.  A summation of the journey is a call to adventure which is then rejected, before the hero suffers a loss to push them onto an adventure (crossing a threshold which will transform the hero), a mentor figure guiding them through initial challenges before often being excised from the story, more challenges for the hero before a descent into the abyss for the low point and death of the hero, a rebirth for the hero leading to a final transformation and the eventual return to the previous or new status quo.  While this is fairly vague, it should be as it is describing archetypes in a story and not literally every story to the letter.  There are variations, omissions from the format and additives depending on genre and what an author is attempting to accomplish, but essentially stories follow some sort of hero’s journey style structure.  I bring up Star Wars: A New Hope because in writing the seminal science fiction film, George Lucas adheres to the hero’s journey to the letter in a science fiction coating.  Luke Skywalker is the hero, Princess Leia’s message for Obi-Wan Kenobi’s help is the call to adventure, Luke’s responsibilities on the farm stop him from initially going off to find Ben Kenobi, the death of his aunt and uncle are the crossing of the threshold, there are challenges in getting to where Leia is being held while Luke begins to learn about the Force, the death of Kenobi at the hands of Darth Vader is the death of the hero, and the final challenge to overcome is blowing up the Death Star, ending the film with the ceremony declaring Luke a savior of the galaxy.

 

I spent so much time on this preamble as discussing Eragon is a difficult task.  Published independently in 2002, it is the first book in The Inheritance Cycle written by Christopher Paolini who was only 15 years old when he begun writing.  I bring up this age because while the series sold incredibly well, well enough to be picked up by a traditional publisher for release in 2003 with the three sequels coming in 2005, 2008, and 2011 respectively, it is a book that in recent years has garnered a lot of criticism for being wholly unoriginal.  While this criticism is harsh, it is not an inaccurate criticism, as the plot structure and characters of Eragon follow George Lucas’ interpretation of the hero’s journey, as seen in Star Wars: A New Hope, almost down to the letter, including where the initial Star Wars trilogy would go in subsequent films though instead of science fiction, this takes the form of epic fantasy specifically inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien in terms of setting, Ursula K. LeGuinn in terms of magic system, and Anne McCaffrey in terms of how the dragons work.  Yet, I don’t wish this review to be seen as bashing Paolini, since when he wrote this book he was a teenager doing what any teenage writer would do, take the interesting elements of the stories he clearly loved and smash them together to form his own narrative.  I do wish to dispel the idea that Paolini was just using the hero’s journey, as if this were the case there would not be analogues to every major Star Wars character, Eragon is Luke, Brom is Obi-Wan, Murtagh is Han Solo, Arya is Leia, Durza is Vader, Galbatorix is the Emperor, and the only real new character is Saphira, Eragon’s dragon, who really doesn’t have a Star Wars analogue.  Saphira as a character is a lot of fun, she has this smug sense of importance and continually grows, though some of her teasing feels like Paolini wanting to have a reason to reveal information to someone whenever the plot requires it.

 

It’s when Paolini isn’t sticking to the Star Wars script or writing a Tolkein homage that Eragon is allowed to shine, some of the towns Eragon and Brom visit as well as the opening chapters do manage to be engaging and give kernels of interesting ideas and characters, as well as an exploration of the magic system where Paolini is allowed to get the interesting bits across.  The writing and prose are at best average, you occasionally get a good one liner or even a scene, but this is clearly a book that has been edited to make a 15-year old’s prose presentable.  This makes it perfectly readable, though the simple style is enhanced if you are a younger reader, as this is a book explicitly marketed towards children (I’m only reading this since Paolini is releasing two books next year and has announced it is being adapted into a streaming series for Disney+).  Paolini throughout has this great sense of childlike wonder with a protagonist that will be easy for children to imprint themselves on, though one that does at least have some struggle.  Eragon as a character is at least partially falling into the Mary Sue trope, but like any character labelled with that particular trope it isn’t always accurate.  The length of the book also makes this a great example of a gateway to epic fantasy, this first book clocks in at just over 500 pages but rarely do you feel that length.  The worldbuilding also shines through Paolini’s imagination coming across in a map and several varied cities, using the work of Tolkein as building blocks.  The final sequence of the book while clearly inspired by sequences in The Fellowship of the Ring in particular are interesting and deal with a resistance movement who has their own motivations and potential for backstabbing our heroes.  It does fall down by ending with essentially the tease that the plot of Eldest will at least in part be following The Empire Strikes Back for Eragon as a character.

