tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71294206254398198852024-03-12T21:26:04.055-07:00From a Story By...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-14433786825296815792015-07-23T09:04:00.003-07:002015-07-23T09:05:45.519-07:00The Last Pharaoh - Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett (Thebes Publishing, 2015)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: dark2;">Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett’s <i>The
Last Pharaoh</i>, the debut release from Thebes Publishing, arrives on the Who
fiction scene during something like a period of renaissance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s hard to deny that the official BBC novel
releases have been underwhelming in the main, while the special e-short stories
from Big Name Authors have been patchy in quality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on the plus side, the recent charity <i>Seasons of War</i> collection was excellent and it’s been surrounded by more than
a trickle of other unlicensed anthologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Add to that, the launch of the Candy Jar’s <i>Lethbridge-Stewart</i> series,
while plagued with release problems to date, could turn into a worthwhile addition
to the prose ranks in the right hands (the appearance of David McIntee’s entry
will be very welcome in that respect).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: dark2;">What they’ve all been (with the honourable
exception of <i>Seasons of War</i>) is very traditionally constructed books – and
‘The Last Pharaoh’ is a novel in similar vein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But if you’re now thinking of Chris Bulis’ interminable Virgin titles,
don’t!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is nothing like that…</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: dark2;">Actually, perhaps now would be a good point
to explain about rad and trad Doctor Who books for the three people reading this
who need an explanation?</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAGWlH8Bn02nrp8E-ZPVIbzxw2SyxVZzwuSIK2KwkKEs-AXElcsLvrARg952VUyAYuas9UGKDi4VrKJSXPl1Ab7XuMmfcBgYV0Kei6PTfmxXIr4rAoHMt6KSvBUH27wCqGAfG8MW-umd_c/s1600/lastp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAGWlH8Bn02nrp8E-ZPVIbzxw2SyxVZzwuSIK2KwkKEs-AXElcsLvrARg952VUyAYuas9UGKDi4VrKJSXPl1Ab7XuMmfcBgYV0Kei6PTfmxXIr4rAoHMt6KSvBUH27wCqGAfG8MW-umd_c/s320/lastp.jpg" width="214" /></a><span style="color: #1f497d; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: dark2;">Back in the bad old days, Doctor Who book
fandom split into two distinct camps – the rad and the trad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The former was the domain of Lawrence Miles,
Dave Stone and Jim Mortimore, with multiple realities, dead Doctors and, you know,
sex and swearing and shit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The former
attracted writers and readers more comfortable with, well, traditional style
stories, in which the Doctor and a plucky assistant or two battled evil in the
Home Counties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They both had their good
and bad points (and certainly didn’t deserve to be the basis for one jihad
after another on radw and related newsgroups, mailing lists and web fora.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: dark2;">Anyway…</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: dark2;">‘The Last Pharaoh’ kicks off a series of
books featuring Erimem, the forgotten Egyptian Pharaoh from the Big Finish
series of audio plays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m afraid I
don’t listen to those, so can’t say if the last audio fits in with the first
novel in any way, but all that really matters is that Erimem turns up in modern
England and quickly teams up Ibrahim, an Egyptian Professor, and sundry
students and staff from the University. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cue the type of set-up adventure all series
need, in which the main characters are established, a means of continuing the
story is acquired and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some hands,
that would involve a slew of info-dumping, but McLaughlin and Bartlett know the
character and know how to write, and as a result, I found myself knowing
everything I needed about Eminem and chums without even noticing, like some
kind of literary osmosis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The plot is
solid, without being flashy (exactly what you want from an introductory novel)
but also not without some very pleasing surprises and some interesting
misdirections (at one point, I thought the First Doctor was about to make an
appearance!).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Best of all, the authors
can write historical characters (not as easy as you might think) and present
intriguing instances of both famous and unknown people from the distant past, which
really fleshes out the text and brings the various settings to life.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1f497d; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: dark2;">The cover art is excellent, and unusually
for any book I barely spotted an actual typo (though there were a handful of
points at which entire words were missing – perhaps those small sections were
late additions to the manuscript?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
in all, a very worthwhile addition to the Who spin-off world, and an enjoyable
read in its own right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wish I’d taken
advantage of the subscription now!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #1f497d; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: dark2;">Highly recommended. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-391164551621195662015-07-06T13:21:00.000-07:002015-07-23T09:06:04.561-07:00Seven Cities of Old - Mike Wild (snowbooks, 2014)<br />
<span style="color: #363636; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">
Mike Wild is living proof – I hope – of the maxim that perseverance
pays off. Thirty years writing top quality prose as a jobbing author for
Abaddon, the BBC, World Distributors and many others, his work has
always been intelligent, innovative and packed with ideas, but most of
all written with a casual elegance which many far more well-known
writers would do well to emulate. His writing rolls across the page with
a smoothness which is, I suspect, impossible to teach or learn, but
which comes straight from talent, and ‘Seven Cities of Old’ is no
exception.<br /><br />In some ways, it begins much as Wild’s last series
(‘Twilight of Kerebos’) did, with a feisty female hero in a land which
has regressed technologically from that of mysterious, half-forgotten
forebears – but anyone therefore expecting a replay of ‘The Clockwork
King of Orl’ would be in for a shock, as this tale of mutated cowboys
and injuns unfolds. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #363636; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Leavened with a frequent dash of humour (the whole
scene in which three literal rednecks try to decide if a half burned
corpse is human or chicken had me howling with laughter), but built on a
double sided base of solid characters and wild imagination, this first
volume in a new ongoing series is both a splendid adventure story and a
fabulous work of fantasy, which left me keen to read more. Here's hoping that Snowbooks get the sequels (and there are surely going to be some) out soon!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-51566435896405991972015-04-23T02:06:00.000-07:002015-04-23T02:10:22.662-07:00Seasons of War, ed Declan May - The Complete Review<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><a href="http://justgiving.com/declan-may1" target="_blank">Seasons of War</a> is a charity Doctor Who
short story collection, edited by Declan May, with all proceeds going to the
Caudwell Children charity. </span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">After a touching
preface by Nicholas Briggs, remembering his friend Paul Spragg, to whom the
book is dedicated...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">The opening
image, of a solitary man on a bleak crag overlooking a land of mist and swamp
reminded me of the cover to the 80’s Penguin Classic edition of Nietzsche’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ecce Homo</i> and while I’m aware that’s an
extremely up-myself way to start a review for a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> book, it also seems strangely fitting for a collection
of stories featuring a Doctor so dark as to make the Seventh seems positively
uncomplicated and angelic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this
point in time, two pages in, I’ve no idea if it’s an image which accurately
reflects the remaining one and a half million stories (or at least that’s how
it feels when you look at the two pages of contents– this is a book which gives
value for money even if you buy the ebook <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">then</i>
the limited edition paperback!) but it’s a quality I hope to see more in the
pages to come.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Anyway, back to
that first story..</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">If I had to
describe it in a single word, I suspect I’d plump for ‘perverse’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An opening story called ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Epilogue’</i>, which revisits another story titled, in part, ‘Genesis’,
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Matt Fitton</b>’s timeless tale is more
of an intriguing starter (or dessert - take your pick) than a fully-fledged
story in its own right, but in a long collection such as this some stories
serve as building blocks for others, and I get the feeling this is one of
those.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Christ on a
bike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next up is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Karn</i>’ by, I assume (it
doesn’t say) editor <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Declan May</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the first thing I’ve read by the
author, but bloody hell he doesn’t miss, does he?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Set a heartbeat after the events of the
McGann-Hurt regeneration, this War Doctor isn’t the basically cuddly old
curmudgeon we saw in ‘Day of the Doctor’, this is an absolute bastard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Judged purely on his words and actions in
these few pages, this is a Doctor to make the Master look kindly, a Doctor who
cares about nothing bar victory, a Doctor who can forget the name of a dead
woman in seconds and doom a mythical race in a moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not sure I like him much, but it’s a
brave decision and an impressive introduction to Mr May’s writing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">After two grim
opening tales, ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crowsnest Past</i>’ by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Warren Frey</b> comes as a welcome change
of pace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Epilogue’</i> took place in a world of vicious peaks and ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Karn’</i> featured a vicious Doctor, this
one kicks off with a spot of fishing, as the Doctor (I’m just going to call him
that, by the way - it’s only a missing adjective ,after all) sits in the door
of the TARDIS and tries to catch a gumblejack or two (incidentally, this is the
third story in a row to specifically reference an old TV episode – is this a
deliberate thing, I wonder?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course,
it soon goes a bit horrible and scary, with burning eyed monsters attacking the
helpless human settlement, but this is a ‘proper’ 21st century <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> adventure, of a type I wasn’t
sure we’d see in this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kudos to the
author for a solid <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who</i> story and to
the editor for slotting it in here, just where it was needed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I love <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Lee Rawlings</b>’ ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eight Minute War</i>’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
writing itself is peculiar, disjointed and with an occasional lapse in
vocabulary – exactly, in fact, as you would expect an alien to sound speaking a
language not his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that this
is first person, and that the jagged nature of the text is consistent
throughout makes me think this has to have been a deliberate choice by the
author, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was impressed by the way the
bewildered narrator describes events he doesn’t entirely understand and ends up
confronting a Doctor who is a failure, no matter how you cut it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll never see something like this on
television, in the new superhero version of Doctor Who, and in some ways that
may be a good thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rawlings’ Doctor is
a hard man to respect…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Whereas <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">JR Southall</b>’s Doctor is very much the
twenty-first century version, prone to doing what’s needed and feeling a little
bit sad about it later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like Warren
Frey’s story this is a story I can easily imagine being tweaked and used as the
basis for a Matt Smith or David Tennant episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With echoes of ‘Journey to the Heart of the
TARDIS’, ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ and – for obvious reasons – ‘The Mind Robber’,
this is the sort of tale I can picture Steven Moffat enjoying, as the Doctor
does what needs to be done in what might be the Land of Fiction, and is
lessened because of it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">That Southall’s
less spiky interpretation of the Doctor leads straight into the second of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Declan May</b>’s ‘Doctor as
uber-pragmatist’ can’t be co-incidental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The differences are readily apparent and altogether striking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s clearly the same character, but where
Southall’s Stranger is taking a break from the front lines, May’s Man in the
Bandolier wouldn’t function anywhere else (it’s interesting to see the various names
the author give our protagonist, incidentally – seven stories in, and he’s yet
to be referred to, even in passing, as the War Doctor).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As manipulative as the McCoy incarnation and
as hard as very early Hartnell, had he wandered into the previous story, he’d
have killed Alice on the first page and have forgotten her name by page
two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nice to see the titular Corsair
making a re-appearance too.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">And now we come
to an unexpected (because I’ve not checked out the contents page at all)
treat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A new <b>Kate Orman</b> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> story!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Easily in the top five prose authors ever to
write for the series, it’s fair to say that ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ambassador from Wolf-Rayet 134</i>’ is one of her lesser works, if
only for reasons of brevity, but even so, it’s a delightful piece, where Orman
contrives – with only a few thousand words to play with – to sketch in an
entire alien species in sufficient detail that this reader at least would have
been happy to have heard far more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
particular talent of the Ambassador’s people is reminiscent of Telos’ Time
Hunter series, but Orman gives the concept a twist of her own, allowing that
skill to become overwhelming and then perfectly reporting the exact alien
reaction to being so overwhelmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
with all of Orman’s writing there’s a real sense of effortless ability on
display, and I’m reminded again of my desire to see the publication of single
author <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> short story
collections…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">In contrast to
Orman’s relatively small story of one ‘woman’ and her need for peace, ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Amber Room</i>’ by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Simon Brett</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Davies</b>
remembers that other Who staple – the big set piece (with dinosaurs).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kicking a story off with a time transported
soldier being chased by an allosaurus does usually mean that you’re obliged to
pull back on the throttle a little as you progress, but that’s not the case
here, where the authors immediately raise the stakes by removing the entire
Earth in the next paragraph!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I have a
criticism – and it’s a small one – it’s that Leo, the soldier grabbed from an
early twenty-first world of terrorist attacks and IDEs, accepts the Doctor and
his TARDIS with no apparent concerns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But it’s a minor complaint, and in no way detracts from another solid,
well told tale.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Andrew Smith</span></b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> and Matthew Smith – the two names from
my youth which occasioned in me such feelings of jealousy that I might as well
have had a big sign on my forehead that said ‘under achiever’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Games’ buffs of a certain vintage will
recognise the latter name as that of the teenager who wrote Spectrum classics
‘Manic Miner’ and ‘Jet Set Willy’ but it was the former who convinced the
thirteen year old me that I’d already missed the talent boat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Author of really rather brilliant tv story ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Full Circle</i>’ while still in Primary
school (or so it felt at the time), Smith disappeared into the black hole which
is the Police Force, and has only recently resurfaced in our little corner of
the internet, producing work for Big Finish and now – more unexpectedly,
perhaps – for Declan May in this book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">But enough of
the slightly breathless history lesson, what’s ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Celephas Gift</i>’ like, I hear you ask?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s damn good, actually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story has a complete shape which, for all
their positive qualities, some of the other stories so far have been missing
