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

Timeless

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

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

I apologise for how long it took me to read this book. One of my goals this year is to finish reading this entire series, and I don't know how that will turn out, but I'm still going to try!

After the mess that was The Last Resort, this one feels like a return to form, but it very rarely rises above "competent" despite some really fun imagery at the beginning of the universe and pretty decent characters. The plot is all right, just not very engaging, and I thought there were a bit too many characters in the main team this time around. There's also a few continuity errors. But I can't say I was ever bored either.

At this point, I have to compare it to some previous average books in the range to give it a proper score. And it's kind of on the same level of enjoyment for me as Dark Progeny or Parallel 59. Which I both rated 5. Not gonna lie, I'm glad this arc seems to be nearly over. 5/10

The Last Resort

Some highlights of the latest EDA I’ve read (The Last Resort).

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

What happened. No seriously, what happened.

I should love this book. It's written by Paul Leonard. His "worst" EDA so far was Dreamstone Moon, and I rated it 7/10 and even made fanart about it. His previous books were full of emotion, examined what it means to be human, what made a person a person even when they looked completely alien, talked about cosmic tragedies viewed from a small, personal angle. And now, here's a book where the stakes are higher than ever, and suddenly, nobody cares about anything.

From one scene to the next, we're following different versions of the same characters interchangeably. People die again and again, and little to no weight is given to any of it. We're told Sabbath and maybe the Doctor have a plan to solve the whole situation, but we can't parse what it is, so we don't really care. There's a lot of technobabble. About a third of the way into the story, it gets obvious that all of this is going to get hit by a big red RESET button at the end, so you're just waiting for it to happen. Thankfully, there's some very good imagery near the end, but it's too little too late.

It took me two years to get through The Last Resort. It's experimental, exhausting, convoluted but not complex, weirdly one-dimensional for a thing about multiple realities colliding, and more than a bit nihilistic. I want to care about things again, please. 3,5/10

The Sights 3 [Constellations]

 

Autopsy scars

The Eighth Doctor has lived rent free in my head for more than ten years at this point and yet @daydreamycrustacean drawing Eight with autopsy scars reprogrammed my entire brain with a single drawing

 

Infinity Train crossover

 

I haven't updated this blog in more than a year even though I was originally planning to finish reading this series of books in 2024. The problem is that I fell into my biggest hyperfixation-turned-special-interest since, well, Doctor Who ten years earlier. As you can guess, it was Infinity Train.

At some point in August 2024, one user called deathchrist2000 asked me "Of the 8th Doctor companions, who would have the largest number upon entering the Infinity Train? Why do I feel like the answer is Fitz?" to which I replied: "Look me in the eye. Look me in the eye, and tell me that Fitz “intergalactic loser of mystery” Kreiner would have a higher number upon entering the Train than the alien mass murderer raised in a death cult" and posted that first picture with C'rizz from the audios. Then I added "Sidenote: over there we have someone who couldn’t deal with the death of a loved one and who tried to clone him, except the clone isn’t a perfect copy. Weird how that keeps happening, uh" and posted that second drawing with Eight and Fitz.
 

The Sights 2 [Satellites]

 

I did it because you're a jerk

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)