 

Eragon as a book is not really a good book, but it is not one that I can bring myself to thrash.  Any adaptation will have to contend with the fact that it was written by someone who was very young, though luckily by the time it was published traditionally Paolini was 20, nearly 30 by the time the series was finished.  After this book Paolini has the chance to make some experience work to improve his craft.  Is it a book I’d recommend people read if they’ve already read a lot of fantasy?  Most definitely not, it is a book that does tropes and sticks to them without understanding what makes tropes work, but it is a decent enough gateway fantasy and it is a series with potential.  It’s a series I will be covering (prior to this I had only read Eragon itself once) and while I am perhaps a bit hesitant to give it a score since it was written initially by a child, I can only give it a score of 5/10.

The Dragon Reborn by: Robert Jordan: Solving the Mat Problem Part 3 (Chapters 30 to 32)

 

“He won again, and it was as if a fever gripped him.  He won every throw.  From tavern to inn to tavern he went, never staying long enough to anger anyone with the amount of his winnings.  And he still won every toss.  He exchanged silver for gold with a money changer.  He played at crowns, and fives, and maiden’s ruin.  He played games with five dice, and four, and three, and even only two.  He played games he did not know before he squatted in the circle, or took a place at the table.  And he won.  Somewhere during the night, the dark sailor—Raab, he had said his name was—staggered away, exhausted, but with a full purse, he had decided to put his wagers on Mat.  Mat visited another money changer—or perhaps two; the fever seemed to cloud his brain as badly as his memories of the past were clouded—and made his way to another game.  Winning.” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 343-344.

 

There have already been two essays focusing on the change in character for Mat Cauthorn throughout The Dragon Reborn, discussing how much he has changed throughout the book once he is healed.  He spends a chapter showing the audience his fighting prowess, another showing his distrust of how his friends have changed over the past two books, and now we reach the point where he is allowed to be the headliner of his own subplot.  Okay, the subplot is essentially a fetch quest where he is being sent to deliver a letter on behalf of Elayne, but that is only an excuse to get him moving and it’s important to make Mat an interesting character and integral part of the narrative.  Mat is also the one character of the Emond’s Field Five who was still relatively normal, Perrin has being a Wolfbrother and Rand is the Dragon Reborn while Egwene and Nynaeve both can channel the One Power.  But Mat begins to discover here his own power, luck.  This is a development which easily could have become a deus ex machina, an author making a character lucky could just lead to moments where the character gets out of trouble far too easily, but the way Robert Jordan establishes it here is what makes it work.  Mat goes to gamble, something already established as part of his character, and slowly realizes after the fact that he is winning.  The quote above specifically revels how slowly he realizes that he is winning, and then the doubt starts creeping in.  He wins too much.  He lashes out when someone curses their own bad luck, not even thinking that he is evil and he flips ““Don’t you say that!” he snarled. “Don’t you ever say that!”…Mat released his grip on the scar-faced man’s coat and backed away “I…I…I don’t like anybody saying things like that about me. I’m no Darkfriend!”  Burn me, not the Dark One’s luck.  Not that! Oh, Light, did that bloody dagger really do something to me?” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 345.