(though, to be fair, those without such a structure have been so for a reason)
– a sense that this story has a beginning, a middle and an end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It helps that there’s something of a
pre-credits sequence, as the Doctor completes one (unseen) adventure and then
suffers the ramifications of the fallout from that adventure, but Smith is
clever in that, while there’s a definite sense that this story takes place
against the background of a wider War, and that this is not the Doctor we’re
used to, there’s enough meat in the story he tells for us not to care that
we’re not seeing the bigger picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
high spot of the early part of the collection, even amongst strong competition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">The next story
but one is a reworking of a chunk of Shakespeare’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Henry V</i>, so it’s good that two such meaty pieces are constructed
around a third <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Declan May</b> (this time
with the assistance of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Davies</b>)
entry, ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Girl with the Purple Hair</i>’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Less immediately about the War Doctor himself
than about his new, occasional companion, Jenny Shirt, and her perception of
him as he visits at various points in his own timeline, it still manages to add
another brick to the character May has been portraying all along.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">And so to the
reworking of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Henry V</b>!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some ways this is simply an extended joke,
with key roles for Commander Maxil (primarily remembered on Gallifrey, we are
told, for shooting an unarmed man), Castellan Kelner (similarly ‘feted’ back
home for his craven behaviour during the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Invasion
of Time</i>) and Commentator Runcible (a joke all in and by himself), as well
as any number of other references to make the long term fan chuckle in
recognition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But is it too much of a
stretch to suggest that almost the last line of the footnotes makes the key
point of the piece in noting that the cowardly Runcible, post-regeneration,
‘became a War TARDIS flotilla commander and was known as ‘Lady Runcible The
Fearless’, one of the most ruthless and capable soldiers in her field’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a warrior in all of us, if need be,
apparently….</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">‘…half-crazed
Robomen, force-mutated mounds of pain rejecting their half-destroyed mechanical
prostheses, and time-distorted semi-corpses from unidentifiable races…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you were expecting more belly laughs from
‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Here Comes the Doctor</i>’ by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Christopher Bryant</b> then you’re in for a
disappointment, though I suspect that would be the only one you’d
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must admit the name is a
new one to me, but I’m very keen to read more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s an air of RTD about the way he punctuates the meat of the plot
with carefully constructed lists like the one above, or drops unexplained
references<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- ‘I saw the birthing of the
Final Pathogen’ – into the Doctor’s dialogue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Equally, though,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there’s an old
school feel to the Doctor turning up in disguise rather than waving the psychic
paper around, then having to use his wits to convince people he’s the good
guy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For myself, I thought it was
missing a trick to have the Daleks turn out to be the bad guys (though the
clues were there, which I did appreciate, in retrospect) but the author makes
up for that by allowing the story to continue beyond the point at which a
common or garden short story would stop (read it yourself – didn’t you expect
Aceso wasting the flying Daleks to be the end?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Bryant’s War Doctor – the Patient, as
he’s known here – makes May’s look like the softest liberal bleeding heart
ever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“People change’, indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christ. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">A really good
short story feels like a novel in miniature – obviously not so detailed and
maybe not so tricky, but with several characters interacting in several
different ways, and a variety of plot twists and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A really great short story does all that and
yet still feels the perfect length.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is a great short story, simple as that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I’ve got a
slightly complicated relationship with the novelist <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Peel</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the one hand,
I actually enjoyed ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">War of the Daleks</i>’
and think that a genetic cross of Chris Bulis’ workmanlike prose and Gary
Russell’s flights of continuity fancy is something to be cherished, on some
level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand though, pretty
much everything else’s he written has been too pedestrian to be linked to
flying of any sort and has left me bored or confused (and sometimes both at
once).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fortunately, short stories allow
Peel less time to get lost in his own canon-related knots and so what we have
here is a competent, solid <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>
story, heavily laced with references to previous adventures, and none the worse
for that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sonnet’</i> by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jenny Colgan</b>, conversely, is anything but pedestrian or
boring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather it’s exactly what it
claims to be – a short poem in which Shakespeare considers the Doctor and his
past adventures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A peculiar choice,
perhaps, but like the earlier pastiche of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Henry
V</i>, an enjoyable – if brief – experience.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Moving onto a
more commonplace story telling format, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Elton
Townend-Jones</b> wins the award for best image of the book so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Five wet fingers…and a grasping, groping
hand’ appearing from within a mug of tea is not your everyday occurrence, but
it is the type of unexpected juxtaposition which the 21st century iteration of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> is very good at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The amusing way that the author then skips
over anything approaching a genuine technical explanation for what’s just
occured also echoes one of the better tropes of the new series, as does the
bittersweet ending – which, for my money, Townend-Jones nails more effectively
than anyone else so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another
excellent story in a book so far filled with them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">One thing worth mentioning - the
author’s choice of name for the female protagonist – Cass – is a little
distracting, in that I expected it to be a call-back (or possibly forward) to
the character from ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night of the Doctor</i>’,
but in the end it appears to be a co-incidence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">IV. Loop</i>’ is another story by the
Editor, though this one is considerably longer than previous such entries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>May makes good use of the extra space though,
dipping inside the head of the War Doctor, early on in his mission, exhibiting
his hopes and fears, but without descending to maudlin sentiment or
(alternatively) jingoistic machismo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead, we get a form of multi-Doctor adventure, complete with what I
assume is the War Doctor just before he uses the Moment, and a rumination on
the passing of time and the effect that can have on individual morality.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">The last few
stories have been something of a breathing space in the flow of stories – well
crafted and well told, slightly smaller stories, with more emphasis on character
building than pyrotechnics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exactly what
any long collection needs at this point, in other words.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Holdover</i>’ by another name new to me,
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Daniel Wealands</b>, throws us back into
the middle of the Time War, however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Clearly the Editor thinks that the Reader has had enough of the pleasant
stuff for a while!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wealands’ War Doctor
is a cynic and a pragmatist, but more importantly, his Time Lords are most
definitely no better than the Daleks (a position which the book as whole has
only hinted at until now).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Internment
camps, ethnic cleansing, conscientious objectors vilified and imprisoned – you
can almost feel the stakes rising as you move from one page to the next, from
one graphically described horror to the next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps the links to the Nazis is a bit unsubtle, but it’s also
effective in repelling the reader.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, if I had any criticism it’s that by the end you might well find
yourself rooting for the Daleks, just a tiny bit, so revolting is the Time Lords’
plan and so vile its implementation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fact that the tv series demonstrates that the plan backfires
horribly in the end is a consolation, I suppose, but still, this is dark, dark
stuff…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">It’s no
surprise, given the comparatively little we see on screen of the War Doctor and
his own description of himself, that most authors in this collection have opted
to portray a dark and troubled figure, either a flint-hard soldier with the
greater good always in mind, or a weary old soldier, longing for the end of the
fighting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Lance Parkin</b>, predictably, chooses a different path altogether, and
shows us a War Doctor who remains recognisably ‘our’ Doctor, a cunning
trickster choosing the most sensible path, even if that means very slightly
helping the Dalek war effort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a
clever inversion of expectation – the reader gets to the end of the story,
thinking Parkin hasn’t brought his A game (‘of course it must be a trick – we
know how these types of stories go!’) and then has the carpet swept from under
him and the expected twist turns out to be a straighten after all, and the
better for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A nice switch in tone,
just as the reader thinks he could do with a change from all these piles of
bodies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Like Christopher
Bryant earlier on, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sami Kelish</b> is a
name new to me, but one I’m very keen to see again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A complete change of pace from even Lance
Parkin’s story, ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gardening’</i> does
exactly what it says on the tin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
quiet, small story of one woman and her garden, this is beautifully written
(reminiscent, for me, of Mags Halliday’s lovely writing style), with what is
probably the most three dimensional character in the book so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kelish’s War Doctor falls somewhere between
young street fighter and weary veteran, but – as with Parkin’s story – I really
was ready for a gentler, less cold-blooded hero for a story or two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kudos to the editor for providing this brief
oasis, and to the author for crafting so engaging a heroine.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Having said
that, I’m inclined, if I’m being honest, to both criticise and praise the
editorial work on the next story up, ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sleepwalking
to Paradise</i>’ by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dan Barrett</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which is not to say that the story is poor –
anything but.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s impressively layered
and plotted, with several competing stands of action, at least two clever
twists, and an ending which left me making an actual noise of surprise and
pleasure at the author’s cleverness in staying true to the character, rather
than providing a pat and easy ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Editor Declan May deserves credit then both for allowing the story to
take up the space it requires (it’s quite a long tale) and for using this story
at the edges of the War to gently slide the reader back into the conflict after
two more pastoral stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where I might
perhaps quibble a little is that, following on from a story called and about
gardening, the last thousand words of this story are very similar in tone to
much of that story, as a character describes her garden using pretty similar
phrases in each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A very minor quibble,
in truth, which swapping Parkin and Kelish’s stories round n the running order
would fix in a trice (if it needs fixing at all – it may be I’m enjoying this
anthology so much that I’m now looking for things to moan about, in order to
keep my curmudgeonly reputation intact!)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Damn, and that's
the stakes raised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'Guerre'</i> by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Alan P. Jack</b>
and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Declan May</b> continues the theme
of Doctor as Bastard seen in the earlier May-penned vignettes, but leavened now
with a slightly softer (and older) War Doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One weary of killing, but forced to kill, aware of the necessities of
war but equally cognisant that those necessities can change a man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This story (set, very effectively in World
War I), even though it doesn't feature the most radical depiction of the
Doctor, has convinced me that this is not the man we knew any longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He's not even, by this point, a variation on
the Doctoral theme really.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This War
Doctor is a man for whom the choices available keep narrowing until even the
unthinkable is possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In terms of the
plot, it does seem a little convenient that Vincent just happened to be
returning home as the Doctor landed, but coincidence is hardly the worst of
plotting sins.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">The second short
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'Girl with Purple Hair</i>' story
meanwhile is short and to the point, though again showing a very weary Doctor
contemplating death, and serves as a coda to the story preceding it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hard to say anything further without giving
everything away...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">'V. Lady Leela'</span></i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> completes a triumvirate of consecutive <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Declan May</b> shorts - and manages to be
the bloodiest of the three stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Again, it's sufficiently short that too much discussion will give away
too much away, but suffice it to say that I thought the characterisation of our
favourite savage turned implausible army wife was spot-on and exactly how I
imagine Leela would react to the Time War.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">In passing, it's
a pleasure to observe the way in which the editor has shaped the flow of
stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Too often people think that
deciding the running order in a short story collection is simply a matter of
making sure no two consecutive stories have too similar a plot, but Declan May
demonstrates here that the order of stories can create a story of sorts
itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Impressive.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">A few years back
I picked up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nick Mellish</b>’s
self-published short story collection on Lulu, and was pleasantly surprised by
the very individual prose voice he turned out to have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the intervening years, Mellish has
improved as a writer (not that he was a bad one before), but that gift of
unusual phrasing has clearly stuck with him – lines like ‘it would catch me,
stun me, and either kill me or take me off to the camps where I would work until
death, and even then they would probably find a job for my soul’ are sprinkled
across the pages of ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Making Endings</i>’
to its great benefit. The story itself is also very well done – just when you
think it’s one thing, it turns out to be another, and then a slightly different
other still, and then it’s all done, and I found myself at the end feeling both
happy and sad, just like a really good story always does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly I find myself wondering where my
copy of that Lulu collection might be…</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Book of the Dead’</i> by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">David Carrington</b> sees the return of
Jenny Shirt (who, frankly, I’m starting to think of as a tv companion I’d
somehow managed to forget about – and if that’s not a pleasingly ironic piece
of post-modern shenanigans in a book about the War Doctor then I don’t know
what is).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is good, as she’s a
splendid character, with more personality than all but the very best tv
assistants, but better still is the idea – introduced early on – of a library
