strange and random happenstance

In 2014 the BBC successfully moved to acquire the rights to Agatha Christie's estate. Since then they have made nine adaptations. I actually couldn't bring myself to watch John Malkovich as Poirot so I can't pass judgement on it, but of the rest, two are fabulous, one is acceptable, and the rest are too painful to watch. In fact I couldn't even finish Partners in Crime it was so bad. AND they're redoing it with Conchita's husband from The Buccaneers who I've seen no evidence of acting ability from. Just hell no. There's only one Tommy and Tuppence and that's James Warwick and Francesca Annis. And while I'm at it, no one asked for that sex scene in The Witness for the Prosecution. NO ONE! I'm not saying that ITV wasn't guilty of crimes against Christie, they just weren't so consistently criminal. Plus, David Suchet! He IS Poirot and forever will be no matter what Kenneth Branagh thinks in his fever dreamed mind. Though one perfect show is almost worth the trade-off of all this dreck. And Then There Were None I have to say, from my point of view, is sheer perfection, but Towards Zero comes damn close. Though fans of ITV's Marple might find it a tad familiar. As Angelica Huston, in her first onscreen role in five years, looked out at a dead body being pulled out of the water while bemoaning the stupidity of man and rip tides I realized that I had indeed seen an adaptation of this mystery before. Back when Marple was gleefully pillaging all of Christie's back catalog this was adapted with added Marple and Greg Wise. And yes, it's because he wears a swimsuit that I connected the dots. But that's beside the point. The point is, I got see murder and mayhem with simply gorgeous dresses all at Tony Baddingham's house. Yes, Tony Baddingham from Rivals. Neston Park in Wiltshire has been in A LOT of shows lately. Or at least all the shows I've been watching. What makes this so good is the perfection of the casting, Oliver Jackson-Cohen is so so good and being bad. It's nice to see Jack Farthing being pitiable again. Anjana Vasan is the only answer I will accept for their being a season four of Killing Eve. I will watch Matthew Rhys as a hapless detective in anything! But most of all, there's Ella Lily Hyland. She's playing the first wife of Nevile Strange who is plotting to frame her for his crimes as revenge for leaving him. Ella Lily Hyland came to my attention in the highly lauded, but in actuality completely absurd, Black Doves. If while watching that show you wondered if everyone was a spy the answer is yes. Yes they are. But Ella Lily Hyland played Williams someone who changes alliances easily and loves a girl with a rocket launcher. In other words, she and Gabrielle Creevy as Eleanor should have been the stars of the show, not those nobodies, what's their names again? Oh yeah, Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw. I'm sorry, I just had to make the joke. Anyway, Ella Lily Hyland, an amazing actress, is totally going to be a star, she's the one to watch. As is this adaptation. Damn. Murder and elegance, what's not to love?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, And the Emmy Goes To, And Then There Were None, Angelica Huston, Anjana Vasan, Black Doves, David Suchet, Ella Lily Hyland, Greg Wise, Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Rhys, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Poirot, Towards Zero