 

What is especially interesting is there are already Darkfriends looking for Mat, a Gray Man is in Tar Valon and attempts to kill him, but fails, being impaled by its own dagger after falling thirty feet off a bridge.  “When he could breathe again—and see—he realized he was lying on top of the man who had attacked him, his fall cushioned by the other’s body…He expected the other man to be dead…but what he had not expected was to see the fellow’s dagger driven to the hilt into his own heart.  Mat did not think he would have noticed him in a crowded room.  “You had bad luck, fellow”” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 349-350.  It’s more than just luck, it’s the Pattern itself keeping Mat safe and getting him the money he needs to get out of Tar Valon.  It is also incredibly lucky that the inn he falls outside of is an inn where an emotionally broken Thom Merrilin is playing, whom Mat recruits to come to Caemlyn and they charter a ship.  Mat actually gets to show some of his diplomatic skills, knowing to give the captain of the ship they are going to travel on, the Gray Gull, four extra gold marks coaching it in language of helping those in cabins eh will displace.  Again, there are two men on this voyage whom Mat has to kill leaving him with the question of what insanity he has gotten into, fully putting him in the fish out of water status that becomes integral to his motivation going forward.

 

This section also ends with one of the rare point of view sequences from Rand’s point of view, still running towards Tear, but this is a very small piece of the puzzle.  It is a parallel to Mat’s inner turmoil, Rand seeing everyone he loves hurt in dreams and the only piece of the dream which is real is Egwene, a reflection of what happened in the last section of the book where she entered Tel’aran’rhiod and found him.  There is a slight moment of serenity when the point of view initially switches to Rand, simply because he is playing something on the flute which is very nice, but this is essentially the quick Rand is still going towards Callandor and Tear but not really developing his plot in any meaningful way.

The Year of Intelligent Tigers by: Kate Orman

 

Sometimes you want to see a character get very angry.  Anger in a protagonist is something often either muted or exaggerated for the purposes of angst, but The Year of Intelligent Tigers is a book that slowly builds up the anger of the main character while all his friends slowly betray him, and two societies cast him off.  This is Kate Orman’s final contribution to the Eighth Doctor Adventures and penultimate Doctor Who novel as it is, though she would contribute some short stories to Big Finish and was recently announced to be writing the fourth in their series of Audio Novels, and like all of Orman’s work at its core there is a deconstruction.  This deconstruction is of who the Eighth Doctor is as a character, what his goals are, and what the effect of the near constant amnesia has had on him.  Orman writes the Eighth Doctor with a real sense that he doesn’t quite know or understand who his friends are.  He is travelling with Fitz, but does he really know this version of Fitz?  Anji is also a relative newcomer, and their previous adventures have been so full of death and destruction that the anger is already there.  The TARDIS team’s arrival on Hitchemus has served as a vacation, the first fifty pages or so are written in such a lyrical style of the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji having their first real chance of character growth and development.  This is the first time that it seems they are actual friends and travelling companions without the added angst of Anji grieving or Fitz being afraid of not being the real Fitz.  This makes a nice change and the human colony on Hitchemus, one of artists and musicians with some scientists but mostly those set apart from traditional capitalistic human society.  The only form of life on Hitchemus is a species of tigers who have been lazing around and whom one scientist is convinced are more intelligent than they are letting on.

 

The Doctor is playing first violin in a concerto and the novel itself is structured like a symphonic composition.  The music subplot is something that permeates the novel which is integral to how the Doctor is portrayed, every time he attempts to play his solo in the concerto it only grows and grows, becoming more and more unruly and impossible to contain, reflecting the nature of the Doctor himself.  The conductor and composer, Karl, still wants to keep the Doctor in the part but he becomes more and more unmanageable.  It is at this point when the tigers reveal their intelligence and take over the city, keeping anyone not a musician or music instructor trapped in their home, literal and figurative storms are brewing and the Doctor is cast out from the rest of the humans.  The bulk of the novel deals with the descent of the humans against the Doctor’s endless and romantic optimism that the humans and tigers could possibly live together.

 

Fitz takes a background role, having traveled with the Doctor for so long he understands that the Doctor wants to save everybody, wants to see the humans and the tigers living together even when both humans and tigers are at each other’s throats.  Even the tigers, who have cyclical evolutionary development of intelligence to stupidity back to intelligence, eventually want to see the Doctor dead because he wants everyone to live.  Anji, being still the newcomer to the TARDIS only having three proper adventures under her belt, becomes a leader in the anti-tiger resistance, something she takes up because she is scared.  Orman is brilliant in foreshadowing this early on with Anji being the most distrustful of the tigers even before they show their intelligence, worried about people letting them into their homes and places of business to do whatever they please.  And then once everything comes to a head we get to the ending where Kate Orman ties everything together.  The Doctor fails.  He intentionally leaves the situation with only a few short years for the humans and the tigers to learn how to work together or their small little island will end.