inside a majestic oak tree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, let us
be clear, is the sort of image to win over the heart of this particular
bibliophile reviewer!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Packed with
splendidly wild ideas and images – I especially liked the proposed plant Daleks
– this is good, solid Doctor Who writing, of the sort that the Big Finish Short
Trips collections used to do, at their very best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">On the surface,
it’d be very easy – and very simplistic – to see ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driftwood’</i> by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Simon Brett</b>
as something too similar to the tv episodes ‘Into the Dalek’ and ‘Dalek’,
featuring as it does a Dalek apparently turned into something else, something
less Dalek-y.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that’d be wrong – this
Dalek, Azrael as the non-Daleks call him, is more than just a prisoner or an
enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Named after the Muslim Angel of
Death, I was unexpectedly reminded of Dante’s Satan, trapped deep in the ice at
the centre of Hell, or even Milton’s deceiving, poetic devil – and if that
seems pretentious, well even if it is, it’s no less true for all that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the story progresses, little clues build
up, pointing the reader in one interesting direction, only for Brett to
surprise every one (well, me anyway!) by carrying out a sneaky, and damn
clever, side step at the last moment. Another high point in an altogether
stellar collection…</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I’ve come
particularly to look forward to the ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girl
with the Purple Hair</i>’ stories which pop up intermittently in Seasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re short, precise vignettes which
provide a spine for the book, without intruding into the flow of the other
stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which makes it a shame that
number III in the series is, for me, the first mildly jarring mis-step in the
collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t get me wrong – it’s as
neatly and concisely written as earlier entries, with some useful and touching
commentary on the life of the War Doctor from the titular Jenny Shirt, but
there’s an unexpected clumsiness in the key moment of the story, a moment which
I won’t spoil but which felt, to me, a little too obvious and a little too keen
to pluck at the heart strings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not
a major problem – and even if it was, the quality of the other stories in this
mini-series more than compensate for a very slight tonal issue like this – but
it was enough to make me pause in my reading and wish that a more subtle
approach had been taken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One interesting
aside is that, at one point, the author refers to ‘Kaled Deadnoughts’ rather
than Dalek ones, which may have been unintentional, but did make me picture a
Time War in which the Daleks go back to a time pre-Davros and absorb their own
ancestors into the conflict…</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Alan Ronald</span></b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">’s ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Ingenious Gentleman</i>’ on the other hand is an absolute blast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cleverly starting with what appears to be the
War Doctor on a white horse, Ronald throws the reader straight into the action
as a famous Spanish writer and adventurer encounters a materialising TARDIS by
a suspiciously giant-like windmill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
tone throughout the first half of this splendid tale is firmly tongue in cheek,
as Don Quixote and the Doctor trade stories of their respective quests and,
after some genuinely gruelling (in the good, intentional sense) recent stories,
it’s hard to deny that the change is a welcome one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even so, there’s room left later for the two
heroes to interact at a less frivolous level – in fact, thinking about it, this
is one of those stories where the plot is less important than the characterisation
and perhaps the key thing the reader should take away from it is the idea that
perhaps – one day – the War Doctor might feel able to drop the ‘War’ from his
name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another thumbs up for both author
and editor for slipping ‘The Ingenious Gentleman’ in exactly where it was
needed in this increasingly impressive collection.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">There's a
strange line early on in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Matt Barber</b>'s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'Fall'</i> where the narrator remarks
that the Doctor's face 'had a look of Don Quixote about it'.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing wrong with that in itself, of course,
but it does feel slightly peculiar to have such a comparison straight after a
story in which he meets that Spanish literary eccentric - as though this is
something significant, rather than merely an incidental effect of story
placement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's about the only
off-kilter moment in the tale though, as an elderly Brigadier makes his first
appearance in the book, coming to the Doctor's aid against a Krynoid
threat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have an admission to make at
this point, though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This isn't the best
written story in the book, nor the one with the most interesting plot or the
most unexpected twist on the standard Who tropes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which sounds like I'm about to say I didn't
like it at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but in fact I loved
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything in the story is more
accurately described as 'competent' and 'solid' rather than 'brilliant' or
'exceptional' but there's something about the whole - about the mix of old and
new favourites, about the obscure tv references and the knowing jokes, about
the interaction between the Doctor, the Brig and everyone else - which works
absolutely perfectly and turns this story into a real celebration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is how I picture the Brigadier in very
old age, close, as he admits himself, to death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not slipping away in his sleep in a retirement home, but creating his
only mini-army who he leads when the time is right and the old UNIT gang are
required.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually, I tell a lie anyway
- there's one element in which this story - rather than being 'merely' very
good - is the best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author gets the
elderly Brigadier spot on, from the straightening of his aged spine when called
to action, via his feelings of pain when he allows one of his men (or women) to
die, all the way to his own feelings of inadequacy and his realisation that war
has chnaged his old friend, the Doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It's beautifully done, and the ending almost reduced me to tears (it's
also damn funny at points, I should add).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Another highlight in a book which positively sparkles with them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Jon Arnold</span></b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">'s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'Always
Face the Curtain with a Bow</i>', on the other hand starts with a bang and
never lets up until it finishes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With a
combination of humour, pace and sheer brio, Arnold takes the readers on a
terrific ride which reminded me at times of the work of the late Terry Pratchett
and at others of the equally lamented Iain M Banks, as great jokes and mad
ideas clash and collide in a frantic literary form of Brownian Motion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I especially liked the mind eating penguins
of Voltaria and the killer bunnies, but it's a slick story all round, with
echoes of Philip Jose Farmer's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'Riverworld'</i>
and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'Groundhog Day</i>' - which is just the sort of unexpected mashup
Doctor Who is so good at, now I think about it...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">'Help a Stranded Time Traveller</span></i><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">' by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Matthew
Sylvester</b> is considerably more straight-forward an adventure story, with
the Doctor arriving as a ruthless and greedy criminal attempts to steal of
wrecked TARDIS in order to sell it to the Daleks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sylvester is a confident, accomplished writer
and if I don't say as much about this as other stories in the book, that's not
an insult, but more a recognition that real professionalism is as often about
creating something solid, comfortable and dependable than something wildly
experimental or controversial. Sylvester has come up with a story which, in
some ways, could be about the Sixth Doctor or the First as easily as about the
War Doctor, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Quite a few of
the stories in this book are pretty large scale, with whole planets under
threat and entire armies wiped out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That's an unavoidable consequence of putting together a large amount of
stories about a War which spans all of space and time, but even so, it's a
pleasure now and then to come across something slightly more small-scale (in a
good way).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'Storage Wars</i>' by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Paul
Driscoll</b> manages to be both at once, which is the best combination of all,
if you ask me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Small scale, as the title
suggests, in that this is a tale about something found in a Totters Lane
junkyard and sold on a trashy bit of daytime tv schedule filler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Small too in that the Doctor at this point in
his life is living as a near tramp in central London, apparently taking a break
from the War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Small, finally, in the
sense that the whole story revolves around a payment of a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mere six grand and possession of a child's
toy, not millions of pounds or billions of mazumas or whatever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there's also grandeur in here, with the
genocide of one species reversed and the Doctor rejecting a weapon against the
Daleks because it would require that genocide to work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There's paradox too, most obviously in Ruby's
desire to weaponise something tiny in order to destroy something huge, but also
in the War Doctor - in spite of his name - choosing beauty over
destruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And finally, there's some really
nasty stuff, as befits a book about a war - burned corpses and unmarked graves
and human nature shown to be less than the ideal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A lovely story composed of layer upon layer
of meaning, and an impressive achievement all round.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">There's a point
in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Davies</b>' <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'The Postman</i>' in which the author intertwines several disparate
time lines into one action-packed sequence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It works pretty successfully, and serves as a micro-version of the story
as a whole, but it also marks the point at which Davies cuts the legs from
under the reader and what seemed on the surface, at the beginning, to be a
fairly jolly, at times humorous, story becomes something black as hell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's not the first story in this collection
to be comfortable with the grim, but - more even than Daniel Wealands - this is
brutal, brutal stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's hard to say
much without giving things away, but remember that the postman of the title is
one of the type who deliver black edged telegrams to waiting mothers and
fathers and you get the idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Might just
be me, but I found this enormously moving and the timey-wimey sequence
painfully sad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As with every other
story, this is well-written, cleverly plotted and entirely affecting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">If I'm honest, I'm
not sure how I feel about '<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Thief of
All Ways</i>' by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Elliot Thorpe</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the first time in the book - even
allowing for the grimness of elements of the previous story - it feels like
this is not in any way the Doctor I know and love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This guy is an unknown now, sacrificing lives
without really looking for an alternative, and then expecting the victims to
thank him later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's deliberate, of
course, and the author does indeed have the victim say 'thank you' and then
acknowledge that in some way what the Doctor is being 'forced' to do is the
'right' thing - "The Daleks would have used me in ways I can’t even
imagine. That’s a more horrifying thought than this...and it means I can at
least do something right." she says at one point - but I found the former
in particular a lot less believable as a sentiment than the "No! Wait!
Please!" she cries out when the time actually comes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's hard to deny the maturity of this
writing though - noble self-sacrifice is a lot easier when it doesn't look as
though it'll be required, and panic when the moment comes is a perfectly normal
human reaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the 'thank you' at
the end is, I think, a mis-step - more of a way of quickly re-humanising this
callous, killer Doctor than a genuinely plausible reaction from someone who's
just been murdered, effectively (and the entire story, of course, comes just a
heartbeat after Paul Driscoll's very different take on the Doctor and his
willingness to compromise his core values).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Like I said, I'm a bit conflicted about this one, but it did make me
think and sometimes there's no greater praise you can give a story.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Paul Driscoll is
in danger of becoming my favourite new author in this collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After his excellent initial offering, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'Storage Wars</i>', his second story "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Time Lord Who Came to Tea</i>' manages
to continue at the same high quality level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It's a deceptively simple story, with the Doctor and a child crossing a
war torn landscape to collect some much needed supplies, but it's the
incidental detail and the world building which impresses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dalek Meat Traders, Puritanians, the protection
of rotting corpses and the promise of Arcadia - each element Driscoll
introduces adds a little more to the world he has created until, in the space
of a few thousand words, Jericho feels as real as any planet from the tv show
or novels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'd be happy to read more
about young Sophienna and her world - can't say better than that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Damn, this next
story, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'The Nightmare Child</i>' is about
as unexpected as anything I've read this year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Normal narrative structure is abandoned in part, replaced by the bastard
offspring of James Joyce and Kathy Acker (minus the sex references).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it's not clear who wrote this - mention of
wardenmen suggest that it may perhaps be John Davies - but the plot here is
subservient to the language, the nameless author playing with words and
phrases, combining and dissecting them with controlled abandon.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">It makes sense
to follow this linguistic tour-de-force with a story from <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Paul Magrs</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the past I've
read similarly experimental cut-up approaches by Magrs to Sexton Blake,
Sherlock Holmes and Iris Wildthyme and so in a perverse sort of way it feels
right that he should be the one to return the collection to the everyday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, reading it, I wonder if the
preceding tale and this are not both his, as Davros turns out to be an old disabled
guy in a wheelchair, who lives in a tower block in urban London and dreams of
the Nightmare Child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This return to the
setting of Magrs' and Jeremy Hoad's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'The
Blue Angel'</i> novel (my favourite <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who</i>
novel), only updated for the new series, is both a surprise and a real pleasure
and has, not to put too fine a point on it, quite made my day. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Next up - <b>Barnaby
Eaton-Jones</b> can bugger off.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">SPOILER ALERT</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">HE KILLED JENNY
SHIRT!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I'm tempted to
say nothing more about his story and hell-mend him, but I suppose I have to be
the bigger man here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let's see...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">It's pretty damn
good, actually, with a bone weary Doctor near the end of this incarnation and
ready for death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I've mentioned
before, it's unavoidable that a War Doctor has to be violent and amoral, a
killer with little conscience, but I have particularly enjoyed moments like
this, where one author or other demonstrates that - in the absolute end - the
War Doctor will be bowed down by the weight of his actions, and regret all the
things he's had to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eaton-Jones
effectively turns this necessity from subtext to (almost) text in relating one