Auld Acquaintance by Sofia Slater
Published by: Swift Press
Publication Date: November 3rd, 2022
Format: Kindle, 229 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Millie Partridge just can't catch a break. Going into the holidays single and unemployed makes her do something reckless. When her ex Nick sends her an invitation to a luxurious New Year's Eve party at a Downtonesque manor in the Outer Hebrides, Fairweather House, she uses the last of her money to get there. She is desperate for her life to turn around and this might be just what she needs, to ring in the New Year with an auld acquaintance that shouldn't be forgot. Though if she were looking for an omen, the scene of the fatal car crash she passes on the way to the ferry should have made her reconsider her plans. The island is so remote that the ferry only stops by when it feels like it and there's a storm moving in off the Atlantic, so the guests for the party are either on board with her or already ensconced in holiday merrymaking on the island. Which means Nick must have got there ahead of her. When she finally arrives at the supposedly stately home it's nothing like she imagined. This is more haunted house than manor house. And then there's Mrs. Flyte. The chatelaine who won't answer questions. Even the person who booked the venue is verboten. And as for the guests? Millie is crestfallen that despite inviting her Nick is nowhere to be seen. And what's more, these can't be his friends can they? There's an off-putting and enigmatic lawyer, Winston, a rather glamorous influencer Bella, and her partner Ravi, and James. James seems too normal to be there and like Millie he is rather out of place, which is making Millie ill at ease. Like she's fallen into a trap. But the biggest shock is that there is a guest that Millie does know. A person she hoped to never see again, her ex-colleague, Penny Maybury. What happened between them at their previous place of employment should never be thought of and Penny being here in the middle of nowhere is an unwelcome reminder. And if Millie thought that the party was off to a rocky start, well, it's nothing to what's in store. As they sit down for dinner it is revealed that the final two guests that were expected were none other than her and Penny's ex-employer and his wife and they were the fatalities in the crash that Millie passed that morning. This is a shock to the system. But not the first and certainly not the last. Come morning Penny is missing. Her coat out on the cliffedge the only sign of her. Was this deliberate or an accident? They have no way to call for help and soon it becomes all to apparent that this was no accident. Nothing was. They've all be brought here and not all will leave.

You can't talk about Auld Acquaintance without talking about And Then There Were None. And Then There Were None is the bestselling mystery of all time, which, OK, maybe that did surprise me, but at the same time, I get it. And it did bring us Aidan Turner in a towel. Of course this means that there have been many adaptations and reinterpretations, hello Aidan! Hell, even Agatha Christie changed the ending of her book for theatregoers thinking that her original ending was a little too bleak, which personally is why I like it. Auld Acquaintance is a retelling of this tale, and sadly a lot of people seem to hold that against it. Firstly, while Agatha Christie might be the best in the business, that doesn't mean that she somehow has the right to hold all the intellectual property rights over people going to an island and being killed off one by one. Yes, she did it spectacularly, but that doesn't mean that no one else can now use that trope in perpetuity. Because I personally found Auld Acquaintance to a complete and utter delight. Yes, it's derivative, but guess what? It has fun with the trope. This book brought me nothing but glee. Because while it takes from And Then There Were None it also takes from The Haunting of Hill House, making it this wonderfully Gothic melange that kept you guessing and wondering if, in fact, we did indeed possibly have something supernaturally Scotch. The "attacks" on the residents of Fairweather House really had the Shirley Jackson vibe of questioning your reality that I just can't seem to get enough of. And yes, even if you do figure out what is going on, which I did, it was still fun. This was the first book I read in 2024, in fact I started it on New Year's Eve 2023, and I would encourage everyone to do so. In fact I'm kind of wondering why I didn't reread it to ring in 2025... Because it is literally that fun. For me, the holidays mean murder, and if it can have a dash of Gothic dread, that just makes it all the more enjoyable. But most importantly, for me this book has given me a new author to look out for. While Sofia Slater's second book, The Serpent Dance, isn't available stateside yet, I couldn't wait to read it being as it sounds like it's heavily influenced by The Wicker Man and so I ordered it from Waterstones. Because once you find an author you love, you can never get enough.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Aidan Turner, And Then There Were None, Auld Acquaintance, Gothic, Murder Most Foul, New Year's Eve, Shirley Jackson, Sofia Slater, The Haunting of Hill House, The Serpent Dance, The Wicker Man

