Just finished this 'book', and I can't say I like it very much. I like the Doctor's characterization, but hate the way Sam is now the wannabe Ace/torture victim. No charactorization for any other person in the book, none of whom I can even picture in my mind. Too much happening. Mortimore should write his own books, and not Who, that way I won't be subjected to them.

This is possibly the most confusing book I've ever read. I still can't figure what, if anything, was resolved. Who died? Who lived? Is Sam still immortal? What happened to the cavemen introduced in the beginning? How does the Doctor keep getting superhuman powers of endurance, only to lose them when convenient?

Mortimer should spend less time trying to be "cosmic" and more time on developing a plot.

You think this is confusing? Just try The Sword of Forever sometime.

I can only answer one of your questions: Sam is definitely not still immortal. The Face-Eater kindly supplied us with this information, as Beltempest so signally failed to do so. (Actually it's a bit of a shame, being condemned to immortality would have livened up Sam's character no end.)

The end of the book indicates that Sam isn't immortal when she burns herself.

Personally I was boggled by the prologue, told from the point of view of tribal hunter Fastblade. Bearing in mind he's already been tagged as a bit on the thick side by his comrade Skywatcher, it's a bit odd when the text starts referring to him seeing a 'triple solar eclipse' and pondering that it's inconceivable for a planet with only one moon. Improve your brainpower the Mortimore way.

How does burning oneself mean that one is not immortal? That just means she's not indestructible. She could have been given incredible healing capabilities, you know.

I think that was intention behind Sam burning herself - quite how its supposed to work is beyond me. I'd stopped paying attention by that point...

I thought the ending had been left open - Sam's burnt herself and is waiting to see if it'll keep on hurting as if she's a common-or-garden human - or if it'll heal superfast, indicating she's stuck with the nanobots and immortality.

I'm only on page 38 of this epic and I'm not sure I can finish. The Doctor is unrecognizable, even when compared to his "chirpy" movie persona, and Sam sounds a bit silly. I'm sorry I won't be reading any more about the tribal people; that bit was actually pretty good. (And it's the narrative that mentions the impossibility of a triple eclipse, not Fastblade's ponderings.)

But this is what's killing me, Mortimore's painfully tortuous prose: "Five hundred kilometers closer to the equator than the capital city was a chain of mildly active but nonetheless beautiful volcanic islands, scallop-shaped cones of volcanic pumice with hot sandy beaches and abundant wildlife produced regularly whenever the local techtonic plates could not decide which had the more legitimate claim on the surrounding geological area." Did you notice that was JUST ONE SENTENCE? Just like his characterization of the Doctor.

Well, I did manage to finish, and yes, it was every bit as tedious as I was expecting. Once I stopped trying to understand it or actually recognize any of the characters as ones I know, it was okay. Some of the cosmic, you're-in-my-mind pages were pretty hideous though.

Can't say I understood what happened either. I think the baby whatsit was born, but damned if I can figure if any of the system's original inhabitants survived.

Oh, after rereading the synopsis, I think there's one mistake -- there are four sentient species in the system: Humans, Hanokoi (or something), Hoth, and the big alien planet things. The military were trying to destroy the big alien planet things' baby in the middle of the sun, not the Hoth (who were big, country-sized, floaty things in the atmospheres of the gas giants). [Moderator's Note: corrected. Eventually.]

Oh-kay. I'll have to take your word for it, as I have no intention of rereading this thing in the foreseeable future. And suspect I wouldn't be any clearer about what's going on even if I did.

Believe me, I think that's all I managed to get out of it myself.

I just finished re-reading it. Took me only two days although I suspect that was due to the part of my brain which likes good things forcing the eyes to move quickly to get it over with. Most of my 'Parasite' review holds for this book except this is worse.

The


long spaces between


words in


italics and


large line


breaks

are the sign of something thinking they are a far better writer than they actually are. It's not clever, it's just a stylistic trick which is stupidly tiresome. Not to mention all those streamofconsciousnessbits which were passe back in 1994.

Mortimore likes pain and death on a huge scale but he can't write them for that. He can't do it on a small scale either. I think this was his last Who book (apart from 'Campaign') so there's something good that comes out of everything. Now if only his mate, Paul Leonard, would do the same I'd be a happy man.

I love the long spaces between words and large line breaks! They enable one to get through the book SO much faster!

LOL!

Something else I remembered. Does this book have the record number of times where lips are bitten to draw blood? It's a favourite trick of writers but I've never seen it happen IRL or even on TV. Perhaps everyone in the literary Who universe has sharp teeth...

Well, I've bitten my lips and drawn blood, but it's usually when I'm eating a sandwich, not feeling tense. When I'm tense, I bite my nails. I'd like to see a companion do that.

Sam is definitely not still immortal. The Face-Eater kindly supplied us with this information, as Beltempest so signally failed to do so. (Actually it's a bit of a shame, being condemned to immortality would have livened up Sam's character no end.)