of the Doctor's memories concerning the death of one administrator who worked
with the Daleks (presumably - it's not made clear) because he had no choice but
to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It remains unspoken, but the
comparison with the Doctor is clear enough - forced throughout this collection
of stories to do all manner of things he'd rather not, to sacrifice all the
principles which made him the Doctor and, in doing so, become someone who, in
his own words, doesn't deserve that name or, perhaps, his own life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">So, maybe it's
not so terrible that Jenny Shirt dies, after all - for all that the Doctor says
it would seem I’ve made the wrong choice, it's a dying Jenny who tells him that
he hasn't - and that's pretty important.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">"English.
Therefore probably drunk" - <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Gary
Russell</b> wins the prize for funniest line in the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And his story <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'The Beach</i>' slots in very well as near the end of the book as the
Doctor is near the end of his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because the War is nearly over, the Doctor has a Plan, and it's time to
wrap up loose ends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Russell's writing
has been accused in the past of prioritising continuity concerns over story,
but that's the last accusation which can be levelled at 'The Beach', which is
sweet and small-scale recounting of debts repaid and promises kept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quite lovely, in its way, in fact.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">There's a reason
that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">George Mann</b> was chosen to write
the sole War Doctor novel so far released by the BBC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has the happy knack of capturing the most
interesting parts of the characters he writes, for one thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not for Mann a War Doctor obsessed with
fighting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, he shows us a War
Doctor trying to please (and, perhaps, save) a single friend, and in doing so
pleases this reader enormously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
litany of rescued moments which the Doctor shows Cinder (and how nice to get
what is effectively a deleted scene with that splendid girl) serve both as a
touching opportunity to gain her own survival and an affectionate reminder of
the multiple, wonderful, alien worlds of 'Doctor Who' as a whole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That we know, as readers of 'Engines of War',
how it all ends up does nothing to detract from that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fingers crossed that this isn't the last time
Mann writes for Doctor 8.5...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Declan May</span></b><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> obviously loves language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can tell that from any part of his
writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turns out he wrote the
extravagant word gymnastics of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">'The Nightmare Child'</i>, for example, but
in this last story in this more than accomplished collection, that adoration
for sound is equally evident and just as memorable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Descriptions like 'cruel, twisted tailor-made
naissance' and 'Gallifrey, spoiled in the heat of war and turned into a
desperate, treacherous, brutal beast' abound here, but even if they didn't, his
decision to list the thirteen Chronosmiths individually (Wigs, Rags,
Hynchcliffe, Sheepskin, Plunder, the Baronessa, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon,
Spinach, Thurber, Myopapa and the Cigarette Crow, fact fans) demonstrates an
unusually strong love of linguistic legerdemain which cannot be denied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He even dips into French at one point!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the story...well, read it for yourself
and see what you think.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">Read them all,
in fact...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://justgiving.com/declan-may1" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"> http://justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-17124677964788196462015-04-20T14:01:00.002-07:002015-04-20T14:01:21.483-07:00The Unofficial Doctor Who Book Guide - Chris Stone (Long Scarf, 2015)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>One thing <i>Doctor Who</i> books seem to do
better than anyone is to provide touching introductions, and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who Book Guide </i>continues that
happy tradition with a fittingly nostalgic Foreword from author Iain
McLaughlin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nostalgic and true, as it
happens – as he rightly says ‘[w]ithout those Target books we would never have
had Professor Nightshade or Faction Paradox’ and, for me, as much a fan
nowadays of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> in print as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> on screen, that’s a pretty
impressive thing to be able to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More
than any other genre franchise – more, perhaps, than any tv show of any sort
ever – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> books are genuinely
indispensable to anyone who wants to gain full value from their fandom.</div>
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It’s that indispensability, in fact, which elevates this
guide above other, apparently similar titles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unlike, say, a recent guide to the distinctly finite <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> dvd range which, while damn pretty,
should really have been a website not a book, there’s enough range and
diversity in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> books to
support a title which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> lists<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>the different editions of each
publication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">useful</i> book, which in the end is the
best thing you can possibly say about a reference title.</div>
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<br /></div>
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So, having established <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that the existence of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book Guide </i>is not some dubious madness on the part of the author,
what of the contents?</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, it starts off with an excellent introduction from
Christopher Stone in which, amongst other arcane matters, he explains what <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that ’10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1’ thing at the start
of books means, why 1984 editions of the Target books might not even exist, and
just price tag clipping does to the value of your treasured pink Pertwee
Annual!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s all good stuff, and
interesting, but having examined the added extras, let’s mix metaphors wildly
and move onto the meat of the thing…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Each book has a section devoted to it, including images of
each edition of the book in question, with a box out breakdown beneath of such
details as cover price, spine colour, ISBN, publisher and date.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lest that sound a bit dry, Stone has also
attempted, with varying degrees of success, it’s fair to say, to add a bit of
colour to each entry with mocked up newspaper reports, quotes, background
information and the like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can be a
bit repetitive when several new editions in a row have the exact same cover (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An Unearthly Child</i>, first out of
the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>blocks, for instance, starts with
five near identical covers.!) but it’s difficult to blame the author for doing
exactly what he said he would do, and show everything!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where the book comes into its own though is with the more
obscure titles – after five very similar aUC covers, we have the cover to ‘Doctor
Who entre en scene’ and ‘Doctor Who und das kind von der sternem’, neither of
which I can recall seeing before, and both of which I now, in my half-daft
collector way, want…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Any negatives, I hear you ask?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, one or two of the cover images could do
with sharpening up (but the edition I have is a pre-publication one, so it’s
entirely possible the author is already aware of this) and a couple of the
background pictures are somewhat distracting from the main text.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other than that my main gripe was that I wasn’t
sure what was real and what was damn clever fakery in the additional material –
was there really a belief that the novelisation of ‘Galaxy 4’ was good enough
to justify a major marketing campaign?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All in all, an excellent idea which, on the basis of this
early draft, will make a welcome addition to any Who book fans shelves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll definitely be picking up a copy…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Unofficial Doctor Who Book Guide is available for
pre-order in softback and hardback</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://sandholes.wix.com/drwhobookguide">http://sandholes.wix.com/drwhobookguide</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-16574193219176193612015-04-10T08:07:00.002-07:002015-04-10T08:10:17.363-07:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 13Declan May obviously loves language. You can tell that from any part of his writing. It turns out he wrote the extravagant word gymnastics of 'The Nightmare Child', for example, but in this last story in this more than accomplished collection, that adoration for sound is equally evident and just as memorable. Descriptions like 'cruel, twisted tailor-made naissance' and 'Gallifrey, spoiled in the heat of war and turned into a desperate, treacherous, brutal beast' abound here, but even if they didn't, his decision to list the thirteen Chronosmiths individually (Wigs, Rags, Hynchcliffe, Sheepskin, Plunder, the Baronessa, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, Spinach, Thurber, Myopapa and the Cigarette Crow, fact fans) demonstrates an unusually strong love of linguistic legerdemain which cannot be denied. He even dips into French at one point! As for the story...well, read it for yourself and see what you think.<br />
<br />
Read them all, in fact...<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/Declan-May1" target="_blank"><img alt="https://www.justgiving.com/Declan-May1" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8n4gi3-zjLZ2Urc3P1cVlVbQ3xkqJJJorWQGnbCqdvDKkkZD2YsdcKjm8GaDUGARV-A_5mZGe5gMUM2wK7uZc7ugzWTvzOVhJwSq-3KJ7bLdKbChX7n4hV_FDirXJVq7KmC7asJumf_6Q/s1600/Seasons-of-War.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: xx-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: 20px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-18975845700331267332015-04-10T05:45:00.003-07:002015-04-10T07:51:44.725-07:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 12Well Barbaby Eaton-Jones can bugger off.<br />
<br />
SPOILER ALERT<br />
<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
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.<br />
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<br />
HE KILLED JENNY SHIRT!<br />
<br />
I'm tempted to say nothing more about his story and hell-mend him, but I suppose I have to be the bigger man here. Let's see... <br />
<br />
It's pretty damn good, actually, with a bone weary Doctor near the end of this incarnation and ready for death. As I've mentioned before, it's unavoidable that a War Doctor has to be violent and amoral, a killer with little conscience, but I have particularly enjoyed moments like this, where one author or other demonstrates that - in the absolute end - the War Doctor will be bowed down by the weight of his actions, and regret all the things he's had to do. Eaton-Jones effectively turns this necessity from subtext to (almost) text in relating one of the Doctor's memories concerning the death of one administrator who worked with the Daleks (presumably - it's not made clear) because he had no choice but to do so. It remains unspoken, but the comparison with the Doctor is clear enough - forced throughout this collection of stories to do all manner of things he'd rather not, to sacrifice all the principles which made him the Doctor and, in doing so, become someone who, in his own words, doesn't deserve that name or, perhaps, his own life.<br />
<br />
So, maybe it's not so terrible that Jenny Shirt dies, after all - for all that the Doctor says it would seem I’ve made the wrong choice, it's a dying Jenny who tells him that he hasn't - and that's pretty important.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSDLjL62JimXNJYZvIZ5dBUBQD3Z_sScWJufU1pSPZxwOaBM46aG5KX3uLEL__YyfUJSLUrEG3DjEEgSZIQ3e0kzKxScaZnOpW1ujNCHzxJWgE7MBnQ4MNIrEx-9SzFVCsj_xa4HkNZEVp/s1600/drunk-teenager.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSDLjL62JimXNJYZvIZ5dBUBQD3Z_sScWJufU1pSPZxwOaBM46aG5KX3uLEL__YyfUJSLUrEG3DjEEgSZIQ3e0kzKxScaZnOpW1ujNCHzxJWgE7MBnQ4MNIrEx-9SzFVCsj_xa4HkNZEVp/s1600/drunk-teenager.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>"English. Therefore probably drunk" - Gary Russell wins the prize for funniest line in the book. And his story 'The Beach' slots in very well as near the end of the book as the Doctor is near the end of his life. Because the War is nearly over, the Doctor has a Plan, and it's time to wrap up loose ends. Russell's writing has been accused in the past of prioritising continuity concerns over story, but that's the last accusation which can be levelled at 'The Beach', which is sweet and small-scale recounting of debts repaid and promises kept. Quite lovely, in its way, in fact.<br />
<br />
There's a reason that George Mann was chosen to write the sole War Doctor novel so far released by the BBC. He has the happy knack of capturing the most interesting parts of the characters he writes, for one thing. Not for Mann a War Doctor obsessed with fighting. Instead, he shows us a War Doctor trying to please (and, perhaps, save) a single friend, and in doing so pleases this reader enormously. The litany of rescued moments which the Doctor shows Cinder (and how nice to get what is effectively a deleted scene with that splendid girl*) serve both as a touching opportunity to gain her own survival and an affectionate reminder of the multiple, wonderful, alien worlds of 'Doctor Who' as a whole. That we know, as readers of 'Engines of War', how it all ends up does nothing to detract from that. Fingers crossed that this isn't the last time Mann writes for Doctor 8.5...<br />
<br />
* and a new Cinder image by Paul Hanley! Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-42520993993861589292015-04-09T06:19:00.000-07:002015-04-23T01:16:10.627-07:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 11Paul Driscoll is in danger of becoming my favourite new author in this collection. After his excellent initial offering, 'Stoarage Wars', his second story "The Time Lord Who Came to Tea' manages to continue at the same high quality level. It's a deceptively simple story, with the Doctor and a child crossing a war torn landscape to collect some much needed supplies, but it's the incidental detail and the world building which impresses. Dalek Meat Traders, Puritanians, the protection of rotting corpses and the promise of Arcadia - each element Driscoll introduces adds a little more to the world he has created until, in the space of a few thousand words, Jericho feels as real as any planet from the tv show or novels. I'd be happy to read more about young Sophienna and her world - can't say better than that.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2S5TliH0F_KYvZwUngqCyeBNP_iGYbPQUSNndWp2APXiqbguD5QJNqQv14SGDmf7d_8U7H0luRO08nQWyIUMbiDCTCtj9e6qUBhNXJMMxpQbI0Ndw1yRbROSQsqDV2Bo8Xax1Gyv8S268/s1600/davros.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2S5TliH0F_KYvZwUngqCyeBNP_iGYbPQUSNndWp2APXiqbguD5QJNqQv14SGDmf7d_8U7H0luRO08nQWyIUMbiDCTCtj9e6qUBhNXJMMxpQbI0Ndw1yRbROSQsqDV2Bo8Xax1Gyv8S268/s1600/davros.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>Damn, this next story, 'The Nightmare Child' is about as unexpected as anything I've read this year. Normal narrative structure is abandoned in part, replaced by the bastard offspring of James Joyce and Kathy Acker (minus the sex references). it's not clear who wrote this - mention of wardenmen suggest that it may perhaps be John Davies - but the plot here is subservient to the language, the nameless author playing with words and phrases, combining and dissecting them with controlled abandon.<br />
<br />
It makes sense to follow this linguistic tour-de-force with a story from Paul Magrs. In the past I've read similarly experimental cut-up approaches by Magrs to Sexton Blake, Sherlock Holmes and Iris Wildthyme and so in a perverse sort of way it feels right that he should be the one to return the collection to the everyday. In fact, reading it, I wonder if the preceding tale and this are not both his, as Davros turns out to be an old disabled guy in wheelchair, who lives in a tower block in urban London and dreams of the Nightmare Child. This return to the setting of Magrs' and Jeremy Hoad's 'The Blue Angel' novel (my favourite Who novel), only updated for the new series, is both a surprise and a real pleasure and has, not to put too fine a point on it, quite made my day. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-6439507679830602322015-04-09T02:55:00.001-07:002015-04-09T04:28:02.618-07:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 10<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[<i>Seasons of War</i> is a charity Doctor Who
short story collection, edited by Declan May, with all proceeds going to the
Cauldwell Childrens charity. It's a long book, with a lot of stories, so
I'll be reviewing it in chunks of 4-6 stories at a time over the next week or
so...]</span><br />
<br />