Auld Acquaintance by Sofia Slater
Published by: Swift Press
Publication Date: November 3rd, 2022
Format: Kindle, 229 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Millie Partridge just can't catch a break. Going into the holidays single and unemployed makes her do something reckless. When her ex Nick sends her an invitation to a luxurious New Year's Eve party at a Downtonesque manor in the Outer Hebrides, Fairweather House, she uses the last of her money to get there. She is desperate for her life to turn around and this might be just what she needs, to ring in the New Year with an auld acquaintance that shouldn't be forgot. Though if she were looking for an omen, the scene of the fatal car crash she passes on the way to the ferry should have made her reconsider her plans. The island is so remote that the ferry only stops by when it feels like it and there's a storm moving in off the Atlantic, so the guests for the party are either on board with her or already ensconced in holiday merrymaking on the island. Which means Nick must have got there ahead of her. When she finally arrives at the supposedly stately home it's nothing like she imagined. This is more haunted house than manor house. And then there's Mrs. Flyte. The chatelaine who won't answer questions. Even the person who booked the venue is verboten. And as for the guests? Millie is crestfallen that despite inviting her Nick is nowhere to be seen. And what's more, these can't be his friends can they? There's an off-putting and enigmatic lawyer, Winston, a rather glamorous influencer Bella, and her partner Ravi, and James. James seems too normal to be there and like Millie he is rather out of place, which is making Millie ill at ease. Like she's fallen into a trap. But the biggest shock is that there is a guest that Millie does know. A person she hoped to never see again, her ex-colleague, Penny Maybury. What happened between them at their previous place of employment should never be thought of and Penny being here in the middle of nowhere is an unwelcome reminder. And if Millie thought that the party was off to a rocky start, well, it's nothing to what's in store. As they sit down for dinner it is revealed that the final two guests that were expected were none other than her and Penny's ex-employer and his wife and they were the fatalities in the crash that Millie passed that morning. This is a shock to the system. But not the first and certainly not the last. Come morning Penny is missing. Her coat out on the cliffedge the only sign of her. Was this deliberate or an accident? They have no way to call for help and soon it becomes all to apparent that this was no accident. Nothing was. They've all be brought here and not all will leave.

You can't talk about Auld Acquaintance without talking about And Then There Were None. And Then There Were None is the bestselling mystery of all time, which, OK, maybe that did surprise me, but at the same time, I get it. And it did bring us Aidan Turner in a towel. Of course this means that there have been many adaptations and reinterpretations, hello Aidan! Hell, even Agatha Christie changed the ending of her book for theatregoers thinking that her original ending was a little too bleak, which personally is why I like it. Auld Acquaintance is a retelling of this tale, and sadly a lot of people seem to hold that against it. Firstly, while Agatha Christie might be the best in the business, that doesn't mean that she somehow has the right to hold all the intellectual property rights over people going to an island and being killed off one by one. Yes, she did it spectacularly, but that doesn't mean that no one else can now use that trope in perpetuity. Because I personally found Auld Acquaintance to a complete and utter delight. Yes, it's derivative, but guess what? It has fun with the trope. This book brought me nothing but glee. Because while it takes from And Then There Were None it also takes from The Haunting of Hill House, making it this wonderfully Gothic melange that kept you guessing and wondering if, in fact, we did indeed possibly have something supernaturally Scotch. The "attacks" on the residents of Fairweather House really had the Shirley Jackson vibe of questioning your reality that I just can't seem to get enough of. And yes, even if you do figure out what is going on, which I did, it was still fun. This was the first book I read in 2024, in fact I started it on New Year's Eve 2023, and I would encourage everyone to do so. In fact I'm kind of wondering why I didn't reread it to ring in 2025... Because it is literally that fun. For me, the holidays mean murder, and if it can have a dash of Gothic dread, that just makes it all the more enjoyable. But most importantly, for me this book has given me a new author to look out for. While Sofia Slater's second book, The Serpent Dance, isn't available stateside yet, I couldn't wait to read it being as it sounds like it's heavily influenced by The Wicker Man and so I ordered it from Waterstones. Because once you find an author you love, you can never get enough.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, Aidan Turner, And Then There Were None, Auld Acquaintance, Gothic, New Year's Eve, Retelling, Shirley Jackson, Sofia Slater, The Haunting of Hill House, The Serpent Dance, The Wicker Man

Smoke and Lies by Andrea Penrose
Publication Date: May 15th, 2018
Format: Kindle, 355 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