Actually...DOES immortality liven up your character? Captain Jack was ADORABLE and QUITE worthy of his own series BEFORE Rose messed him around. And there's no way being immortal (or anything else) is gonna make Rex any more interesting...

Most of my 'Parasite' review holds for this book except this is worse.

NOTHING is worse than Parasite!

OK, several things are technically speaking worse than Parasite, including 'getting tortured to death' and 'Rags', but...at least I FINISHED Rags...

Perhaps everyone in the literary Who universe has sharp teeth...

Quite possibly. When the Time Lords Anchored the Thread (Book of the War) and rewrote the universe in their own boring image (Christmas on a Rational Planet) they laid down a template for sentient life to develop pretty much in their image. And of course the image of Rassilon Himself had been contaminated by Vampiric DNA at the dawn of time...(Goth Opera; Interference)

Ergo, people in the Whoniverse probably have sharper teeth than us.

'The last spadeful of snow hit the grave and Skywatcher patted it down' - whatever happened to 'a child who had seen a sun die and a world end. Who had seen crops fails and people kill each other in their mad desire for food'? Why is he WASTING the lovely meat?

'I like to think of the universe itself as my foster family. It took me in when I was young. Taught me about life when my own parents decided to opt out of their responsibilities...You never met my parents, did you?' - eek. Urk.

Why does the Doctor co-operate quite so enthusiastically with being tranquillised? Which bit of 'Sexy lost, Sam lost, entire solar system about to explode' made him think it would be a great time to take a nap? Or did he think it wouldn't WORK (albeit belatedly), in which case how come he has so little knowledge of his own biochemistry?

'Lives are always worth saving, no matter what the general population trends and how you might be increasing the severity of any hypothetical ultimate Malthusian control which might be lurking in the wings by using technology to avert a more immediate natural disaster...' - look, I love this stuff (it's the only bit of the book I DO love) but the unfortunate fact is that the Doctor just doesn't TALK like this. Not even 'judging by the evidence, I've certainly got a gob' Ten and gabble-incomprehensible-Scottish-at-a-thousand-miles-an-hour Twelve. Let alone Eight, who doesn't say as much in his ENTIRE ON-SCREEN LIFE as in a couple of Beltempest paragraphs.

The TARDIS 'was after all, indestructible' - ALMOST destructible, surely?

I note that whilst demanding that all the refugees strip off (um, so he can use their clothes to plug the depressurisation. Obviously) the Doc doesn't lead by example.

'Nobody mentioned anything was wrong with the engines' - and during all your poking around in the ship's computers you didn't NOTICE?

'He thought about [the fact Sam had been on an exploding moon] for another few moments, wondering eventually why he was not more upset. Sentimentality. He'd always subscribed to it in the past. He cared about his compan- his friends, didn't he? Why did it seem so easy, then, sometimes, to put the emotion aside? To put her aside?' - ALWAYS? Can he not remember BEING HARTNELL? (Also, we never DO get an explanation for why he suddenly doesn't care about Sam when he's usually perfectly fond of her.)

'Twice as big as Sam's Earth' - as WHAT! It's HIS Earth! He's been TOTALLY OBSESSED by the place for CENTURIES longer than Sam's existed!

My Doctor does not crack his knuckles.

'The machine began to shake again. It was putting out an awful lot of energy. Far more than it had when supporting the wreckage of the ship. But fortunately it would have to last only a few minutes this time' - but it only had to last a few minutes LAST time, when supporting said wreckage.

'They stepped from the yacht on to the blasted concrete apron to the spaceport and into a dangerously large crowd of refugees' - WHAT yacht! There WERE no space-yachts left conveniently lying around on the airless moon to give Sam a lift to another planet! (Let alone one where the Doctor can locate and pick her up in five minutes flat.)

'The TARDIS is probably getting all maternal about stars with problems, you know...' - alternatively, you could just NOT try to come up with any really stupid excuses for the unfortunate similarity to Janus Conjunction.

So Sam picks up some brat in god-knows-what refugee camp...and just happens - amid all the 200 billion-strong population of 23 worlds - to bump into his parents during a visit to Parliament shortly thereafter? (Cos of course all parents who've mislaid their offspring due to their solar system exploding will seize the opportunity for a little cultural sightseeing...)

'"I can't explain. You wouldn't understand." "Because I'm a man and you're a woman?" "Yes, actually." The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "But I'm not a man."' - ah, I used to be so grateful for such assurances. New Who has, however, rendered them a bit pointless. Plus why SHOULD the Doctor assume Sam is refusing to explain her bizarre and inexplicable actions just because they're of opposite genders?

Sam doesn't bother to tell the Doctor about the fact that one of the locals has picked up a bad case of (contagious) immortality WHY, exactly?

