Reckless Engineering - At the end of the universe

Anji filling a water bottle with luminous water

Reckless Engineering

Some highlights of the latest EDA I’ve read (Reckless Engineering).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers.

 

 

Finally! A good book! Well, not a great book, but, you know. A pretty good one! After the previous two, that's a relief. Sure, the regulars are kind of the generic version of themselves (Eight especially is threading daaaaangerously close to "generic Doctor" territory), but at least they're not the caricatures or the complete OOC versions we had in recent memory. Sure, the resolution of the plot is way too simple considering how complex everything was before that point, but it only feels a bit cheap, not like a complete cheat.

Fortunately, the main qualities of this book are its core concept and its worldbuilding, and that goes a long way when dealing with mostly generic characters. What an amazingly disturbing idea for an apocalypse! What a cool way to create zombie-like humans for your story. What a great choice that was to set most of the plot 150 years after said apocalypse to see what kind of world would be born out of it.

It's compelling, it's disturbing, it's a great concept. If only the plot was a bit more clever and the regulars written a bit better! But still, 7/10

The Domino Effect

Some highlights of the latest EDA I’ve read (The Domino Effect).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers.

 

Good news, everyone! This one isn't as bad as Infinity Race.

Unfortunately that's where the good news stop. And yeah, it's also pretty bad, but in a completely different way than the previous book - it's slightly better written, but it's gratuitously edgy, the regulars are either bland, way too aggressive or too busy being tortured to be in or out of character, the plot is very thin and makes very little sense, and it ends in the most boring, predictable way possible. And it also has the most artificial conflict between the main characters that I've ever seen in these books.

Some parts are so-bad-it's-good, and I kinda liked one specific plot thread, but that's about it. I sincerely hope this is just a fluke? 2,5/10

The Infinity Race

Some highlights of the latest EDA I’ve read (The Infinity Race).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers.

 

Well, folks, this is it. It took us eight years, and it was quite a journey, but here we are. We've found it at last. It's finally there.

The worst book in this series.

I'm not saying this lightly either. I had to pull out my spreadsheet where I keep track of every rating I've ever given to a Doctor Who story (thank the autism, I guess) and I'm staring at this list right now, and there is nothing I could place lower than this one. I gave The Space Age a 1/10 for being boring as hell, and yet, it was better written than this one. It's clearly worse than War of the Daleks and its 1,5/10. God, The Slow Empire, with its out of character regulars and its plot based on a pun, looks like a masterpiece next to The Infinity Race. And I gave that one 2,5/10.

The prose is beyond awful, the regulars are either out of character or complete caricatures of themselves, the plot is boring and its rare decent ideas aren't fully exploited, there's "native" locals speaking in baby talk, there's a couple of weirdly sexist bits, and it's constantly breaking the fourth wall for no reason.

I've heard the next book is pretty bad too, but surely it can't be worse than this. Surely we've reached rock bottom. 1/10

The Book of the Still - Lebenswelt

 

Lebenswelt, the horribly gothic city from "The Book of the Still". Anji reaaaally doesn’t like that place. Fitz is a little more enthusiastic. (September 13th, 2019)

Vampire Science - Eight and kittens

 

(June 30th, 2019)

Gardening

 

Fitz adding a couple of new plants to the TARDIS’ garden. (June 30th, 2019)