Quite a few of the stories in this book are pretty large scale, with whole planets under threat and entire armies wiped out. That's an unavoidable consequence of putting together a large amount of stories about a War which spans all of space and time, but even so, it's a pleasure now and then to come across something slightly more small-scale (in a good way). 'Storage Wars' by Paul Driscoll manages to be both at once, which is the best combination of all, if you ask me. Small scale, as the title suggests, in that this is a tale about something found in a Totters Lane junkyard and sold on a trashy bit of daytime tv schedule filler. Small too in that the Doctor at this point in his life is living as a near tramp in central London, apparently taking a break from the War. Small, finally, in the sense that the whole story revolves around a payment of a mere six grand and possession of a child's toy, not millions of pounds or billions of mazumas or whatever. But there's also a grandeur in here, with the genocide of one species reversed and the Doctor rejecting a weapon against the Daleks because it would require that genocide to work. There's paradox too, most obviously in Ruby's desire to weaponise something tiny in order to destroy something huge, but also in the War Doctor - in spite of his name - choosing beauty over destruction. And finally, there's some really nasty stuff, as befits a book about a war - burned corpses and unmarked graves and human nature shown to be less than the ideal. A lovely story composed of layer upon layer of meaning, and an impressive achievement all round.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIiBVh5njZFZw0ECOV5OtembsxachrFWqSTZdMsE0h-EIVUHP92uOVH23yb5tB_TusJtAdrXwN5krx5wk-auUcEFChSH4gnxucJw1fmrLUUoJvUzD2IbzntA53Z4k9uDJPhf-LnXg-ljRz/s1600/The-Day-ofthe-Doctor-Totters-Lane.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIiBVh5njZFZw0ECOV5OtembsxachrFWqSTZdMsE0h-EIVUHP92uOVH23yb5tB_TusJtAdrXwN5krx5wk-auUcEFChSH4gnxucJw1fmrLUUoJvUzD2IbzntA53Z4k9uDJPhf-LnXg-ljRz/s1600/The-Day-ofthe-Doctor-Totters-Lane.png" height="179" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
There's a point in John Davies' 'The Postman' in which the author intertwines several disaprate time lines into one action-packed sequence. It works pretty successfully, and serves as a micro-version of the story as a whole, but it also marks the point at which Davies cuts the legs from under the reader and what seemed on the surface, at the beginning, to be a fairly jolly, at times humorous, story becomes something black as hell. It's not the first story in this collection to be comfortable with the grim, but - more even than Daniel Wealands - this is brutal, brutal stuff. It's hard to say much withut giving thigns away, but remember that the postman of the title is one of the type who deliver black edged telegrams to waiting mothers and fathers and you get the idea. Might just be me, but I found this enormously moving and the timey-wimey sequence painfully sad. As with every other story, this is well-written, cleverly plotted and entirely affecting.<br />
<br />
If I'm honest, I'm not sure how I feel about 'the Thief of All Ways' by Elliot Thorpe. For the first time in the book - even allowing for the grimness of elements of the previous story - it feels like this is not in anyway the Doctor I know and love. This guy is an unknown now, sacrificing lives without really looking for an alternative, and then expecting the victims to thank him later. It's deliberate, of course, and the author does indeed have the victim say 'thank you' and then acknowledge that in some way what the Doctor is being 'forced' to do is the 'right' thing - "<i>The Daleks would have used me in ways I can’t even imagine. That’s a more horrifying thought than this...and it means I can at least do something right.</i>" she says at one point - but I found the former in particular a lot less believable as a sentiment than the"<i>No! Wait! Please!</i>" she cries out when the time actually comes. It's hard to deny the maturity of this writing though - noble self-sacrifice is a lot easier when it doesn't look as though it'll be required, and panic when the moment comes is a perfectly normal human reaction. But the 'thank you' at the end is, I think, a mis-step - more of a way of quickly re-humanising this callous, killer Doctor than a genuinely plausible reaction from someone who's just been murdered, effectively (and the entire story, of course, comes just a heartbeat after Paul Driscoll's very different take on the Doctor and his willingness to compromise his core values). Like I said, I'm a bit conflicted about this one, but it did make me think and sometimes there's no greater praise you can give a story.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">/ to buy the ebook. There's
a paperback (and reviews of the next few stories) yet to come..</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-59997211780695013892015-04-03T07:57:00.001-07:002015-04-03T07:57:12.221-07:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 9<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ehmPnGGSd25QK7qdFfeQ1fxTX6X5K-JmFdU0wdfHmoZYLmle9cD8drNKHsJUeBgc3Yhy3M9bitYSQcQL2G1H7vzNPXGj2EUA0EhJIFFEU8kZlysrSAU_DrU0WPGouQwK-_t7YxlcVWFq/s1600/brig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ehmPnGGSd25QK7qdFfeQ1fxTX6X5K-JmFdU0wdfHmoZYLmle9cD8drNKHsJUeBgc3Yhy3M9bitYSQcQL2G1H7vzNPXGj2EUA0EhJIFFEU8kZlysrSAU_DrU0WPGouQwK-_t7YxlcVWFq/s1600/brig.jpg" height="112" width="200" /></a>There's a strange line early on in Matt Barber's 'Fall' where the narrator remarks that the Doctor's face 'had a look of Don Quixote about it'. Nothing wrong with that in itself, of course, but it does feel slightly peculiar to have such a comparison straight after a story in which he meets that Spanish literary eccentric - as though this is something significant, rather than merely an incidental effect of story placement. That's about the only off-kilter moment in the tale though, as an elderly Brigadier makes his first appearance in the book, coming to the Doctor's aid against a Krynoid threat. I have an admission to make at this point, though. This isn't the best written story in the book, nor the one with the most interesting plot or the most unexpected twist on the standard Who tropes. Which sounds like I'm about to say I didn't like it at all. but in fact I loved it. Everything in the story is more accurately described as 'competent' and 'solid' rather than 'brilliant' or 'exceptional' but there's something about the whole - about the mix of old and new favourites, about the obscure tv references and the knowing jokes, about the interaction between the Doctor, the Brig and everyone else - which works absolutely perfectly and turns this story into a real celebration. This is how I picture the Brigadier in very old age, close, as he admits himself, to death. Not slipping away in his sleep in a retirement home, but creating his only mini-army who he leads when the time is right and the old UNIT gang are required. Actually, I tell a lie anyway - there's one element in which this story - rather than being 'merely' very good - is the best. The author gets the elderly Brigadier spot on, from the straightening of his aged spine when called to action, via his feelings of pain when he allows one of his men (or women) to die, all the way to his own feelings of inadequacy and his realisation that war has chnaged his old friend, the Doctor. It's beautifully done, and the ending almost reduced me to tears (it's also damn funny at points, I should add). Another highlight in a book which positively sparkles with them.<br />
<br />
Jon Arnold's 'Always Face the Curtain with a Bow', on the other hand starts with a bang and never lets up until it finishes. With a combination of humour, pace and sheer brio, Arnold takes the readers on a terrific ride which reminded me at times of the work of the late Terry Pratchett and at others of the equally lamented Iain M Banks, as great jokes and mad ideas clash and collide in a frantic literary form of Brownian Motion. I especially liked the mind eating penguins of Voltaria and the killer bunnies, but it's a slick story all round, with echoes of Philip Jose Farmer's 'Riverworld' and the movie 'Groundhog Day' - which is just the sort of unexpected mashup Doctor Who is so good at, now I think about it...<br />
<br />
'Help a Stranded Time Traveller' by Matthew Sylvester is considerably more straight-forward an adventure story, with the Doctor arriving as a ruthless and greedy criminal attempts to steal of wrecked TARDIS in order to sell it to the Daleks. Sylvester is a confident, accomplished writer and if I don't say as much about this as other stories in the book, that's not an insult, but more a recognition that real professionalism is as often about creating something solid, comfortable and dependable than something wildly experimental or controversial. Sylvester has come up with a story which, in some ways, could be about the Sixth Doctor or the First as easily as about the War Doctor, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-92075094054066464322015-04-02T05:32:00.000-07:002015-04-02T05:39:03.036-07:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 8<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[<i>Seasons of War</i> is a charity Doctor Who
short story collection, edited by Declan May, with all proceeds going to the
Cauldwell Childrens charity. It's a long book, with a lot of stories, so
I'll be reviewing it in chunks of 4-6 stories at a time over the next week or
so...]<br />
<br />
I’ve come particularly to look forward to the ‘Girl with the Purple Hair’
stories which pop up intermittently in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seasons</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re short, precise vignettes which
provide a spine for the book, without intruding into the flow of the other
stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which makes it a shame that number
III in the series is, for me, the first mildly jarring mis-step in the collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t get me wrong – it’s as neatly and
concisely written as earlier entries, with some useful and touching commentary on
the life of the War Doctor from the titular Jenny Shirt, but there’s an
unexpected clumsiness in the key moment of the story, a moment which I won’t
spoil but which felt, to me, a little too obvious and a little too keen to
pluck at the heart strings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not a
major problem – and even if it was, the quality of the other stories in this
mini-series more than compensate for a very slight tonal issue like this – but it
was enough to make me pause in my reading and wish that a more subtle approach
had been taken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One interesting aside is
that, at one point, the author refers to ‘Kaled Deadnoughts’ rather than Dalek
ones, which may have been unintentional, but did make me picture a Time War in
which the Daleks go back to a time pre-Davros and absorb their own ancestors
into the conflict…</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-TiOxoN_znMObaDHLX8DiecqBKB0Y9JvQJ2myNHRmpVsXMFMf2zrSw_UgFh7oA3Dsf4WsXrEvEQr-qIvrJtOsT2Yy_49HJxW6vVfYzBRmKqbPvnt6zOC7Lq0WstlWcs9PMge3CtWQztl/s1600/dq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-TiOxoN_znMObaDHLX8DiecqBKB0Y9JvQJ2myNHRmpVsXMFMf2zrSw_UgFh7oA3Dsf4WsXrEvEQr-qIvrJtOsT2Yy_49HJxW6vVfYzBRmKqbPvnt6zOC7Lq0WstlWcs9PMge3CtWQztl/s1600/dq.jpg" height="200" width="143" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Alan Ronald’s ‘The Ingenious Gentleman’ on the
other hand is an absolute blast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Cleverly starting with what appears to be the War Doctor on a white
horse, Ronald throws the reader straight into the action as a famous Spanish
writer and adventurer encounters a materialising TARDIS by a suspiciously
giant-like windmill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tone throughout
the first half of this splendid tale is firmly tongue in cheek, as Don Quixote
and the Doctor trade stories of their respective quests and, after some genuinely
gruelling (in the good, intentional sense) recent stories, it’s hard to deny
that the change is a welcome one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
so, there’s room left later for the two heroes to interact at a less frivolous
level – in fact, thinking about it, this is one of those stories where the plot
is less important than the characterisation and perhaps the key thing the
reader should take away from it is the idea that perhaps – one day – the War
Doctor might feel able to drop the ‘War’ from his name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another thumbs up for both author and editor
for slipping ‘The Ingenious Gentleman’ in exactly where it was needed in this
increasingly impressive collection.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">/ to buy the ebook. There's
a paperback (and reviews of the next few stories) yet to come..</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-40361625966481035582015-04-01T05:55:00.001-07:002015-04-01T09:01:51.647-07:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 7<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[<i>Seasons of War</i> is a charity Doctor Who
short story collection, edited by Declan May, with all proceeds going to the
Cauldwell Children charity. It's a long book, with a lot of stories, so
I'll be reviewing it in chunks of 4-6 stories at a time over the next week or
so...]<br />
<br />
A few years back I picked up Nick Mellish’s <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/nick-mellish/love-and-other-adventures/paperback/product-18677316.html" target="_blank">self-published short story collection</a> on Lulu, and was pleasantly surprised by the very individual prose voice
he turned out to have. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
intervening years, Mellish has improved as a writer (not that he was a bad one
before), but that gift of unusual phrasing has clearly stuck with him – lines of
dialogue like ‘Princess in blue, run with me</span>’, and sentences like ‘it
would catch me, stun me, and either kill me or take me off to the camps where I
would work until death, and even then they would probably find a job for my
soul’ are sprinkled across the pages of ‘Making Endings’ to its great benefit. The story
itself is also very well done – just when you think it’s one thing, it turns
out to be another, and then a slightly different other still, and then it’s all
done, and I found myself at the end feeling both happy and sad, just like a really
good story always does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly I find
myself wondering where my copy of that Lulu collection might be…</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPopJxtkNhp1iZIqVK5Cz_pSbeX2K7sahc5cZejJ8xYq7Knp5-dc7tAE0cyrz2CUB9aIwddpK4840zDGSQo_jJ4TW42P3ZWVMG9DzQirXkMHRkZlf1C21Fqw5i8eHPPvgqxE99P2fbJYZf/s1600/daleks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPopJxtkNhp1iZIqVK5Cz_pSbeX2K7sahc5cZejJ8xYq7Knp5-dc7tAE0cyrz2CUB9aIwddpK4840zDGSQo_jJ4TW42P3ZWVMG9DzQirXkMHRkZlf1C21Fqw5i8eHPPvgqxE99P2fbJYZf/s1600/daleks.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> ‘The Book of the Dead’ by David Carrington sees the
return of Jenny Shirt (who, frankly, I’m starting to think of as a tv companion
I’d somehow managed to forget about – and if that’s not a pleasingly ironic
piece of post-modern shenanigans in a book about the War Doctor then I don’t know what is).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is good, as she’s a splendid character,
with more personality than all but the very best tv assistants, but better
still is the idea – introduced early on – of a library inside a majestic oak
tree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, let us be clear, is the sort
of image to win over the heart of this particular bibliophile reviewer!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Packed with splendidly wild ideas and images – I especially
liked the proposed plant Daleks – this is good, solid Doctor Who writing, of
the sort that the Big Finish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Short Trips </i>collections
used to do, at their very best. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">On the surface, it’d be very easy – and very
simplistic – to see ‘Driftwood’ by Simon Brett as something too similar to the
tv episodes ‘Into the Dalek’ and ‘Dalek’, featuring as it does a Dalek
apparently turned into something else, something less Dalek-y.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that’d be wrong – this Dalek, Azrael as
the non-Daleks call him, is more than just a prisoner or an enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Named after the Muslim Angel of Death, I was
unexpectedly reminded of Dante’s Satan, trapped deep in the ice at the centre
of Hell, or even Milton’s deceiving, poetic devil – and if that seems pretentious, well
even if it is, it’s no less true for all that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As the story progresses, little clues build up, pointing the reader in
one interesting direction, only for Brett to surprise every one (well, me anyway!)
by carrying out a sneaky, and damn clever, side step at the last moment. Another
high point in an altogether stellar collection…</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">/ to buy the ebook. There's
a paperback (and reviews of the next few stories) yet to come...</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-86081389986578237602015-02-23T05:57:00.001-08:002015-02-23T05:57:41.907-08:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 6<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOD0iZCl77DxyaEEL4bdBH9D6hi21g7ktW3swpcMiJwV7gbAus-gnfq8gV4a_aQESDLK3oeOCnBK3nv_LNh0iovo25VZ7NmySrnyKWMzOs6KdaEEV2rHaAhpCRAuN4l_vDstawqAUq1sF-/s1600/dr-who-leela-then.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOD0iZCl77DxyaEEL4bdBH9D6hi21g7ktW3swpcMiJwV7gbAus-gnfq8gV4a_aQESDLK3oeOCnBK3nv_LNh0iovo25VZ7NmySrnyKWMzOs6KdaEEV2rHaAhpCRAuN4l_vDstawqAUq1sF-/s1600/dr-who-leela-then.jpg" height="320" width="232" /></a>[<a href="http://www.seasonsofwaranthology.co.uk/" target="_blank"><i>Seasons of War</i></a> is
a charity Doctor Who short story collection, edited by Declan May, with
all proceeds going to the Caudwell Children charity. It's a long book,
with a lot of stories, so I'll be reviewing it in chunks of 4-6 stories
at a time over the next week or so…]<br />
<br />
Damn, and that's the stakes raised. 'Guerre' by Alan P. Jack and Declan May continues the theme of Doctor as Bastard seen in the earlier May-penned vignettes, but leavened now with a slightly softer (and older) War Doctor. One weary of killing, but forced to kill, aware of the necessities of war but equally cognisant that those necessities can change a man. This story (set, very effectively in World War I), even though it doesn't feature the most radical depiction of the Doctor, has convinced me that this is not the man we knew any longer. He's not even, by this point, a variation on the Doctoral theme really. This War Doctor is a man for whom the choices available keep narrowing until even the unthinkable is possible. In terms of the plot, it does seem a little convenient that Vincent just happened to be returning home as the Doctor landed, but coincidence is hardly the worst of plotting sins.<br />
<br />
The second short 'Girl with Purple Hair' story meanwhile is short and to the point, though again showing a very weary Doctor contemplating death, and serves as a coda to the story preceding it. Hard to say anything further without giving everything away...<br />
<br />
'V. Lady Leela' completes a triumvirate of consecutive Declan May shorts - and manages to be the bloodiest of the three stories. Again, it's sufficiently short that too much discussion will give away too much away, but suffice it to say that I thought the characterisation of our favourite savage turned implausible army wife was spot-on and exactly how I imagine Leela would react to the Time War.<br />