If there's one thing that Lord Saybrook and Arianna have learned, it's that if they won't do Lord Grentham's bidding then he will find leverage to force them to do his bidding. And his favorite leverage is family. This time it's Sandro's cousin, Eduardo de la Vega. Eduardo has been stationed on Elba, Napoleon's palatial prison, and has gone missing. Therefore it serves "everyone's" interest for Sandro and Arianna to travel to Elba. A gentleman scientist and his wife will be welcomed by Napoleon with open arms while really they will be listening for any concrete evidence that Napoleon has his eyes on his old throne and of course trying to find Eduardo. Lord Grentham though isn't taking any risks with Napoleon and therefore has saddled Sandro and Arianna with two rather sketchy associates. The Baroness Plessy-Moritz seems ill-equipped for espionage, but her friendship with Napoleon's sister is a boon, whereas Count von Wolfram isn't who he says he is. Wolffy is an old associate of Arianna's. He had been the proprietor of the Wolff and Lamb Theatrical Company, where Arianna learned her disguise skills back when she was fighting to survive in the West Indies. But how do his skills apply to this situation? As they all board the Basilisk none of them really know what they are in for. Their assignments are illusive and no one is what they seem and they have become becalmed in pirate-infested waters. Which is when things go from bad to worse as yet another person from Arianna's past emerges. What's even more humiliating than finding her in this situation is having him be the one to rescue her. But she can deal with that another day, because they must get to Elba at all costs, and so far it has cost the captain of the Basilisk his life in a back alley in Gibraltar. Reaching their destination is a miracle in and of itself, but how are they going to navigate the world Napoleon has built around himself when he is the greatest tactician ever? Perhaps by appealing to his sweet tooth?

This adventure is balls to the wall bonkers in the best possible way. It's Clue meets And Then There Were None meets Horatio Hornblower where you're constantly uncertain of your footing but enjoying every minute of it. But then, I've always been a sucker for big boats. There's something so classic yet powerfully elemental about old fashioned sailing vessels. They were their own little worlds and taking that concept and making it into a bit of a locked room mystery just made me giddy. Yes, I spent an inordinate amount of time when young dreaming of my perfect pirate ship, so taking that which I've always loved and the Regency addict I've become and making this wonderful confection just made me want to do nothing but read this book until I'd reached the very last page. What's more this is the first book in the series in its new iteration. For those who read the paperbacks like me, the recipes are gone. I'm of slightly two minds as to this development. As I have previously mentioned I found the recipes distracting as they interrupted the flow of the narrative. Stick them in the back was my initial response. But then by the third book almost all the recipes involved coffee or espresso so I changed my mind to get ride of them entirely. Now some of these recipes I actually want to try, but here's a clue about me, NONE OF THEM will have coffee. I don't just dislike coffee, I detest it. And I hate more than anything the adulteration of chocolate with coffee. Just don't do it OK? But seeing as the recipes are gone so are my gripes. My gripes about recipes. Now I have a new gripe. My new gripe is that since this series moved from a publishing house to being published independently you can see the lack of polish. There are some repetitions with turns of phrases that a good editor would have caught, but more irksome were the straight up errors. Wolffy changes how he addresses Arianna all the time. She's either Anna or Annie. If there had been an explanation as to this I wouldn't have minded him constantly calling her one or the other diminutive. There isn't. Therefore I am annoyed. But the bigger annoyance I had was that in the previous volume Arianna is lamenting her lack of knowledge of the Greek Mythology, which she hasn't had time to fix yet, but somehow she magically knows all these myths? Yeah, I'm not buying it. But I would say buy this book because the errors don't take away from the narrative, they just make you a little peeved every once in awhile. Is it Anna or Annie!?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And Then There Were None, Andrea Penrose, Arianna Hadley, Chocolate, Clue, Coffee, Editor, Elba, Gibraltar, Greek Mythology, Horatio Hornblower, Lord Grentham, Napoleon, Recipes, Regency Romp, Sandro, Smoke and Lies

