Jules Jones

40) Jacqueline Rayner - Doctor Who: Winner Takes All

Third in the New Who novel line. Now this was a definite improvement over the previous title in the series. It's a revisit of the Last Starfighter scenario, but with some nasty twists, and not just the one you find in Ender's Game. Rose and Nine drop in to the Powell Estate to visit Jackie, and find that there's a new video game being promoted by people in porcupine costumes, using scratchcards given away with any purchase at local stores, no matter how small. Mickey is one of the people who's won a console, and as he explains, the console has only one game, but it's still good value, because it's so realistic, and complex enough to be a little different every time you play. Of course the Doctor can't resist showing off and beating Mickey's score, doing so thoroughly that he becomes number one on the aliens' list of useful humans to acquire.

The plot's interesting and the characterisations for Nine and Rose are good. But where the story really shines for me is in one of the one-off characters. Robert is a young teenager, complete with young teenage boy anxieties and fantasies, and his interior monologue is wince-inducingly realistic. He's someone a lot of fans will be able to identify with.

Enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. This one I'll probably re-read.


LibraryThing entry

Book 3)

Anthology of 20 short stories with the theme of elf love, published by new small press Pink Narcissus Press. This is an ARC I received through the LibraryThing Early reviewers programme.

While the cover art suggests fantasy-subgenre romance stories, the contents are a good deal more wide-ranging. There's a good sampling of traditional themes about elves, some in modern settings and some not, and the endings cover the full span from happy through bittersweet hope to tragic. The genre styles vary considerably as well. And to go with the prose stories, there's one in graphic form.

Unfortunately the quality varied considerably as well, and for me a few of the stories were a waste of dead trees; but the best were well worth my time. There were several authors whose stories felt a bit unpolished but made me inclined to find more of their work once they've got a few more kilowords under their belts. Of particular note was Duncan Eagleson, who provided my two favourite prose stories in the anthology, together with the art for the graphic story (and the cover art, which I liked less than the graphic story).

There's some violence, and some sexually explicit and some erotic content (the two are not identical) covering a range of sexual orientations, mostly not gratuitous.

In spite of the uneven quality, this is a worthwhile anthology -- this is a good selection covering a range of story types, and I could have quite happily read the whole thing in one sitting without feeling that the stories were too repetitive. While my copy was an ARC, I personally wouldn't have been disappointed had I paid the full cover price of US$15 for the trade paperback. Whether other readers feel the same will really depend on how many of the stories work for them, and regrettably I have to say that the anthology is sufficiently uneven and unpolished that I can't wholeheartedly recommend it at that price.

I'll try to write up some detailed notes on individual stories later, but in general I'd agree with TPauSilver's comments on LibraryThing.


Released in February 2011, but available now for pre-order direct from the publisher.

LibraryThing entry.

Book 75

I bought this because it was by the same author as the Railway Detective series, which I'd found enjoyable at the "read once" level. This is the fourth in the Restoration series, a mystery series about architect Christopher Redmayne and constable Jonathan Bale, set in Restoration London in the years following the Great Fire of 1666. I haven't previously read any in this series, but found that this worked well as a standalone, with enough backstory worked in to be able to follow who people were.

A naked corpse is found frozen into the sheet of ice that has covered the Thames, and the most obvious suspect is Christopher's rake of a brother, who wakes up after a drunken night to find himself arrested and flung into Newgate. Christopher is convinced of his brother's innocence, not just out of family loyalty but because he is only too aware of his brother's vices -- and violence is not among them. His friend Jonathan, on the other hand, is convinced of Henry's guilt, and not just because the Puritan Jonathan disapproves of Henry's lifestyle. The evidence at the scene is all too damning. But both men feel that justice will not be done unless the matter is properly investigated. And investigate they do, following parallel lines of enquiry and sharing their information. Along the way there's some excellent world-building about the re-building of the world of London after the Great Fire. I don't know the period well enough to say how accurate it is, but Marston has created an enjoyable picture of a culture that is both alien and familiar.

I think I like this one a little better than I did the Railway Detective series, possibly because rather than in spite of coming in part way through the series -- there's far less overt info-dumping in this one than in the first Railway Detective book I read. I'd be happy to read more of these, although I'm not going to rush out looking for them; in part because a quick look at the blurbs on the author's website suggests there is very little character arc development through the series for the continuing characters and their lives outside the mystery-solving, something I found rather frustrating in the Railway Detective books.

LibraryThing entry