'I've died. I've died many times, in fact. I've never had "proper" children' - that's not what he says in the new series (re the children, I mean. It's a pleasingly New Who-ish way to look at regeneration).

Why would the nurse assume that Harome is Maresley's son rather than her husband? Is the age-gap THAT great? Did no one in this small colony introduce him as THE LEADER'S SON?

How many captains of a spaceship would obey a suicidal order because the person who issued it owned the ship? Wouldn't this be a GREAT moment to decide that Property Is Theft?

'Married? Well done. An excellent institution. Not for me, of course, always had a bit of a problem with the "till death us do part" bit' - oh, you just WAIT, Sunshine...

'Ah, youth... Been there, done that. Several times, in fact.' - Just twice, surely? Hartnell and Davison?

So this Doctor is effortlessly reading people's minds all the time, and missing Grace Holloway, and obsessed with sweets. I get the feeling Jim Mortimore watched the telemovie but didn't bother to read any of the subsequent EDAs. And who can blame him...

To be continued...

'Not for the first time, his wish was ignored by whatever higher powers governed the operation of this universe they had brought into being' - THE DOCTOR believes in HIGHER POWERS who CREATED THE UNIVERSE? Go worship that Terminus anti-matter spaceship, loser.

Why all these desperate attempts to save individual lives (other than to pad out the book to a respectable 250 pages)? Which bit of YOUR SUN IS EXPLODING do these people just not get?

'His thoughts turned inevitably to Sam, then, putting aside the pain of loss...' - how does he KNOW Sam's fatally stranded on an ice-planet? Or is he just referring to her not-going-with-you-this-time tizzy tantrum?

Belannia VIII's population has doubled in the last seven days (five days, according to a few pages later)? How the hell did fifty billion refugees make it to this planet? How many spaceships do these people have hanging around? Did no one on Belannia VIII try to close its borders to avoid this 'Malthusian Event waiting to happen'?

'Stillbirth, Major, will undoubtedly result in your sun turning supernova' - so why does the Major promptly decide to destroy said infant?

'As soon as you interfere...things invariably get worse' - says...THE DOCTOR?!

'Major General Smoot took the gravity generators from three inhabited worlds' - and they just LET him remove the ONLY THING that was keeping their planets safe?? In order to use it to destroy a baby-seeker-in-the-sun when its death would undoubtedly cause said sun to go supernova and destroy the ENTIRE SYSTEM - according to the man who BUILT all of those gravity generators and saved them all? (Quite how he did THAT in ten minutes flat is another issue, of course. One minute it said the Doc 'built' them, the next minute he 'designed' them, either way the speed with which they were constructed is breathtaking.)

'And the number [of refugees] tripled overnight' - and the entire population of all three planets evacuated to Belannia XIII OVERNIGHT...???

'You have done what every intelligent creature has ever done. Created a god, and allowed that god to be destroyed in your name' - surely every intelligent creature has more, well, intelligence than THAT?

'Do you have gods, Doctor?' 'Doesn't everyone?' - no they don't and NEITHER DO YOU, cretin. (It's not like the EDAs go along with the NAs' goddess/Eternals Time, Death and Pain, after all.)

'If you weren't the orphan you claim you would know this' - which bit of 'You never met my parents, did you' gave Sam the impression the Doctor was claiming to be an orphan?

'There were no more desires, or wants, or needs or confusion. Only life. Normal, ephemeral life' - yeah, cos THAT never has any desires, or wants, or needs or confusion...

'The light bathed the thousands around her, the billions more she could not see, the billions every one of them could no longer contain within their bodies' - so, er, the light removed the immortality microtechnology from everyone? That's...convenient.

Well, I enjoyed about the first half, even though I was somewhat confused about what was really happening. I liked Sam rescuing the boy she named Danny, only to have him die, only to have him brought back to life, only to have his parents be ungrateful to her for (partly) being responsible for his still being alive!

In the second half, I got more and more confused about what was really happening. Sam's partaking in Saketh's communion--thereby setting in motion her conversion to "immortality"--just seemed badly out of character for her. That being said, I did like the conversation between the Doctor and the converted Sam beginning on page 229--except that in ways I find hard to explain it didn't seem like a conversation from a Doctor Who novel.

I was somewhat confused about what was really happening

The secret to enjoying a Jim Mortimer novel is not to worry too much about THAT.

Sam's partaking in Saketh's communion--thereby setting in motion her conversion to "immortality"--just seemed badly out of character for her

Well, it was that or being DEAD, you can understand why she went for the immortality option in the circumstances.

Especially when you can trust the Doctor to sort it out afterwards. As of course he does.

That being said, I did like the conversation between the Doctor and the converted Sam beginning on page 229--except that in ways I find hard to explain it didn't seem like a conversation from a Doctor Who novel.

Dammit, at mum's again minus my collection - remind me to look this up when I'm back in civilisation...