Agatha Christie adaptations in recent years have been very hit or miss. And let's be honest, they're almost all misses. The BBC, Amazon, Sarah Phelps, and Kenneth Branagh should all be banned from ever doing another adaptation of Christie's work again. And whomever thought up the Partners in Crime reboot with David Walliams and Jessica Raine should be charged with crimes against humanity. Therefore I was understandably wary that there was a new adaptation of Why Didn't They Ask Evans? on the horizon. But once I heard about Hugh Laurie's involvement I felt a slight fluttering in my chest, was this hope? Was this the first hope I'd had since The Witness for the Prosecution? And yes, never watch The Witness for the Prosecution unless you really want to see Toby Jones in a sex scene no one ever asked for. And the reason I had hope for that adaptation was because the previous year's adaptation of And Then There Were None was brilliant. It was also the last good new Christie adaptation I've seen. And yes, that sadly extends to Why Didn't They Ask Evans? But here's the thing, it's not horrible by any stretch of the imagination. In fact it literally is the best of the newer adaptations, excluding And Then There Were None. The problem is it's not amazing, it's not perfect, it's just serviceable. It goes along at a decent pace and after three episodes you know why they didn't ask Evans. And that is probably where I had problems. I usually forget who commits crimes in books and shows unless they are really memorable or heavily foreshadowed or obvious from casting, so not knowing the answer is kind of important to give an element of suspense. Here the problem was I knew why they didn't ask Evans. The reason I knew why is from the weird Marple amalgamation where they ran out of stories after the departure of Geraldine McEwan and shoehorned Marple as played by Julia McKenzie into any story of Christie's that didn't have one of her continuing detectives present. So many stories stripped for parts and put back together in the most absurd ways. Yet for all the mysteries they changed and maimed, I remembered why they didn't ask Evans. So I just watched this show waiting for the supposed brilliant comedy and wit of Frankie, and it fell flat, though she did have some awfully nice clothes. I recently watched the old series of Partners in Crime starring Francesca Annis and James Warwick. Now that was fun, that was funny, that had what this wanted to have. And there was not a single miscast character in that series, seriously, don't get me started on Badger here. For some reason Christie and modern sensibilities haven't found a happy medium, and if anyone was going to succeed it should have been Hugh Laurie. Perhaps Emma Thompson might be willing to try next?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Agatha Christie, And the Emmy Goes To, And Then There Were None, David Walliams, Emma Thompson, Francesca Annis, Hugh Laurie, James Warwick, Marple, Partners in Crime, Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Smoke and Lies by Andrea Penrose
Publication Date: May 15th, 2018
Format: Kindle, 355 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

If there's one thing that Lord Saybrook and Arianna have learned, it's that if they won't do Lord Grentham's bidding then he will find leverage to force them to do his bidding. And his favorite leverage is family. This time it's Sandro's cousin, Eduardo de la Vega. Eduardo has been stationed on Elba, Napoleon's palatial prison, and has gone missing. Therefore it serves "everyone's" interest for Sandro and Arianna to travel to Elba. A gentleman scientist and his wife will be welcomed by Napoleon with open arms while really they will be listening for any concrete evidence that Napoleon has his eyes on his old throne and of course trying to find Eduardo. Lord Grentham though isn't taking any risks with Napoleon and therefore has saddled Sandro and Arianna with two rather sketchy associates. The Baroness Plessy-Moritz seems ill-equipped for espionage, but her friendship with Napoleon's sister is a boon, whereas Count von Wolfram isn't who he says he is. Wolffy is an old associate of Arianna's. He had been the proprietor of the Wolff and Lamb Theatrical Company, where Arianna learned her disguise skills back when she was fighting to survive in the West Indies. But how do his skills apply to this situation? As they all board the Basilisk none of them really know what they are in for. Their assignments are illusive and no one is what they seem and they have become becalmed in pirate-infested waters. Which is when things go from bad to worse as yet another person from Arianna's past emerges. What's even more humiliating than finding her in this situation is having him be the one to rescue her. But she can deal with that another day, because they must get to Elba at all costs, and so far it has cost the captain of the Basilisk his life in a back alley in Gibraltar. Reaching their destination is a miracle in and of itself, but how are they going to navigate the world Napoleon has built around himself when he is the greatest tactician ever? Perhaps by appealing to his sweet tooth?