<br />
In passing, it's a pleasure to observe the way in which the editor has shaped the flow of stories. Too often people think that deciding the running order in a short story collection is simply a matter of making sure no two consecutive stories have too similar a plot, but Declan May demonstrates here that the order of stories can create a story of sorts itself. Impressive.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">/ to buy the ebook. There's a paperback (and reviews of the next few stories) yet to come...</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-24938358366035513022015-02-20T12:47:00.000-08:002015-02-20T13:54:22.684-08:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 5<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7129420625439819885" name="_GoBack"></a>[<a href="http://www.seasonsofwaranthology.co.uk/" target="_blank"><i>Seasons of War</i></a> is a charity Doctor Who short story collection, edited by Declan May, with all proceeds going to the Caudwell Children charity. It's a long book, with a lot of stories, so I'll be reviewing it in chunks of 4-6 stories at a time over the next week or so…]</div>
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It’s no surprise, given the
comparatively little we see on screen of the War Doctor and his own description
of himself, that most authors in this collection have opted to portray a dark
and troubled figure, either a flint-hard soldier with the greater good always
in mind, or a weary old soldier, longing for the end of the fighting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lance Parkin, predictably, chooses a
different path altogether, and shows us a War Doctor who remains recognisably
‘our’ Doctor, a cunning trickster choosing the most sensible path, even if that
means very slightly helping the Dalek war effort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a clever inversion of expectation – the
reader gets to the end of the story, thinking Parkin hasn’t brought his A game
(‘of course it must be a trick – we know how these types of stories go!’) and
then has the carpet swept from under him and the expected twist turns out to be
a straighten after all, and the better for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A nice switch in tone, just as the reader thinks he could do with a
change from all these piles of bodies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Like Christopher Bryant earlier on, Sami Kelish is a name
new to me, but one I’m very keen to see again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A complete change of pace from even Lance Parkin’s story, ‘Gardening’
does exactly what it says on the tin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
quiet, small story of one woman and her garden, this is beautifully written
(reminiscent, for me, of Mags Halliday’s lovely writing style), with what is
probably the most three dimensional character in the book so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kelish’s War Doctor falls somewhere between
young street fighter and weary veteran, but – as with Parkin’s story – I really
was ready for a gentler, less cold-blooded hero for a story or two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kudos to the editor for providing this brief
oasis, and to the author for crafting so engaging a heroine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Having said that, I’m inclined, if I’m being honest, to both
criticise and praise the editorial work on the next story up, ‘Sleepwalking to
Paradise’ by Dan Barrett.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which is not
to say that the story is poor – anything but.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s impressively layered and plotted, with several competing stands of
action, at least two clever twists, and an ending which left me making an
actual noise of surprise and pleasure at the author’s cleverness in staying
true to the character, rather than providing a pat and easy ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Editor Declan May deserves credit then both
for allowing the story to take up the space it requires (it’s quite a long
tale) and for using this story at the edges of the War to gently slide the
reader back into the conflict after two more pastoral stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where I might perhaps quibble a little is
that, following on from a story called and about gardening, the last thousand
words of this story are very similar in tone to much of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> story, as a character describes her garden using pretty similar
phrases in each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A very minor quibble,
in truth, which swapping Parkin and Kelish’s stories round n the running order
would fix in a trice (if it needs fixing at all – it may be I’m enjoying this
anthology so much that I’m now looking for things to moan about, in order to
keep my curmudgeonly reputation intact!)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">/ to buy the ebook. There's a paperback (and reviews of the next few stories) yet to come...</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-84031422599115818812015-02-19T09:42:00.000-08:002015-02-19T09:42:00.947-08:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 4<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[<a href="http://www.seasonsofwaranthology.co.uk/" target="_blank"><i>Seasons of War</i></a> is a charity Doctor Who
short story collection, edited by Declan May, with all prceeds going to the
Caudwell Children charity. It's a long book, with a lot of stories, so
I'll be revieiwng it in chunks of 4-6 stories at a time over the next week or
so...]<br />
<br />I’ve got a slightly complicated relationship with
the novelist John Peel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the one hand,
I actually enjoyed ‘War of the Daleks’ and think that a genetic cross of Chris Bulis’
workmanlike prose and Gary Russell’s flights of continuity fancy is something
to be cherished, on some level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the
other hand though, pretty much everything else’s he written has been too pedestrian
to be linked to flying of any sort and has left me bored or confused (and sometimes
both at once).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fortunately, short
stories allow Peel less time to get lost in his own canon-related knots and so
what we have here is a competent, solid Doctor Who story, heavily laced with
references to previous adventures, and none the worse for that.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.caudwellchildren.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="http://www.caudwellchildren.com/" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrsdi9t4QaGHTv-q_L-04a3qwGwbfxIibSWFFT4qyNClOAhb2CW2UhlDNYON4Wsa-1GicUpmBpDdYazZmaQGIJ5IDWclI-5u2MV0nIvgw7uBoy7LhWwHUjg9MvJQv8ZvnV65A96u3b-k3E/s1600/caul.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Sonnet’ by Jenny Colgan, conversely, is anything
but pedestrian or boring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather it’s exactly
what it claims to be – a short poem in which Shakespeare considers the Doctor
and his past adventures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A peculiar
choice, perhaps, but like the earlier pastiche of Henry V, an enjoyable – if brief
– experience.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Moving onto a more commonplace story telling
format, Elton Townend-Jones wins the award for best image of the book so
far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Five wet fingers…and a grasping, groping
hand’ appearing from within a mug of tea is not your everyday occurrence, but
it is the type of unexpected juxtaposition which the 21<sup>st</sup> century
iteration of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> is very good
at. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The amusing way that the author
then skips over anything approaching a genuine technical explanation for what’s
just occured also echoes one of the better tropes of the new series, as does
the bittersweet ending – which, for my money, Townend-Jones nails more effectively
than anyone else so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another excellent
story in a book so far filled with them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In passing, the author’s choice of name for the
female protagonist – Cass – is a little distracting, in that I expected it to
be a call-back (or possibly forward) to the character from ‘Night of the Doctor’,
but in the end it appears to be a co-incidence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXmfXZ-yTpb1CKNpzRXgDnY_QFUI7sLWeigoapOGENfIfUpl0yQIbUAjinRXOH6dcHkd3IGgAG4wOcg72Rbk48cToaWfPTJjDShBkJU36c4gftI5T_9bpx4_cEKguThUpm1yiXP38a0D-T/s1600/10624774_564586873672868_5322158061428452964_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXmfXZ-yTpb1CKNpzRXgDnY_QFUI7sLWeigoapOGENfIfUpl0yQIbUAjinRXOH6dcHkd3IGgAG4wOcg72Rbk48cToaWfPTJjDShBkJU36c4gftI5T_9bpx4_cEKguThUpm1yiXP38a0D-T/s1600/10624774_564586873672868_5322158061428452964_n.jpg" height="320" width="209" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘IV. Loop’ is another story by the Editor, though
this one is considerably longer than previous such entries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>May makes good use of the extra space though,
dipping inside the head of the War Doctor, early on in his mission, exhibiting
his hopes and fears, but without descending to maudlin sentiment or (alternatively)
jingoistic machismo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, we get a
form of multi-Doctor adventure, complete with what I assume is the War Doctor
just before he uses the Moment, and a rumination on the passing of time and the
effect that can have on individual morality.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The last few stories have been something of a breathing
space in the flow of stories – well crafted and well told, slightly smaller
stories, with more emphasis on character building than pyrotechnics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exactly what any long collection needs at
this point, in other words.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘The Holdover’ by another name new to me, Daniel
Wealands, throws us back into the middle of the Time War, however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly the Editor thinks that the Reader has
had enough of the pleasant stuff for a while!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wealands’ War Doctor is a cynic and a pragmatist, but more importantly,
his Time Lords are most definitely no better than the Daleks (a position which
the book as whole has only hinted at until now).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Internment camps, ethnic cleansing,
conscientious objectors vilified and imprisoned – you can almost feel the
stakes rising as you move from one page to the next, from one graphically
described horror to the next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
the links to the Nazis is a bit unsubtle, but it’s also effective in repelling
the reader.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, if I had any
criticism it’s that by the end you might well find yourself rooting for the
Daleks, just a tiny bit, so revolting is the Time Lords’ plan and so vile its implementation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
fact that the tv series demonstrates that the plan backfires horribly in the
end is a consolation, I suppose, but still, this is dark, dark stuff…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">/ to buy the ebook. There's
a paperback (and reviews of the next few stories) yet to come...</span> </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-29486934795827613432015-02-18T13:26:00.000-08:002015-02-19T05:52:52.637-08:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 3<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Andrew
Smith and Matthew Smith – the two names from my youth which occasioned in me
such feelings of jealousy that I might as well have had a big sign on my
forehead that said ‘under achiever’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Games’ buffs of a certain vintage will recognise the latter name as that
of the teenager who wrote Spectrum classics ‘Manic Miner’ and ‘Jet Set Willy’
but it was the former who convinced the thirteen year old me that I’d already
missed the talent boat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Author of really
rather brilliant tv story ‘Full Circle’ while still in Primary school (or so it
felt at the time), Smith disappeared into the black hole which is the Police
Force, and has only recently resurfaced in our little corner of the internet,
producing work for Big Finish and now – more unexpectedly, perhaps – for Declan
May in this book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But
enough of the slightly breathless history lesson, what’s ‘The Celephas Gift’
like, I hear you ask?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s damn good,
actually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story has a complete shape
which, for all their positive qualities, some of the other stories so far have
been missing (though, to be fair, those without such a structure have been so
for a reason) – a sense that this story has a beginning, a middle and an
end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It helps that there’s something of
a pre-credits sequence, as the Doctor completes one (unseen) adventure and then
suffers the ramifications of the fallout from that adventure, but Smith is
clever in that, while there’s a definite sense that this story takes place
against the background of a wider War, and that this is not the Doctor we’re
used to, there’s enough meat in the story he tells for us not to care that we’re
not seeing the bigger picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A high
spot of the early part of the collection, even amongst strong competition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzBLO-Obu2r4iCSB6HowPfGsPFfw7Pin_hILhLmCERxwhQOGsMd-8g9ARwMnTQTtS048gKmOH5HxoJgNBykpyffuRBDo9WZBZILlU0Pfs16PRPD1lvh0RD7CBRLQxpwEdS8tREzpG8XZtP/s1600/15855_603861869745368_6387149213110795673_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzBLO-Obu2r4iCSB6HowPfGsPFfw7Pin_hILhLmCERxwhQOGsMd-8g9ARwMnTQTtS048gKmOH5HxoJgNBykpyffuRBDo9WZBZILlU0Pfs16PRPD1lvh0RD7CBRLQxpwEdS8tREzpG8XZtP/s1600/15855_603861869745368_6387149213110795673_n.jpg" height="320" width="227" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The next
story but one is a reworking of a chunk of Shakespeare’s Henry V, so it’s good
that two such meaty pieces are constructed around a third Declan May (this time with the assistance of John Davies) entry, ‘The
Girl with the Purple Hair’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Less
immediately about the War Doctor himself than about his new, occasional
companion, Jenny Shirt, and her perception of him as he visits at various points in
his own timeline, it still manages to add another brick to the character May
has been portraying all along.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And so to
the reworking of Henry V!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some ways
this is simply an extended joke, with key roles for Commander Maxil (primarily
remembered on Gallifrey, we are told, for shooting an unarmed man), Castellan
Kelner (similarly ‘feted’ back home for his craven behaviour during the
Invasion of Time) and Commentator Runcible (a joke all in and by himself), as
well as any number of other references to make the long term fan chuckle in
recognition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But is it too much of a
stretch to suggest that almost the last line of the footnotes makes the key
point of the piece in noting that the cowardly Runcible, post-regeneration, ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">became a War TARDIS flotilla commander and
was known as ‘Lady Runcible The Fearless’, one of the most ruthless and capable
soldiers in her field</i>’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a
warrior in all of us, if need be, apparently….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘…half-crazed
Robomen, force-mutated mounds of pain rejecting their half-destroyed mechanical
prostheses, and time-distorted semi-corpses from unidentifiable races…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you were expecting more belly laughs from
‘Here Comes the Doctor’ by Christopher Bryant then you’re in for a
disappointment, though I suspect that would be the only one you’d
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must admit the name is a
new one to me, but I’m very keen to read more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s an air of RTD about the way he punctuates the meat of the plot
with carefully constructed lists like the one above, or drops unexplained
references<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- ‘I saw the birthing of the
Final Pathogen’ – into the Doctor’s dialogue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Equally, though, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there’s an old
school feel to the Doctor turning up in disguise rather than waving the psychic
paper around, then having to use his wits to convince people he’s the good
guy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For myself, I though it was missing
a trick to have the Daleks turn out to be the bad guys (though the clues were
there, which I did appreciate, in retrospect) but the author makes up for that
by allowing the story to continue beyond the point at which a common or garden
short story would stop (read it yourself – didn’t you expect Aceso wasting the
flying Daleks to be the end?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
Bryant’s War Doctor – the Patient, as he’s known here – makes May’s look like
the softest liberal bleeding heart ever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“People change’, indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">A really
good short story feels like a novel in miniature – obviously not so detailed
and maybe not so tricky, but with several characters interacting in several different
ways, and a variety of plot twists and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A really great short story does all that and yet still feels the perfect
length.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a great short story,
simple as that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">/ to buy the ebook. There's
a paperback (and reviews of the next few stories) yet to come...</span> </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-76803728200086686022015-02-17T09:59:00.001-08:002015-02-17T13:17:50.138-08:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 2<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[<i>Seasons of War</i> is a charity <i>Doctor Who</i>
short story collection, edited by Declan May, with all prceeds going to the
Caudwell Children's charity. It's a long book, with a lot of stories, so
I'll be revieiwng it in chunks of 4-6 stories at a time over the next week or
so...]</span>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Whereas
