The Sleep of Reason

Some highlights of the latest EDA I’ve read (The Sleep of Reason).

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

Okay, so. As far as "Doctor Who stories seen from the perspective of an outsider" go, this is pretty good. It's kinda fun to see Team TARDIS from a different perspective, even if it's not particularly new at that point, and they are mostly fine here, even if the characterisation is nothing groundbreaking.

The problem is that the story itself feels like a single idea stretched far too thin for far too long. Of course it doesn't help that the previous book was throwing a dozen ideas at the wall at once, but still, this one feels full of filler side plots at times.

At this point you might be bracing yourself for a bad note, but no, I mostly enjoyed this book! And it's because the new characters are well written! Laska in particular feels like a real person and I like her a lot, despite some edginess regarding self-harm early on in the book. Oh yeah by the way: self-harm is a major plot point in this book - so, yeah. You've been warned. 6/10

Added tags to posts

This is a small "quality of life" update, but while I was formatting the Sleep of Reason liveblog I realised I had never used tags on posts on this blog. I just spent half an hour tagging everything to make navigation easier.

• Every liveblog is now tagged "liveblog".
• Every drawing is now tagged "fan art".
• Every blog update is now tagged "blog post".
• If a post is about a specific book, I also tagged the title of that book, so now if you click (for instance) the "Interference" tag, you'll find both of the Interference books liveblogs, plus nearly all my Interference-related drawings.

If something is mis-labelled, please let me know! 

You've kept the t-shirt

 

(the t-shirt is from the book The Tomorrow Windows:)

‘Fitz!’ The Doctor gripped him by the shoulders. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I could ask you the same question,’ said Fitz, opening up his jacket to reveal a T-shirt with the Doctor’s face on it, together with the words I’m Voting For The Doctor.

(I didn’t add the Doctor’s face on the design so just assume it’s on the back lol)

The Tomorrow Windows

Some highlights of the latest EDA I’ve read (The Tomorrow Windows).

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

There's SO MUCH STUFF GOING ON in this book. It's a bit of a throw-everything-at-the-wall story, where you're under the impression the author had five different ideas but none of them was strong enough on its own to write an entire book about, so he combined everything like some kind of fusion cuisine. The most surprising thing is that the result actually works. It works pretty well, in fact. It doesn't start very solidly, the ending is a bit confusing, and the tone is all over the place, and yet, it's (mostly) a lot of fun, despite an insanely high kill count of secondary characters.

After all the introspection of the previous book, I really don't mind a comedic adventure romp - Eight is a bit on the cartoonish side but nothing too annoying or too out of character, Fitz is Fitz, and - wait, is that a second serving of character development for Trix?? Sign me up immediately. 

Wait. Two good books in a row? We are SO back. 8/10

Halflife

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

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

 

I only knew two vague things about this book beforehand. One: shippers kept mentioning it. Two: it was apparently a return to basics after a complicated arc. And so, obviously, I was expecting a fun and simple adventure on some alien planet. Instead, here I am, at the end of this book, with an existential crisis on my hands and trying to figure if an entire arc of mediocre-to-bad books didn't completely destroy my idea of what a good Doctor Who novel was.

On paper, yes, this is a simple alien invasion story, one that the TARDIS team is trying to understand before it's too late to save anyone. In practice, it turns out it's an excuse to redefine the main characters, to address some specific past plot points of the series, and to reflect on a core idea in a multitude of ways: how much do our past actions define who we are in the present? Literally everything here is related to that idea, from the location to the menace(s) and, of course, to the regulars.
Speaking of that location, I wish we could have spent more time exploring it, more time to unravel how a society so desperate to escape from the control of our colonialist and capitalist hellhole can't quite escape from its past by trying to ignore it altogether. That's my only criticism: I wanted more of a good thing.

I'm fascinated by Halflife. It couldn't have existed in this form at any other point than near the end of such a long series. Maybe I'm just burnt out after so many mediocre books in a row. Maybe it's not THAT good. Maybe this note is too high. Who cares. What a breath of fresh air. 9/10

 

Sometime Never

Some highlights of the latest EDA I’ve read (Sometime Never).

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

ok can we agree this is the most EDA-core cover ever

No one told me anything about this book. That's the biggest surprise for me. You see, I had heard or read stuff alluding to The Ancestor Cell being a trainwreck even before I started reading the books. I had heard that Alien Bodies was good, and that The Blue Angel confused a lot of people. I had even heard vague stuff about the Doctor losing a heart at SOME POINT in SOME CONTINUITY back when I hadn't even glanced in the general direction of the books. But nothing about this book was even vaguely known to me. And I have no idea why, because it contains the mother or rather grandfather of all retcons right at the very end, and I'm sure a lot of people are pissed off about it. 

I don't really mind it.

What I do mind is that almost nothing happens for like 180 pages, then the book starts making catastrophic decision after catastrophic decision, and then, when you think it's going to be one of worst books in this series, it somehow decides to course-correct a little bit and it kinda sticks the landing for the most part.

Is the plot good? Not really. Are the regulars interesting? No. Is it full of technobabble? Oh yes, tons. Is it a bit cheap? Definitely. Do I hate it? No. It's not good, but it has some fun moments, and the last 30 pages are a bit of a rollercoaster at times. And weirdly enough, now I respect The Ancestor Cell a bit more. 3,5/10

Emotional Chemistry

Some highlights of the latest EDA I’ve read (Emotional Chemistry).

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

I'm not entirely sure what happened with this one. Most of Team Tardis seems to be some sort of afterthought in the grand scheme of the plot, even if everyone gets at least one pretty good moment. I'm under the impression this might have been a story that's been retooled as a Doctor Who book, but I'm probably wrong.

Regardless of that, well, there's a lot of characters in this one, distributed between three different eras of history, and it's often a bit confusing because some of them are kinda similar. As it turns out, it's partly on purpose, but still, it's not very engaging. And that's a shame, because a love story where, essentially, two people are separated by hundreds of years of history had a lot of potential. It's also a shame that all of this is partly solved through technobabble, but at least there's also a solid emotional core to the ending. Maybe it would be better if romance as a genre in general did anything for me. No idea.

I did something I rarely do and I asked around if other people were also feeling this way about this book, just to make sure I wasn't being too harsh on it, or just not getting it, but the opinions seem to be all over the place. That doesn't help. 4/10