This adventure is balls to the wall bonkers in the best possible way. It's Clue meets And Then There Were None meets Horatio Hornblower where you're constantly uncertain of your footing but enjoying every minute of it. But then, I've always been a sucker for big boats. There's something so classic yet powerfully elemental about old fashioned sailing vessels. They were their own little worlds and taking that concept and making it into a bit of a locked room mystery just made me giddy. Yes, I spent an inordinate amount of time when young dreaming of my perfect pirate ship, so taking that which I've always loved and the Regency addict I've become and making this wonderful confection just made me want to do nothing but read this book until I'd reached the very last page. What's more this is the first book in the series in its new iteration. For those who read the paperbacks like me, the recipes are gone. I'm of slightly two minds as to this development. As I have previously mentioned I found the recipes distracting as they interrupted the flow of the narrative. Stick them in the back was my initial response. But then by the third book almost all the recipes involved coffee or espresso so I changed my mind to get ride of them entirely. Now some of these recipes I actually want to try, but here's a clue about me, NONE OF THEM will have coffee. I don't just dislike coffee, I detest it. And I hate more than anything the adulteration of chocolate with coffee. Just don't do it OK? But seeing as the recipes are gone so are my gripes. My gripes about recipes. Now I have a new gripe. My new gripe is that since this series moved from a publishing house to being published independently you can see the lack of polish. There are some repetitions with turns of phrases that a good editor would have caught, but more irksome were the straight up errors. Wolffy changes how he addresses Arianna all the time. She's either Anna or Annie. If there had been an explanation as to this I wouldn't have minded him constantly calling her one or the other diminutive. There isn't. Therefore I am annoyed. But the bigger annoyance I had was that in the previous volume Arianna is lamenting her lack of knowledge of the Greek Mythology, which she hasn't had time to fix yet, but somehow she magically knows all these myths? Yeah, I'm not buying it. But I would say buy this book because the errors don't take away from the narrative, they just make you a little peeved every once in awhile. Is it Anna or Annie!?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And Then There Were None, Andrea Penrose, Arianna Hadley, Chocolate, Clue, Coffee, Editor, Elba, Gibraltar, Greek Mythology, Horatio Hornblower, Lord Grentham, Napoleon, Recipes, Regency Romp, Sandro, Smoke and Lies

Ten Little Aliens by Stephen Cole
Published by: BBC Books
Publication Date: August 22nd, 2002
Format: Paperback, 305 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Ten soldiers are sent to an asteroid. With their commander Haunt they are to participate in this final training exercise with the hopes of becoming part of the elite squad in humanities war against the Schirr. As soon as they get to their location things start to go wrong and one of their own goes missing. There is weird vegetation throughout the asteroid that has bioluminescence, as well as flea like bugs that are drawn to it. Chambers throughout have odd pillars and carvings with elaborate glass dangling from the center like free standing stained glass windows or chandeliers. When they stumble into what appears to be the nerve center of this odd asteroid they are in for another shock. Besides finding the leaders of the Schirr rebellion, DeCaster and the ten strong, apparently dead, they also come across an odd blue box. The Doctor is there with Ben, having already misplaced Polly. They are locked out of the TARDIS and are now face to face with soldiers who were not expecting to find anyone living out in this remote sector of space dangerously close to the Morphiean Empire.

Catastrophe soon strikes and the asteroid turns out to be a spaceship on course for the center of the Morpheian Empire, which would start a second war if humans were found breaching their boundaries. The asteroid also seems to be turning against the invaders. There are more disappearances, cave-ins, a few of the party start mutating, but most disturbing of all, the Schirr bodies start disappearing. It feels like they are being toyed with and The Doctor just needs to get his mind around what exactly is going on so that he can stop it before they all die or mutate into something entirely different. But The Doctor is an old man, can he keep up until he and his party can retreat to the safety of the TARDIS?