JR Southall’s Doctor is very much the twenty-first century version, prone to doing
what’s needed and feeling a little bit sad about it later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like Warren Frey’s story this is a story I
can easily imagine being tweaked and used as the basis for a Matt Smith or
David Tennant episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With echoes of ‘Journey
to the Heart of the TARDIS’, ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ and – for obvious reasons – ‘The
Mind Robber’, this is the sort of tale I can picture Steven Moffat enjoying, as
the Doctor does what needs to be done in what might be the Land of Fiction, and
is lessened because of it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">That
Southall’s less spiky interpretation of the Doctor leads straight into the
second of Declan May’s ‘Doctor as uber-pragmatist’ can’t be co-incidental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The differences are readily apparent and
altogether striking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s clearly the
same character, but where Southall’s Stranger is taking a break from the front lines,
May’s Man in the Bandolier wouldn’t function anywhere else (it’s interesting to
see the various names the author give our protagonist, incidentally – seven stories
in, and he’s yet to be referred to, even in passing, as the War Doctor).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As manipulative as the McCoy incarnation and
as hard as very early Hartnell, had he wandered into the previous story, he’d
have killed Alice on the first page and have forgotten her name by page two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nice to see the titular Corsair making a
reappearance too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And now
we come to an unexpected (because I’ve not checked out the contents page at
all) treat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A new Kate Orman <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who </i>story!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Easily in the top five prose authors ever to
write for the series, it’s fair to say that ‘The Ambassador from Wolf-Rayet 134’
is one of her lesser works, if only for reasons of brevity, but even so, it’s a
delightful piece, where Orman contrives – with only a few thousand
words to play with – to sketch in an entire alien species in sufficient detail
that this reader at least would have been happy to have heard far more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The particular talent of the Ambassador’s people
is reminiscent of Telos’ Time Hunter series, but Orman gives the concept a
twist of her own, allowing that skill to become overwhelming and then perfectly
reporting the exact alien reaction to being so overwhelmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As with all of Orman’s writing there’s a real
sense of effortless ability on display, and I’m reminded again of my desire to
see the publication of single author <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor
Who </i>short story collections… <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In
contrast to Orman’s relatively small story of one ‘woman’ and her need for peace,
‘The Amber Room’ by Simon Brett and John Davies remembers that other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who</i> staple – the big set piece (with
dinosaurs).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kicking a story off with a
time transported soldier being chased by an allosaurus does usually mean that
you’re obliged to pull back on the throttle a little as you progress, but that’s
not the case here, where the authors immediately raise the stakes by removing
the entire Earth in the next paragraph!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If I have a criticism – and it’s a small one – it’s that Leo, the
soldier grabbed from an early twenty-first world of terrorist attacks and IDES,
accepts the Doctor and his TARDIS with no apparent concerns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s a minor complaint, and in no way
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1"><span style="color: blue;">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</span></a>/
to buy the ebook. There's a paperback (and reviews of the next few
stories) yet to come...</span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-37247561404951406192015-02-16T14:06:00.001-08:002015-02-16T14:22:52.342-08:00SEASONS OF WAR: Tales From A Time War - ed. Declan May (2015) PART 1[<i>Seasons of War</i> is a charity Doctor Who short story collection, edited by Declan May, with all prceeds going to the Caudwell Children charity. It's a long book, with a lot of stories, so I'll be revieiwng it in chunks of 4-6 stories at a time over the next week or so...]<br />
<br />
After a touching preface by Nicholas Briggs, remembering his friend Paul Spragg, to whom the book is dedicated...<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
The opening image, of a solitary man on a bleak crag
overlooking a land of mist and swamp reminded me of the cover to the 80s
Penguin Classic edition of Nietzsche’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ecce
Homo </i>and while I’m aware that’s an extremely up-myself way to start a
review for a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> book, it also
seems strangely fitting for a collection of stories featuring a Doctor so dark
as to make the Seventh seems positively uncomplicated and angelic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point in time, two pages in, I’ve
no idea if it’s an image which accurately reflects the remaining one and a half
million stories (or at least that’s how it feels when you look at the two pages of
contents anyway – this is a book which gives value for money even if you buy
the ebook then the limited edition paperback!) but it’s a quality I hope to see more in the pages to come.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyway, back to that first story..</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdsAPqFX7ufKRN7O9SiWQh6HhjhDGoYzqyRhtCBk0ZUSq6bgErBbwP6GTDmtrd1cNfI3WPWOoctskDywIfPiI-PqEzbHuLoccBiLe8YfXjmmFVLtipjGM-vd2qDdqBfjCZkHUkYDpsGrUR/s1600/ECCE-HOMO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdsAPqFX7ufKRN7O9SiWQh6HhjhDGoYzqyRhtCBk0ZUSq6bgErBbwP6GTDmtrd1cNfI3WPWOoctskDywIfPiI-PqEzbHuLoccBiLe8YfXjmmFVLtipjGM-vd2qDdqBfjCZkHUkYDpsGrUR/s1600/ECCE-HOMO.jpg" height="320" width="196" /></a>If I had to describe it in a single word, I suspect I’d
plump for ‘perverse’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An opening story
called ‘<i>Epilogue</i>’, which revisits another story titled, in part, ‘<i>Genesis</i>’,
Matt Fitton’s timeless tale is more of an intriguing starter (or dessert - take
your pick) than a fully-fledged story in its own right, but in a long
collection such as this some stories serve as building blocks for others, and I
get the feeling this is one of those.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Christ on a bike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Next up is '<i>1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Karn</i>’ by, I assume
(it doesn’t say) editor Declan May.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is the first thing I’ve read by the author, but bloody hell he doesn’t miss,
does he?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Set a heartbeat after the
events of the McGann-Hurt regeneration, this War Doctor isn’t the basically
cuddly old curmudgeon we saw in ‘Day of the Doctor’, this is an absolute
bastard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Judged purely on his words and
actions in these few pages, this is a Doctor to make the Master look kindly, a
Doctor who cares about nothing bar victory, a Doctor who can forget the name of
a dead woman in seconds and doom a mythical race in a moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not sure I like him much, but it’s a
brave decision and an impressive introduction to Mr May’s writing.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After two grim opening tales, ‘<i>Crowsnest Past</i>’ by Warren
Frey comes as a welcome change of pace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Where ‘Epilogue’ took place in a world of vicious peaks and ‘Karn’
featured a vicious Doctor, this one kicks off with a spot of fishing, as the
Doctor (I’m just going to call him that, by the way - it’s only a missing
adjective ,after all) sits in the door of the TARDIS and tries to catch a
gumblejack or two (incidentally, this is the third story in a row to
specifically reference an old TV episode – is this a deliberate thing, I
wonder?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, it soon goes a bit
horrible and scary, with burning eyed monsters attacking the helpless human
settlement, but this is a ‘proper’ 21<sup>st</sup> century <i>Doctor Who</i> adventure,
of a type I wasn’t sure we’d see in this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Kudos to the author for a solid <i>Who </i>story and to the editor for slotting
it in here, just where it was needed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I love Lee Rawlings’ ‘Eight Minute War’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The writing itself is peculiar, disjointed
and with an occasional lapse in vocabulary – exactly, in fact, as you would
expect an alien to sound speaking a language not his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that this is first person, and that the
jagged nature of the text is consistent throughout makes me think this has to
have been a deliberate choice by the author, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I
was impressed by the way the bewildered narrator describes events he doesn’t
entirely understand and ends up confronting a Doctor who is a failure, no
matter how you cut it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll never see
something like this on television, in the new superhero version of <i>Doctor Who</i>,
and in some ways that may be a good thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rawlings’ Doctor is a hard man to respect…</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1">https://www.justgiving.com/declan-may1</a>/ to buy the ebook. There's a paperback (and reviews of the next few stories) yet to come...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-4054402036658309812014-11-21T12:28:00.001-08:002014-11-21T13:05:14.437-08:00Bowie Top Ten (contains no Ziggy)<div>
Inspired by James Gent's <a href="http://blogalongabowie.tumblr.com/post/103148908330/nothing-everything-an-alternative-compilation" target="_blank">brilliant, knowledgable and tasteful reimagining of a Bowie boxset</a>, I reckoned I could do another 50 different Bowie tracks and it'd still be fantastic. Then I remembered I have ten days to do a major re-work of my Sherlock Holmes' novel, so decided that ten tracks would have to be enough. </div>
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And then decided - to make it interesting - that none of the tracks could be from either any of Bowie's classic 70s albums, or from his post-<i>Outside</i> resurgence in the late 90s.<br />
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And I could still have done 50, you know...<br />
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</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
1.<i> <b>When I'm Five</b></i><br />
Originally recorded as a demo in 68, this
seemingly whimsical and slight tune sung from the POV of a small child
finally made an appearance on mish-mash release 'Love You til Tuesday'
and then promptly disappeared again, to be remembered only by Bowie
obsessives. From the first time I heard it, though, I thought it was
the saddest song I'd ever heard - and thirty years of listening later I
still feel much the same. It's not a reading I've seen elsewhere so
probably nonsense, but the lyrics have always felt to me to be about a
seriously ill four year old. <br />
<br />
Why else does Daddy shout loudly
at Mummy when she says the narrator - if he's good - can go to school in
August. Why does he then burst into tears? For that matter, what's
with the headaches in the morning, and why is everyone so soppy and daft
when he falls off a trike? Finally, pleas to Jesus to make him five?
Nope - he's a goner, I reckon.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrmiDWzGvSI">www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrmiDWzGvSI</a><cite class=""></cite><br />
<cite class=""><br /></cite></div>
<div>
2.<i><b> Conversation Piece</b></i><br />
<br />
Another
60s demo which didn't make a <span data-dobid="hdw">contemporaneous </span>album, but instead
mouldered in Bowie's archive for a bit, then slipped - almost un-noticed -
into the world, as the b-side to the 1970 re-issue of 'The Prettiest
Star'.<cite class=""> </cite>Bowie re-recorded it for the abortive 'Toy', but I much prefer this acoustic version from 1969 which I first heard on a tape bootleg called 'Bowie Rarities' c 1982.<cite class=""></cite></div>
<div>
<cite class=""><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T54kkF_V4oE" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T54kkF_V4oE</a></cite></div>
<div>
<br />
3. <i><b>Buddha of Suburbia</b></i><cite class=""><br /></cite></div>
<div>
Seriously,
anyone who says Bowie never recorded a great record between <i>Scary
Monsters</i> and '<i>Earthling/Outside/Heathen</i>/Some Other album from the late
90s onwards' should be forced to sit down and listen to this entire
album but - to save time - just give the title track a spin.
Deliberately self-referential (both musically and lyrically, but also
in its South London setting), funny and thoughtful, with a great melody,
some fantastic guitar and a video where Bowie sits and strums a guitar
on a tree stump, the only reason this wasn't a huge return to form was
that he didn't need one of those - he'd never been away...<cite class=""><br /></cite></div>
<div>
<cite class=""><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48d4irOHhLY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48d4irOHhLY</a></cite></div>
<div>
<br />
<cite class="">4. <b>Time Will Crawl</b></cite><br />
And
just to prove that, how about 'Time Will Crawl'? Described by the man
himself as one of his personal favourite tracks, this is a single as
good as anything Bowie has recorded. It's not subtle, it's not layered
and it features Bowie's shittest ever hair style, but from a decade
where - random example - Status Quo managed to get into the top ten with
'In the Army Now', this is pure gold.<cite class=""><br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMhMaNAmT-U">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMhMaNAmT-U</a></cite></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<cite class="">5. <b>As the World Falls Down</b></cite></div>
<div>
<cite class=""></cite><br />
I
almost went with Matt and my favourite track from 'Labyrinth', the
awesome 'Magic Dance', and then I thought of 'Underground', for the
wonderful refrain of 'Daddy, daddy, get me out of here' if nothing else -
but when I was looking for that on YouTube I realised I prefered this,
one of Bowie's more mannered vocals, and a genuinely forgotten but
lovely ballad.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VppuD1St8Ec">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VppuD1St8Ec</a><br />
<br /></div>
<div>
6. <i><b>Remembering Marie A</b></i></div>
<div>
James
went with the admittedly superb bleakness of 'The Drowned Girl', but
personally I've always thought this was as good as Bowie ever sang. Why
is <i>Baal </i>not available on blu-ray, with a beautiful deluxe cd remaster?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymJCdmTwkvs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymJCdmTwkvs</a><br />
<br /></div>
<div>
7. <i><b>Silver Tree Top School for Boys</b></i></div>
<div>
This
list is a bit 'on the trail of lost songs', I know but Bowie's own
version of this turned up unexpectedly on the Bowie Record Day release
in 2012, alongside 'Little Tin Soldier'. Sadly, the version on there
isn't a patch on the Beat Stalkers cover version (on which he allegedly
sang backing vocals) from the 60s. Still it's a great song and if you
love Bowie's Deram stuff (and you do, don't you?), then this is a little
discarded slice of that very English form of psychedelia.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBLktpmOABw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBLktpmOABw</a></div>
<div>
<br />
8.<b> <i>Loving the Alien</i></b></div>
<div>
I wasn't a huge fan of <i>Let's Dance</i>,
with the exception of 'Ricochet' and I didn't even buy a copy until
several years later when I came across it in the Bargain Bin at Vinyl
Villains in Edinburgh's Elm Row, but I thought aout half of <i>Tonight</i> was
genius from the off. 'Loving the Alien' is my favourite purely because
I have a rather lovely picture disc 12" of it, but I could as easily
have chosen 'Blue Jean' or 'Dancing with the Big Boys' (or 'Tonight'
itself, shorn of Tina Bloody Turner).</div>
<div>
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOaqDEjxQAU" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOaqDEjxQAU</a></div>
<div>
<br />
9. <i><b>Absolute Beginners</b></i></div>
<div>
God that video, Bowie as cool as the fags he's smoking, then the guitar coming in and Bowie giving it 'ba ba ba oo!'
It's enough to make a grown man cry, it's so good. The 15 year old me
thought it was literally, genuinely the Best Thing that Ever Happened to
Music (a fact which wasn't even ruined by a terrible, <i>nightmare</i> date at the movie from which is came some weeks later).<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8NZa9wYZ_U">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8NZa9wYZ_U</a></div>
<div>
<br />
10. <b> <i>Knock on Wood</i></b></div>
<div>
No, only kidding. That's a shit song which even Dave can't save. Instead we'll have my current favourite Bowie track - 'Can't HelpThinking about Me'. Bowie
himself says it contains two of his worst lyrics, but given that it was
his first recording as David Bowie, the first Bowie track to be
released in the States and was re-recorded for 'Toy' (as good a version, in its way, as the original).
There are whole back catalogues from mod bands in the 60s and 70s which
don't contain a single better song than this Bowie throw away.</div>
<div>
<br />
60s version: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1MXonBG5NI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1MXonBG5NI</a></div>
<div>
Storytellers: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah07pbw1xws">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah07pbw1xws</a></div>
<div>
<cite class=""><br /></cite></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-86625830581367824892014-11-10T14:00:00.000-08:002014-11-10T14:00:20.955-08:00The Story of Fester the Cat - Paul Magrs (Penguin US, 2014)Spin-offs. Those stories where what looked like a subsidiary character suddenly moves to centre stage and becomes the star. I love them. <i>Frasier</i> spinning out of <i>Cheers</i>, <i>Mork and Mindy </i>emerging from <i>Happy Days, Torchwood </i>springin…well, maybe not all spin offs after all.<br />
<br />
