Book review: The Dark Path
Aug. 22nd, 2006 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleI have reviewed a Doctor Who book. Because I felt I should contribute to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
two_love and Two is hard to write fic about.
The Dark Path by David McIntee (Virgin Missing Adventures)
I'll repeat that: this is the story of how Koschei, the Doctor's best mate at university and seemingly quite a nice guy, becomes a raging megalomaniacal psychopath with a raging grudge against the Doctor and impeccable taste in facial hair. If that story's going to tackled at all you expect it to be brain-sizzlingly epic. With intrigue! And explosions! And, to quote a Mr Edmund Blackadder on what makes a good novel, if nothing else you at least hope for it to be crammed with sizzling gypsies!
In the event, a planet blows up, a couple of people get murdered and Koschei duly does his Lex Luthor/Joker/insert-arch-nemesis here thing, but it all feels a bit... flat.
Poking around online I found that a third of the book had been excised by the editors at Virgin. That goes some way to explaining my problems with the book (namely that the Master goes evil very quickly and with not much motivation, and that he and the Doctor have almost no interaction) but it does raise the question of why the plot's still so bloody slow. Most of it is focused on a Star Trek: The Next Generation-ish starship crew plodding their way through a Star Trek: The Next Generation-ish plot about some renegade colonists, while the Master and his companion and the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria wander around not doing much.
Speaking of the regulars, they're decently written; the Doctor is (I apologise for this) Doctor-ish, Jamie is Scottish (and uses lots of Scottish words to prove it) and Victoria gets some good scenes with Koschei, presumably because somebody had to. And that's the crux of my problem with the book - it doesn't feel like the great tragedy it should be when Koschei lands himself on the metaphysical 'dark path' of the title. He and the Doctor are going to forevermore be mortal enemies? All right, but it might have been nice to have some scenes with them beyond "you were my best friend" lip-service. He did it for love? Fine, but with the scenes about his relationship with his companion seemingly excised, his distress at her 'death' comes out of nowhere and his decision to commit genocide to get her back is baffling.
Perhaps inevitably, I found it disappointing, as if Snakes on a Plane had turned out to be about a kid setting a few earthworms loose on the Number 9 to Hackney Common: interesting enough, in its own way, but with the lingering feeling it could have been so much more.
two_love and Two is hard to write fic about.The Dark Path by David McIntee (Virgin Missing Adventures)
I'll repeat that: this is the story of how Koschei, the Doctor's best mate at university and seemingly quite a nice guy, becomes a raging megalomaniacal psychopath with a raging grudge against the Doctor and impeccable taste in facial hair. If that story's going to tackled at all you expect it to be brain-sizzlingly epic. With intrigue! And explosions! And, to quote a Mr Edmund Blackadder on what makes a good novel, if nothing else you at least hope for it to be crammed with sizzling gypsies!
In the event, a planet blows up, a couple of people get murdered and Koschei duly does his Lex Luthor/Joker/insert-arch-nemesis here thing, but it all feels a bit... flat.
Poking around online I found that a third of the book had been excised by the editors at Virgin. That goes some way to explaining my problems with the book (namely that the Master goes evil very quickly and with not much motivation, and that he and the Doctor have almost no interaction) but it does raise the question of why the plot's still so bloody slow. Most of it is focused on a Star Trek: The Next Generation-ish starship crew plodding their way through a Star Trek: The Next Generation-ish plot about some renegade colonists, while the Master and his companion and the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria wander around not doing much.
Speaking of the regulars, they're decently written; the Doctor is (I apologise for this) Doctor-ish, Jamie is Scottish (and uses lots of Scottish words to prove it) and Victoria gets some good scenes with Koschei, presumably because somebody had to. And that's the crux of my problem with the book - it doesn't feel like the great tragedy it should be when Koschei lands himself on the metaphysical 'dark path' of the title. He and the Doctor are going to forevermore be mortal enemies? All right, but it might have been nice to have some scenes with them beyond "you were my best friend" lip-service. He did it for love? Fine, but with the scenes about his relationship with his companion seemingly excised, his distress at her 'death' comes out of nowhere and his decision to commit genocide to get her back is baffling.
Perhaps inevitably, I found it disappointing, as if Snakes on a Plane had turned out to be about a kid setting a few earthworms loose on the Number 9 to Hackney Common: interesting enough, in its own way, but with the lingering feeling it could have been so much more.
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on 2006-08-23 03:04 pm (UTC)A completely stupid useless death like drowning in her own feces woulda rocked