While I did enjoy Ten Little Aliens, there's a part of me, a rather big part, that says, while I enjoyed it, there was almost too much that annoyed me to actually recommend it to anyone. The book has a very Michael Crichton meets Battlestar Galactica vibe that takes awhile to actually get into and then, once you're fully immersed, does some seriously stupid things that alienate you, confuse you, and then just leave you happy the book has ended. The one thing I have to say is that thankfully the title of the book was deliberately a nod to Agatha Christie, which if it hadn't, would have seriously pissed me off and mystified me. But if you read the introduction, I don't quite get how Stephen Cole wrote this to be like a Christie mystery, but in space... just naming your chapters after Christie books and then having the bodies disappear versus pile up in a reverse of And Then There Were None... well, that's not really enough to categorize it as Christie related. And as for the "unreliable narrator," to quote Inigo Montoya "I do not think it means what you think it means." You need a first person narrator who has been concealing something from us, like in Christie's Endless Night, who turns out to be the villain. Someone we thought was good who turns out not to... well, that's just a plot twist used by almost everyone in fiction. If you want to see Doctor Who do Christie right, just watch the 10th's and Donna's episode "The Wasp and the Unicorn" and skip this author's delusions.

As for the worldbuilding... well... yeah, some things really hit the mark and some were so far off the mark there is no chance we even know where it landed. Characters. There are to many. Ten super soldiers, three from the Tardis, another ten Schirr, two killer robots, and countless other creatures... too much to handle, and this from someone who just read Stephen King's Under the Dome. I gave everyone nicknames, like pilot, geek, scary guy, cyborg, and moved on. Also, besides there being too many characters, they were all unlikable, each and every one. But how could I dislike The Doctor? Because he was irrelevant, a non-entity. He was almost unnecessary and old. He didn't need to be in this book at all, which mystified me, because, excuse me, Doctor Who book! As for the politics of this future world of Schirr and Morphieans... I really have no f'ing clue as to what's going on. The war/politics/genocide/creatures without bodies/dead creatures, was so badly explained that I am still a little mystified ever after The Doctor tried to break it down for me at the end. As for the environment of the asteroid, that was spot on, thumbs up. You did a good job of worldbuilding in the sense of the physical world. I could totally believe myself in dark tunnels with creepy plants and bugs, right on. I just wish Stephen Cole had taken this attention to detail with say, everything else in the book. As for the bad guys... well, these Morphieans constructs, whatever that means, basically, the big baby angels, the putti that liked to pull you to pieces... um, they could give the Weeping Angels a run for the money. Seriously scary. But then again, in the end, overshadowed by the book's failings.

But let me get to what destroyed this book, one full star just knocked right off. The "neural net." This is some kind of network that is a band you wear that connects all the soldiers together, to monitor each other and record their experiences for training purposes, or after The Doctor tinkers with it, so that everyone has access to everyone else's brain. The concept is understandable, but the execution is crap. Everyone starts referring to themselves as "we" so you have no real distinction between the vast overly abundant cast, and it makes everyone sound pompous. Though the nail in the coffin is the almost fifty pages wherein, not only are we stuck in the "neural net" of we's, but it's done as a "choose your own adventure!" Say what? You thought, as a writer, it would be fun? Really, justify this to me because it was just HORRID and pissed me off. Not only that, the writing suffered with bad prompts at the end of sections going: "I wonder what the Doctor is doing" or "Go see what Frog is up to" excuse me? I am not a seven year old who lives and breaths by these books. I never liked them then and I don't like them now. I hate that this book resorted to gimmickry and I am glad I'm done with it. Oh, and don't go on and on about the cover to the old edition in your intro, it makes you seem bitter that they gave it a cooler cover. I'm out, I've disconnected myself from the neural net, laters.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, Choose Your Own Adventure, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Book Challenge, Endless Night, Stephen Cole, TARDIS, Ten Little Aliens, The 10th Doctor, The 1st Doctor