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

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

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 City of the Dead - Tarot cards

 

 

Based on this scene:

She started shuffling the cards. ‘It’s about the forces that brought you to your present position.’

‘Not the future?’

“The future,’ she said, ‘is very evasive.’

He smiled. She handed him the pack to cut, then laid out nine cards on the coverlet, face down. The backs were solid white with grey glyphs. 'OK,’ she said, 'this is where you began.’ She turned up the Hierophant. 'Does that mean anything to you?’

'No.’

'OK. This was where you went next.’ She flipped the second card. The Hermit. 'Any vibes?’

'I’m afraid not.’

The third card was the Emperor. This was followed by the Fool.

Then came the Star, the Moon and the Hanged Man. Then the Tower. Laura shot the Doctor a sharp glance, but his expression was no more than pleasantly interested.

Time Zero

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

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

 

And to think it had started so well. See, I was really into this book at first, I really was! But then my interest dwindled while the plot was getting more and more convoluted, and by the time it devolved into what's basically a verbal fight between two guys going "no, my theory is better than your theory", it was completely gone. If you're planning to read this, make sure you really enjoy long infodumps and very messy storytelling.

But again, the beginning is very strong, there's a couple of fun scenes, and it's not offensively bad - it's just not very good, and after such a good pitch, that's disappointing. 4,5/10

Ohhh the numbers are going backwards!

Don't worry, he will probably read it years later on a shitty pdf

 Well that escalated quickly

 Clearly Sabbath is on his way to complete his ever-growing collection of murderers

Eight you little shit

I'm always here for cool little details like this

 NOOOOOOOOO ANJI PLEASE STAY

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

 NOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY CHILDREN

 Oh, so the Victorian Paleontology nerd is back? yes. good

Eight clearly disapproves

Are. Are you jealous Eight

 Eight please say something

Oh fuck oh no

This book really hooked me from the get-go I must say

Oh. Well that sounds totally sane

Uh. Is that an echo of the expedition? Maybe that's George? Either way that's intriguing

Paleofail: the book

You know what, I'm pretty sure Fitz quietly enjoys being the more knowledgeable person around for once

EIGHT WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN ST PETERSBURG

ARE. ARE YOU STALKING YOUR BOYFRIEND

How long has it been for him wtf

My heart

 Well that escalated quickly

Very ominous, thank you

Wait, but the note was written by Compassion, right? I'm pretty sure it was. I don't remember exactly cause it's been so long. Blame the depression I guess

At the Mountains of Madness 2- the Madnessing

That mental picture is funny

Ok so I'm partly screening this for future reference in case I need to draw anything from this book but also partly because this sounds like descriptions at the beginning of a murder mystery so I hope all of you have written some kind of testament before going on this doomed expedition

I've already mentioned this while livebloging The Turing Test but steganography gives me flashbacks from cryptography history classes, which were done by a teacher who didn't fuck around and who made us literally crack codes for points during the finals

'kay, you had my interest at first (with that heartbreaking situation with Fitz possibly dying in the past), but now you have my attention as well

Woah, Fitz is actually getting angry at someone

Sherlock Eight is back

Eight you little shit I love you

EIGHT YOU LITTLE SHIT SDFGHJKSDFGHJKLKJHGFD

Meanwhile there's been a MURDER I TOLD YOU SO I TOLD YOU DIDN'T I

THE PLOT THICKENS

EIGHT SDFGHJKLKJHGFGHJKLSDFGHJ

And zero fucks were given that day

Meanwhile Anji is ALSO going to Siberia

This is really cool

Nice job breaking it, hero

Oops!

OOPS²!

Sounds like a good time. Take me there.

Anji stole a parachute to make them think she jumped. Pretty smart. I like that

Wait, that was supposed to be dinosaurs?? wtf

Meanwhile Anji crashed the plane! New achievement unlocked

I was starting to suspect they were interested in her for that kind of reason yeah

Convenient.

This won't end well

Also at this point I'm kinda starting to lose interest in the plot, I must say

Anji this is a bad idea and you know it

This book in a nutshell

That phone call sounds fake as hell

SAME, EIGHT, SAME

Nicely explained theory for once

Idiot

IDIOT

As usual this is the only good answer to that thought experiment

Me at parties

He's kinda blasé about it lol

FITZ VS ANOMALOUS REPTILE - FIGHT

Well this is awfully convenient

Also this book is very long

Ok I laughed

I'm sorry but Eight suggesting that someone should be faking amnesia to try to stay out of trouble is absolutely hysterical to me

He's so happy about it

You two are very chill for two guys being chased by aggressive monsters from another dimension

How are you able to SLEEP

Also: two bros, chilling in a castle, five feet apart cause one of them is Victorian ♫

Ok this is a bit weird

This should be mildly amusing but I find it weirdly emotional

Thanks for the summary I hadn't read this book in a while

EIGHT

Ok that was funny

How many times am I going to say "convenient" while reading this book

Me with my sketchbooks

The plot thickens

My interest, however, "thinnens"

Guys. Leave it be. I've seen that movie. It doesn't end well

This story should be SO MUCH MORE interesting than it actually is

You can't be sure until you open the metaphorical box, Doctor

That quote is raw as hell

LMAO I had COMPLETELY forgotten about the murder mystery, that's how interested I am

Ok so it was George who did it, then

 

Ok that was funny

Wait

Wait wait wait

"A business associate of mine"

Is the Duchess actually Sabbath's new recruit in disguise

I almost forgot he was in that book

Well yeah. Nice job breaking it, hero

What

Did it change the climate just because the window is in Siberia

Oh look here's a brand new injury to add to my list of Eight injuries

George forgetting he's a temporal ghost, everybody

This shouldn't be this boring

I think it's because it's mostly explained instead of shown?

Ok now THAT'S very cool

Humanoid black holes should have been the focus of this entire story

LMAO

So Holiday is Sabbath then?

15 years old me making a playlist

It's less scary if he can still talk, come on

This is a really weird plan and a very convoluted plot

Folks is it gay if a time machine kisses a black hole

Yeah, ok, that makes sense

Idiots

ROLL CREDITS

This book is a mess, isn't it

Awww

SDFGHJKLHGF

Funny dialogue but let's be real, this is an isolated instance because fuck this, I'm not screening page after page of infodump. If you're only reading this liveblog, you don't understand HOW MUCH INFODUMP there's in this book.

Fitz no

Great, we're ending on a trolley problem. Everything I like.

The book itself knows it's a mess

Uggh

There's been a tendancy to give Fitz boyfriends instead of girlfriends in the past few books, and frankly, I approve

At least the imagery is cool

Wait this is a The Burning prequel??

Bunch of liars :')

I know Trix comes back, but I hope she's not going to replace Anji

I'm gonna miss Anji. She's an amazing companion. The only reason she's not my fave one in these books is because Fitz exists. This was my favorite TARDIS team of all time, television and audios included. Just a brilliant dynamic all around.

Sooooo this was a meh book, overall. Too bad, I really liked how it started.

Wait it's not over yet

Here's Fitz feeling insulted because his secret diary is cheap, everybody

Oops, wrong universe??

THAT'S HOW IT ENDS?? Come on

Honestly this "About the author" paragraph should have stopped right there, that would have been amazing