Sick Building

[purplecat]

Sick Building by Paul Magrs, has been very well received, at least in my neck of the woods, but I can't for the life of me see why. This book has much in common with his short story in the Doctor Who Storybook 2007 in that there is nothing actually wrong with it in any way, but compared to talking poodles, men transforming into lizards just because, a literally two-dimensional Mike Yates, and a Doctor who is half-human on his mother's side because his mother is a mermaid and so her top half is human this was pretty tame stuff. I wasn't necessarily a huge fan of Paul Magrs other Dr Who books but I was a fan of the fact that this sort of bizarre stuff was being written under the Dr Who banner. It now appears that, stripped of the permission to let his imagination run riot, Magrs is a competent but otherwise uninspiring author.

Sick building is, unsurprisngly, an evil building novel. Our heroes spend much time being menaced (or assisted) by vacuum cleaners, sunbeds and vending machines which, when put that way, makes it seem not so far from talking poodles after all but somehow this feels bereft of the sort of verve and excitement I picked up from Magrs' other works. Certainly the vacuum cleaners etc. don't seem particularly representative, or illustrative, or to be having conceptual fun with or of anything in particular. There is an (almost) obligatory kidult and another mention of the Doctor's apparent preference for Rose over Martha. As an interesting side issue the book was originally entitled The Wicked Bungalow, this being vetoed, by all accounts including his own, by RTD. Since I am at a loss to understand why "Sick Building" is preferable to "The Wicked Bungalow" I can only assume that this must be one of those reasons why I'm not in charge of a vastly successful television brand.

Comments

[iriswildthyme.livejournal.com]

I liked it a lot, at least on a par with Mark M's 'Wetworld', but I suspect that the level of enjoyment to be had depends on (a) your liking or otherwise for Magrs' books in general and (b) your willingness to make allowances for the fact that the NSAs are seemingly aimed aquarely at the less imaginative sector of kiddie readers.

If you liked only the idea of Magrsian poodles and 2D Mike Yates (makes me smile just thinking about that) rather than loving the actual prose, then the book is going to be a bit disappointing - stripped of the unique imagination you have to love the writing style to get a lot from 'Sick Building'.

[purplecat]

Hmm..., I think I was perhaps alienated from the prose early on by the incredibly over-anthropomorphised (which LJ tells me I can't spell) portrayal of the wolf. Just a personal bug-bear but it makes me view things as twee and ill thought out.

My favourite Paul Magrs book is the one non-Who one that I've read, Could it be Magic?, followed closely by one half (I'm sure you can guess which) of The Blue Angel. I really loved both those but the Scarlet Empress and Verdigris, while I can see what they're attempting, both ultimately ended up in the interesting and fun but no wow-factor category and in Mad Dogs and Englishmen I felt the passion of the argument tipped over into vitriol in places and rather marred the whole - probably the same could be said for the other half of the Blue Angel.