<i>The Story of Fester the Cat</i> is, however, the first spin-off in real life that I've come across. It helps that I knew Fester, and was well aware that this was a cat so full of personality that he could easily move out of the shadows of the boys he chose to let live with him and <i>dominate </i>proceedings. But this book is so much more than a simple memoir, unexpectedly told form the point of view of a cat.<br />
<br />
It's also the warmest of love stories, and the story of the creation of a family. It's about the author's love for his partner (the grumpier of the two of them apparently), and of their home (full of comfortingly dusty corners and piles of interesting <i>stuff). </i>It's about loss and anger and pain, and adventures, and fun, and frolics. It's about shenanigans. <br />
<br />
But what's it like to read? Well, I read the first section, in which Fester, sick and tired and feeling every moment of his 18 years slips away (not, he is keen to point out, to anything as stupid sounding as a rainbow bridge) on a train from Manchester to Edinburgh, on the day that Maggie Thatcher died. the word of the ex-PM's death spread through the carriages like wildfire, but I - who spent years waiting for the hideous old crone to snuff it - couldn't have cared less as big, fat, thankfully silent tears ran down my face. It's that good, and that sad, and that beautiful and affirming - it made a middle aged Scotsman cry in public.<br />
<br />
But it's not all doom and gloom. Fester stuck up a tree in the back garden, or trying to eat a frog, the boys having conniptions as Fester opens his mouth and a tiny baby bird squeaks indignantly from between his one and half teeth, Bessy the Big Bollocked Stray…there's plenty in here to make you laugh, and all of it told from what is unmistakably and unflinchingly the viewpoint of Fester, not Paul or Jeremy.<br />
<br />
In fact, I could happily read spin-offs from Fester's life too - 'The Tale of Bessy under the Arches', sy, or 'Adventures with Korky in Cheshire'. <br />
<br />
Or, perhaps best of all - and what Fester I think would have wanted - more stories about Paul and Jeremy and what they did next...<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-61806323870062951932014-07-02T13:02:00.001-07:002014-07-02T13:03:02.464-07:00Great Albums 35: The Defenestration of St Martin - Martin Rossiter (2012)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgB9C_uXgVhwGyZexch6nAAcYLV1mXJndAW3UBb_sLoEossQUjgAQnhXUWfBRQ_VjqLwfm88rb0i3hyphenhyphenuzMAK8D3KROTPRFOl4c4mO21XyztYHkexEgbyQoE-ZfR5Cxv7JbXY_A88ZhrkAW/s1600/martin-rossiter-the-defenestration-of-st.-martin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgB9C_uXgVhwGyZexch6nAAcYLV1mXJndAW3UBb_sLoEossQUjgAQnhXUWfBRQ_VjqLwfm88rb0i3hyphenhyphenuzMAK8D3KROTPRFOl4c4mO21XyztYHkexEgbyQoE-ZfR5Cxv7JbXY_A88ZhrkAW/s1600/martin-rossiter-the-defenestration-of-st.-martin.jpg" /></a></div>
Bit of a turnaround this. When I first heard this album earlier this year I dismissed it as another effort like Brett Anderson's solo LP - not a patch on the band he'd left behind. Rossiter's distinctive voice apart, this sounds nothing like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_%28band%29" target="_blank">Gene</a>, for one thing, and for another it seemed a bit, well, <i>simple</i>.<br />
<br />
But <a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?189992" target="_blank">Phil Craggs</a> told me I was wrong, and for once he was right.<br />
<br />
It needs a few listens, but I'm increasingly coming to think this is a better album than anything Gene ever did. Which is odd - usually I like complex instrumentation and arch lyrics, whereas this is all piano and the lyric...well the lyrics are deceptively simplistic. At times it sounds as though Rossiter wrote all these songs singing haphazardly in the bath. The rhymes are obvious, the vocal tends to follow the piano melody and there's little by way of overdubs. <br />
<br />
But the lyrics often turn out to be layered and pretty bloody clever, if horribly bleak. Maybe that's the attraction - this is an album as miserable as Beck's '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBNFj5iJzLM" target="_blank">Sea Change</a>', or Nick Drake's '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXnfhnCoOyo" target="_blank">Pink Moon</a>'. It's not an album without humour - check out the glorious choir which appears from nowhere in 'I Must be Jesus' - but even the humour has an element of the downbeat about it ('I must be Jesus' concerns a child reflecting on his pain-filled life), and the opening ten minute ode to a shit, shit father sets a tone which rarely lets up across a handful of tracks which consider child abuse, prostitution, death and lost loves. It should be one note, it should be earnest, but it's neither.<br />
<br />
Instead it feels like a lost <a href="http://www.matadorrecords.com/perfume_genius" target="_blank">Perfume Genius</a> album, only with a better vocalist and longer songs. Hard to think of a higher recommendation than that. Give it a listen, then remember it's a grower and play it a few more times - you'll thank me...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-73794981960322001752014-04-07T11:23:00.002-07:002014-04-07T11:23:22.108-07:00Interlude: Bowie and the Riot Squad (1967)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEx7RjGgkM_pVkEGt6g8_8FhCe7gUxjMIFPW-AzBL3lgXE7p_tGFwZEJDlfCy7pTn-m8DNb_IaF2oPPJKN4j03RWmcxLVBXRyGkY_sESPZAF3FeNKeV8x-_ZMboxObWycvFwhsaRvnknOv/s1600/riot.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEx7RjGgkM_pVkEGt6g8_8FhCe7gUxjMIFPW-AzBL3lgXE7p_tGFwZEJDlfCy7pTn-m8DNb_IaF2oPPJKN4j03RWmcxLVBXRyGkY_sESPZAF3FeNKeV8x-_ZMboxObWycvFwhsaRvnknOv/s1600/riot.jpeg" height="315" width="320" /></a></div>
It's a sign of the sheer amount of stuff available nowadays that a song I've been wanting to hear for a decade was released last year and I completely failed to hear about it. I've <a href="https://twitter.com/EducationNinja" target="_blank">James Gent</a> to thank for the heads up, because if he'd not included David Bowie's version of 'Silver Treetop School for Boys' in the imaginary playlist for what would be the best Bowie out-takes box set ever, I'd never have known that Record Day last year included the release of an EP of himself with the Riot Squad back in the last sixties (interestingly, this is presumably at the same time he was recording the Deram David Bowie LP - some of the musical and vocal choices on here are pretty familiar to fans of that great debut album).<br />
<br />
It's a shame The Riot Squad are really not very good, though. Another cover of the Velvets' 'Waiting for the Man', with Bowie really pushing the Lou Reed impersonation is fine, if uninspiring, and listening to
Bowie as Lou Reed on perennial bootleg favourite,
'Little Toy Soldier' is never wasted time, but the backing on a solo version of 'Silly Boy Blue' is difficult listening at times - and 'Silver Treetop' is a bit rubbish really. <br />
<br />
But skip back a bit. 'Silver Treetop School for Boys', I hear you ask (actually, I probably don't - I imagine that, of my eleven regular readers, about eight will know the track already!) ? What's that then?<br />
<br />
Most obviously it's one of four tracks on the ep , but it's also the 'lost' Bowie track I've most wanted to hear, ever since I picked up a copy of the Beatstalkers' 2007 collection which includes a fabulous tight, fast cover of the track. <br />
<br />
The Beatstalkers - apparently known at the time as the Scottish Beatles - did another couple of Bowie covers (they were managed by Ken Pitt, as was Bowie's manager too at the time) and are well worth seeking out. The Riot Squad, though, aren't, except for those of us who would buy any new Bowie. For us, it's worth it - of course it is!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-35138858126580190062014-03-31T03:43:00.002-07:002014-05-22T04:42:59.197-07:00First Men in the Moon - HG Wells (1901)Month two of <a href="http://www.pmagrs.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Paul </a>and I trawling through <a href="http://www.ahundredyearsofpaperbacks.co.uk/" target="_blank">A Hundred Years of Paperbacks</a> finds us in England (then the moon) with HG Wells.<br />
<br />
And, oh, this is more like it! Only a single year further on than Jules Verne's 'Castaways of the Flag', but it
feels as though some clever soul invented the sf adventure novel
somewhere in those twelve months. Admittedly it’s a very British
science fiction – far more obviously the product of a specific country
than Verne’s eurobland attempt, but that’s all to the good as it
replaces Verne’s leaden and plodding morality tale with Wells’ big, mad,
<i>entertaining</i> mass of bonkers science, terrific dangers and
brilliantly innovative anglo-saxons. This is a novel which is intended
to make the reader laugh as well as think deep(ish) thoughts, and it’s
all the better for it.<br />
<br />
Of course it helps.as Paul says below, that it’s basically <i>Doctor Who </i>-
and even more specifically, it’s Peter Cushing in the cinema as
scatter-brained old duffer Dr Who, travelling to the Moon with his new
companion, Mr Bedford, a forward echo of a slightly more morally dubious
Roy Castle or Bernard Cribbins, if ever there was one. It’s all there –
science which makes sense in your head if not in reality, an alien
society which does much the same, a not particularly clever denouement…I
can easily imagine Aaru picking up the rights to this, and giving
Roberta Tovey a call to see if she were free… <br />
<br />
As well as <i>Who</i>,
the early chapters reminded me of Wodehouse a little – Bedford locked
away in the country, just waiting to churn out a novel which will make
his fortune feels like it must have some point have been the fate of
Bertie Wooster or one of his Drones’ chums. And Cavor, checked from
walking the way he prefers, is exactly the sort of unworldly, eccentric
scientist Wodehouse would, I think, have approved of.<br />
<br />
Which
reminds me of something – at one point Bedford makes mention of Jules
Verne. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could link each of these books to the
next in some way, even if the link isn’t always as concrete as an actual
reference? (and if we’re doing so, more interesting to link this to
Wodehouse via the characterisation than to, say, Kenneth Graham via the
metaphysical peculiarities to be found in chapter 20 of ‘First Men’ –
like the ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ chapter in <i>Wind in the Willows,</i>
it’s an odd intrusion of melancholy and spirituality, as though there
was a quota of such that every author pre-WWI was obliged to fill).<br />
<br />
Much better…Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-20846134965953786752014-02-06T08:44:00.003-08:002014-02-06T09:15:03.767-08:00 The Christmas Ghost Stories of Lawrence Gordon Clark (Sepctral Press, 2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV5GFja-EMlXhdKYyQXn4NRrRPd1_RBwVrN128pmM_NTU84BnsE3T4re_f96hfickkTxWcOXODW3titdc4iEnLq-Q08GYlm5R4uDJrno5jUfkbhm2o61U5fZsFwmaw7ZGj-GpMnHScSw4b/s1600/cgs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV5GFja-EMlXhdKYyQXn4NRrRPd1_RBwVrN128pmM_NTU84BnsE3T4re_f96hfickkTxWcOXODW3titdc4iEnLq-Q08GYlm5R4uDJrno5jUfkbhm2o61U5fZsFwmaw7ZGj-GpMnHScSw4b/s320/cgs.jpg" /></a></div>
M.R James may not be as well known and excessively collected as a Poe, say, but it's not exactly a quest to find a copy of his <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Stories_of_an_Antiquary" title="Ghost Stories of an Antiquary">Ghost Stories of an Antiquary,</a></i> and its sequels - and even less so to find the handful of stories which were filmed for the BBC in the 1970s by Lawrence Gordon Clark for Christmas broadcast.<br />
<br />
So it's not for Mr James that you might be tempted to pick up a copy of <i>The Christmas Ghost Stories</i>. I mean, it's a lovely looking volume, and those us who appreciate a book almost as much for the look and feel as for the contents might well shell out just on that basis.<br />
<br />
But really, it's the added extras, the sections which relate to LGC rather than James, which will sell this book - and rightly so too. This is where small presses win out over large, where enthusiasts publishing books which they are personally committed to defeat corporate cash-ins.
From a foreword by Mark Gattis, through a Basil copper adaptation of <i>Count Magnus</i> and introductory essays by Clark himself, by way of newly unearthed photographs, interviews and storyboards, this is a book packed to the rafters and created by someone who really appreciates his subject - and his audience.<br />
<br />
Make no mistake, once you own this book you will never need another about these fabulous adaptations or the man behind them.<br />
<br />
(Incidentally, for those of you who are buying just for the ghost stories themselves, these are they: The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, A Warning to the Curious, The Ash Tree, Lost Hearts, Casting the Runes, Count Magnus)<br />
<br />
Available from <a href="http://spectralpress.wordpress.com/">http://spectralpress.wordpress.com</a> now.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-8758195199019321522014-01-29T13:30:00.000-08:002014-01-29T13:30:37.256-08:00Some books - January 2014My favourite three books read in January (intended as something I'll do every month, but who wants to bet it grinds to a halt round about March?)<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan</b></i><br />
<br />
Sometimes a book is all about the characters or the plot or the clever way in which everyone speaks. Sometimes it's about the puzzle or the twist or even the macguffin. And sometimes it's about the ending.<br />
<br />
<i>Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore</i> is about the ending. After 250 pages of confident, flowing prose, this glorious novel - ostensibly part <i>Name of the Rose </i>and part<i> Big Bang Theory </i>- ends on the most unexpected of beats, but is all the more perfect for that. I'll say no more for fear of spoilers, but I loved the final dozen pages more than any ending in a book for ages.<br />
<br />
There's a brilliant geek pride on display throughout, too. Sure, some of the characters - like those in another US sitcom, <i>Friends</i> - are just a wee bit too good at their geek ninja skills, and the fetishisation of Google in particular is slightly vomit inducing, but these are fairly minor complaints about a book which made me grin more than once and which as, at its core, those two most fascinating of obscure pleasures - the history of printing and mega cool places in which to store books.<br />
<br />
Recommended to me by Scott, and recommended by me to everyone else.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>The Ship that Flew - Hilda Lewis</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
Another lovely ending, though this one is more bittersweet than happy. A small boy buys a toy boat which can swell to any size, and travel to any point in time and space. Cue a series of adventures with his brother and two sisters, as they fly to England in the middle ages, meet with Robin Hood, and dodge dubious foreign and home grown bad guys! The whole story comes together towards the end, and then, like Susan dodging the <i>Last Battle</i>, the children are all grown up and too mature for toy boats…<br />
<br />
Written and published in the 30s, I'm forced to agree with the bookseller who pencilled 'Children's Classic - nice edition' inside my copy (which was a present from Paul, incidentally - he accuses me of occasionally forgetting books he bought me this book or that, especially when I happen to recommend the same books to him a few months later ;)<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>The Company of Friends - Jack Trevor Story</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
The best writer post-war Sexton Blake ever produced, Jack Trevor Story is an author I discovered via his Albert Argyle trilogy last year. Witty, seemingly effortless prose (though with a touch of the sort of poorly thought out sexism so beloved of writers who learned their craft in the 50s and 60s), wrapped round a clever plot and peopled by a cast of engaging characters - throw in Blake, Tinker, Paula Dane and the rest and you're surely into a winner.<br />
<br />
And so it proved. Probably the best late Blake I've read.<br />
<br />
<b>Other books read this month:</b><br />
<br />
Boys and Girls Forever - Alison Lurie<br />
The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle<br />
Brainrack - Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis<br />
Midnight Folk (abridged) - John Masefield<br />
The Sherlock Holmes Handbook - Ransom Riggs<br />
The Christmas Ghost Stories of Laurence Gordon Clark (separate review to follow)<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7129420625439819885.post-63517071872051707112013-10-04T04:14:00.000-07:002013-10-04T04:15:17.971-07:00The Flip Side - Cody Quijano-Schell (Big Finish, 2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Z7Sle8zRd0g-EvvFgMM6NN895ausPEpvxLhWB3uxgEseqL3dsy3a5CxgQyn2IrQmSvi_bZt24s2Qthg9rmBveT0GX4pS4xmgIeXXSUieE8UMKY6SmegGT6zkmM6kbJHaltgYBpuYy98G/s1600/37.theflipside_cover_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Z7Sle8zRd0g-EvvFgMM6NN895ausPEpvxLhWB3uxgEseqL3dsy3a5CxgQyn2IrQmSvi_bZt24s2Qthg9rmBveT0GX4pS4xmgIeXXSUieE8UMKY6SmegGT6zkmM6kbJHaltgYBpuYy98G/s320/37.theflipside_cover_large.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Right then, an admission. No, not the one about knowing and having worked with the author, a man I have a great deal of time and fondness for. Anyone reading this is likely already to know that, and also to know that I'm a big mouthed idiot a fair amount of the time and would not hesitate to say something negative about anyone's work, if I didn't like it.<br />
<br />
No, my admission is this - I have only seen one episode of the TV series <i>Dark Shadows</i>. I know, I know. I claim to love old telly, and am happiest wittering on about 70s sitcoms and 30s movies, Larry Grayson and Lon Chaney, Paula Wilcox and Louise Brooks, but I'm not what you'd call a major fan of old American telly. The references are lost on me, the laughter tracks are irritating and it's all too brightly lit.<br />
<br />
So I came to 'The Flip Side' almost a DS virgin. True, I'd seen that one episode, though all it was missing was Joey from <i>Friends</i>, playing Dr Drake Ramory in a 'Days of Our Lives' style. And I listened to Mark Passmore's (also very enjoyable) preceding DS audio too. But that's it.<br />
<br />
And you know what, dear reader, I loved it.<br />
<br />
It helps that the story is self-contained and spooky, obviously, and so no previous knowledge was required. And obviously - like Mark's earlier audio - it helped no end that it was well written and directed, and moved along at a good pace. But it was the little things I liked most, the teasing suggestions of the thousands of episodes before this - the Leviathans, a planet covered in sand, parallel times and a jukebox which has played the same handful of songs for decades. It was evocative without crushing the listener under the weight of continuity, a skilfully rendered tapestry in the background against which an intriguing mystery takes place.<br />
<br />
Recommended, even if your experience of <i>Dark Shadows</i> is 20 minutes of two charcaters standing talking in a cemetery...<br />
<br />
You can buy it <a href="http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-flip-side-883" target="_blank">here</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0