 

The Year of Intelligent Tigers is not just a book about tigers, it’s a book about music, losing one’s faith, gaining confidence for a cause, and most importantly about humanity.  Nobody in it is wholly good, or wholly bad, they are just people trying to live their lives and survive, that survival instinct leading to the fear that brings people down.  Even after ten previous novels Kate Orman still finds ways to surprise you and keep you wholly engaged with lyricism and beauty on every page.  10/10.

Some Thoughts on The Anthropocene Reviewed by: John Green

 

There is a misconception among the general public about the need for narrative.  Narrative is the glue that holds a book together, not necessarily referring to a plot, but how the book is presented. Non-fiction relies on narrative to convey a point, short form literature needs narrative to hold together an anthology, and The Anthropocene Reviewed is a book that proves that.  John Green is an author whom I probably will never read much more of, his particular style of literature is not one that I am fond of, though never say never.  The Anthropocene Reviewed is a collection of essays on a variety of topics, ranging from Diet Dr Pepper, to plague, and even a particular photograph that affected him.  At its core this is a book about humanity, reflecting on some of our greatest accomplishments and the tendency to leave destruction in its wake but also building up the species to its great potential.  It’s a book that takes disparate threads and essays, written over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, adapting some of its material from a podcast that John Green wrote and released from 2018 to 2020.  Some of the essays adapted are presented here but every essay is written with the format of narrative in mind.  This is a book where you get to a point where the reader is asking themselves if Green will be ever giving something five stars, and suddenly along comes the essay where Green gives out the coveted five star rating.  Writing negative reviews is also something Green has mastered, not demanding some aspect of the world just be ignored or no longer exist but examine some aspect of society.  There is a section on bacteria that becomes a tale about the issues with public health and the systemic inequality, or how plague turns into a story about the cyclic nature of history.  It opens with a decrying of the five star rating system in the introduction while ending every essay with a rating, nothing getting zero stars (very few essays being rated below three).  The Anthropocene itself is the main period of humanity and the existential crisis that comes along with the dawn of humanity as a speck of dusts.  This is perhaps a book best described as a love letter to humanity and an examination of just what people do.  I give The Anthropocene Reviewed five stars.

Asylum by: Peter Darvill-Evans

 

Asylum is a word with many meanings.  Perhaps most prevalent in popular culture is its description of a mental health facility, bringing up horrific stories of the past where people with mental illness.  The word itself comes from the Greek sulon, meaning right of seizure, with a prefix a, indicating lack of, literally meaning taking away the right of seizure.  This brings to mind political and religious asylum, refuge given to seekers which has evolved into the modern sense of political asylum for refugees.  Asylum is the third and final Doctor Who novel written by editor of the Virgin New Adventures, Peter Darvill-Evans, and the first to not be a Seventh Doctor novel and the first not to be a story set in the far future.  Instead, Darvill-Evans has crafted a narrative set in 13^th century Britain, where an unnamed alien race has found itself living amongst monks, possessing bodies, and causing a murder.  This sounds like it should be a great example of a novel and there should be an interesting story here, however, the book falls down on several fronts.  First it’s length, it’s actually the shortest installment of the Past Doctor Adventures, only coming to 226 pages with the rest of the book being filled out by Darvill-Evans dedicating over 30 pages to an essay on the historical context of the novel, what he changed from history for the book and this is honestly the best part of the novel.  It gives an interesting insight into the creative process and how Darvill-Evans has to alter history for a contemporary novel and made efforts to write characters in a way that sounds like they are distinctly from the past and are translated into English.

