Wetworld

[purplecat]

Just as I'd pretty much decided to cut my losses and give up the new series books along comes Wetworld by Mark Michalowski challenging me to revise my assumptions. It's about as old school (as in Virgin-Books-a-like) as its possible to be within the confines of the new series, throwing around mentions of adjudicators and world-building the details of the first expansion of humans into space*, even the obligatory kidult is sixteen years old, sensible, independent and could just as easily have been twenty. It is set on the planet Sunday, a swampy world inhabited by what turn out to be suprisingly intelligent otters (though the book is a little inconsistent in its treatment of their intelligence) and a small bunch of colonists all of whom are muddling along more or less happily when a meteor strike brings a strange tentacled monster to the world, followed shortly by the Doctor and Martha. So far so generic Doctor Who, in fact classic series fans will be picturing the Power of Kroll at this point. Be reassured though we are spared anything remotely approximating the swampies from that story, not to mention the attempts of the 1970s BBC special effects department to produce a giant squid.

While the book avoids many of the irritations of its stable-mates, length, if nothing else, prevents it having the level of detail I associate with the old new adventures (though on the plus side since many of them were a good 100 pages longer than their plot or prose could carry, this isn't necessarily a bad thing) and it is forced to be fairly to the point with little time to spare for description or added depth. On the plus sides it has a coherent plot, with interesting ideas and a monster with a sensible agenda and a interesting modus operandum. There was one character who I feared was about to turn into the kind of irritating bureaucrat Dr Who is so often fond of, closed-minded and inclined to respond to crises by locking the Doctor up, but fortunately despite the fact it looked like the story was heading this way he never did get round to arresting the Doctor, or impeding him with unecessary red tape. It's a good Martha book too, she gets to be resourceful and independent without it appearing forced but, on the downside, it also introduces a proto-companion, Ty Benson, who appears to steal some moments that should more appropriately gone to the Martha. This is made more obvious by Martha's clear jealously.

So, all in all, a bit of a mixed bag. Wetworld has flaws, but it is much closer to the kind of Dr Who book I'm interested in reading than almost anything else the new series books have produced. It's good, but not good enough, I don't think, to dissuade me from buying these books more circumspectly in future based on author pedigree and recommendations.



*by this I mean it's set on a colony planet during the first wave. The Virgin New Adventures fleshed out this milieau in a number of books. Wetworld doesn't add anything much to the previous world-building but is clearly singing from the same hymn sheet.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Do you think the current lot of hardback Doctor Who novels have anything in them that renders them unsuitable for children? I initially put them in the teenage section - Adult also buy them, so they're in the adult section, too - but children are forever clamouring for them.

There really is a need for more Doctor Who fiction aimed at younger children. There's a series of choose your own adventure books, which are going down a storm, but we need so much more.

[purplecat]

I don't think so, though I've not been reading with that in mind. I've certainly given copies to my niece (age 10) and nephew (age 8) without any qualms, though I chose ones I thought they'd like, and I'm told that the authors are told to aim for the level of the first two Harry Potter novels in terms of angst and scares - I'm fairly certain that there is nothing on the horror level that a child couldn't cope with if they could already cope with the TV series and some of the viewpoint characters, especially in Justin Richards' ones, are at the young end of teen, if not pre-teen. I guess if a child liked the show but needed to watch with parents to reassure them then I might have doubts about handing over some of these books (I could give you a list of the ones that would concern me on this level, but whether the things I find horrific equate to what a child might find horrific I couldn't say).

In terms of "adult themes" adultery is openly discussed in "Wooden Heart" but I can't think of anywhere else where sex gets much of a look-in (apart from being where all these kidults presumably came from) and its discussed in terms of the fall-out rather than any suggestion its actually going on any more.

I'd read them to G if I didn't think she'd get bored and complain about the lack of pictures.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Good! I've actually already bought extra copies for the children's sections, so I'm quite relieved. One member of staff - a Doctor Who fan - felt that they were fine for children, but another, also a fan, thought they weren't. (Perhaps they were basing their judgement on different titles.) I think the only thing liable to prompt complaints from irate parents would be sexual references or swearing, since these can easily jump out at them during a brief scan. A book with sustained "challenging" subject matter, dealing with issues likely to go over the heads of most children, is hardly likely to raise an eyebrow, even though such a book might actually be less suitable for children.

I also suspect that many parents are likely to think that Doctor Who = Children's, so it wouldn't even cross their minds that anything in there might not be suitable. Which, I suppose, means that I have a ready-made defence if anyone complains...

[iriswildthyme.livejournal.com]

Good to see I wasn't the only person pleased with 'Wetworld'. I read it on the plane back from the States when caught in the middle of a terribly enthusiastic group of Walmart retirees heading for a break in St Andrews, and it provided great solace and a place of refuge in the face of their unremitting jollity.

Hopefully, it may mark a watershed in the books - Paul Magrs' Sick Building from the same group of releases was also excellent and I enjoyed Mark Morris' book too. And with future releases from Simon Guerrier and Paul Dale Smith, two of current crop of Who authors who can really write, maybe things are finally looking up...

[purplecat]

I'm reading Sick Building at the moment (well until my shiny new copy the Queen of Attolia arrived anyway I was) and so far I've been less impressed than I was by Wetworld, but I'll see how it goes on.

... now all we have to do is entice Steve Kitson, Henry Potts and Jonathan Evans on here and I can enjoy watching my flist argue about Arcs and the comparative popularity of Dr Who and the X-files :-)

[iriswildthyme.livejournal.com]

Goodness, no - I came here to get away from that (or rather to stop myself going on endlessly and irritatingly, while we were all still talking to one another :-)