 

Asylum, the novel, isn’t a very good book.  The interesting premise doesn’t really feel like there is any time to flesh it out in any real way and all of the characters, especially the monks, are incredibly generic.  Some of them are historical figures, Robert Bacon being the most prominent, and there are some pieces of genuinely beautiful prose, but that’s about it.  This is also an odd choice of TARDIS team as it is the Fourth Doctor set immediately after The Deadly Assassin while he meets a Nyssa post-Terminus.  Neither of their characterization actually works with Nyssa coming the closest to her television characterization but this is a shame as by this point The Land of the Dead, Winter for the Adept, and The Mutant Phase were all released to the public so there really isn’t a reason that Darvill-Evans has to fall back on this naïve girl, despite the fact that she is supposed to be quite a bit older than in Terminus.  The Doctor is technically close to the Season 18 portrayal with a sense of age and wisdom and less of the wonder and quirky nature of the character.  Here he just kind of exists and sulks and that doesn’t really make for a compelling character.

 

Overall, Asylum is a book from someone who really should have just stayed as an editor, the BBC Books range certainly could have used his expertise when it came to commissions and published books.  It’s far from the worst book in the range, Rags still takes the cake, and there is a really nice 30 page essay on the historical context.  I’m not kidding.  3/10.

The Dragon Reborn by: Robert Jordan: Dreams and an Out (Chapters 27 to 29)

 

“She stood among rolling hills quilted with wildflowers and dotted with small thickets of leafy trees in the hollows and on the crests.  Butterflies floated above the blossoms, wings flashing yellow and blue and green, and two larks sang o each other nearby.  Just enough fluffy white clouds drifted in a soft blue sky, and the breeze held that delicate balance between cool and warm that came only a few special days in spring.  It was a day too perfect to be anything but a dream” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 311

 

The Wheel of Time has been hinting Egwene’s ability to enter the World of Dreams, Tel’aran’rhiod, for some time now and finally it is time to enter the world of dreams.  Now this is something that Egwene will continually do, early on in the chapter Anaiya  checking in on the three girls mentions her being a dreamer as well as an attempt to get one of them to choose the Ajah since as Accepted all three girls must study.  Jordan’s imagery, as quoted above, maintains this dreamlike quality through the entire chapter.  This is the most interesting to note since previously dream in the previous books, especially The Eye of the World, have been almost exclusively nightmares.  This isn’t a dream that turns into a nightmare or goes to really dark places.  It is mainly used as a way for Egwene to gather information and only ends when grabbed by another figure in the Stone of Tear.  This figure is clearly Lanfear in another guise, named Silvie here which is very close to silver, the color being most associated with the moon and by extension Lanfear herself.  It’s a goading sequence already playing on a vision of Rand rejecting her earlier in the chapter, something that might actually be a real vision as with the vision of Perrin and a wolf contentedly sleeping, being the first moment that the two magic systems really have a chance to cross over.  This is something that must be done with the rest of the series going forward as the separation needs to be overcome and both sides need to work in harmony.  This also is the first real indication that the dreaming as a concept is separate as Perrin can access it and it is not corrupted.

 

The scenes in Tear in the World of Dreams are also fascinating for how easily Egwene is goaded, once she awakens it is immediately apparent that they have to get a message to Morgase and this is where Mat can actually come in.  Mat has been eating quite a bit during his stay at Tar Valon, gaining weight and growing stronger, and it is here where some of the power dynamics between the girls has changed, Nynaeve especially describing her as “Nynaeve pressed a hand to his forehead.  He flinched before he recalled that she had done much the same for at least five years, back home.  She was just the Wisdom then, he thought.  She wasn’t wearing that ring.” – The Dragon Reborn, 323.  Yet, he is still willing to use them as an out to get away from the Tower which is where the book is finally going, as this plotline has been stagnating slightly with recap of previous books however the actual tower testing sequence with Egwene has worked as well as Mat but it is one sequence that before going back to Mat escaping with the Amyrlin sending the girls out.  It’s at this point where the pieces can actually move and we can head towards Tear and the actual climax and as such after this point the analysis will begin to take up the pace in the amount of chapters it covers.