Doctor Who Club of Australia

[Greg]

I've finished reading Justin Richards' second 9th Doctor novel, The Deviant Strain.

THis one is essentially a pretty standrad base-under-siege scenario. Set (probably) on contemporary Earth, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack head to the Novrosk Peninsula to investigate a distress signal picked up in the vortex. The peninsula includes an abandoned Soviet naval base, with nuclear submarines being left to rot. The villagers have largely been abandoned - they can't afford to leave, even though next to no support for their staying is forthcoming.

The arrival of our merry travellers coincides with a mysterious attack on a pair of young lovers, leaving one dead and the other transformed, and the arrival of the Ruissian Special Forces.

In many respects, the story is a bit of a whodunnit - there's things happening and (being Doctor Who) they are connected, but we don't know who from the wide cast of characters is behind it, or if it is entirely an outside force.

The story starts off well, building up some spooky happenings intoamn interesting situation, with the Doctor, Rose and Jack split up and investigating different aspects of the mystery. Then, about half way through, the book suddenly transforms into non-stop action as mysterious beings come out of hiding and pursue the cast, killing some of them, as the Doctor tries to pull all the strands together to end what could become a threat to the whole world.

The ending is quite sudden and has what seems to me to be a sudden extra threat that wasn't needed and, while foreshadowed to a degree, probably should have been excluded from the book as over-egging the pudding.

Justin Richards puts across the regular characters well (as people who have read his previous novel in this series, The Clockwise Man can attest), but this time his supporting cast are a bit nondescript. The fact that there are a fair few of them maes that a bit trying, and I note that it must have seemed that way to Justin as there are a couple of times when a bit of what the character haa done previously is mentioned to make sure we remember who it is.

In my view, it's a novel of two halves - a good start and a not-so-good finish.

Oh, and the title's crap! Even an attempt to expalin it in the book falls flat. IT was used, we're told in the acknowledgements, because it's the name of the typeface used on some new Who merchandising. My advice: find a name that suits the book, don't use a 'clever' refernce to something inthe real world.

[Kerr Avon]

can't argue with anything you've said there Greg.

to me this book felt more like a novelization-of-a-TV-story than the first three NDAs. I never felt I really got to know the supporting cast or the setting.

a fun read nevertheless. my daughter (aged ten) will be allowed to read it, but I won't be reading it aloud to my wife and younger kids (to whom I've read The Clockwise Man and Winner Takes All)

[Ace]

The Curse of Fenric rides again

I did like it very much though...maybe because where Doctor Who is concerned I'm very easily pleased. I have to agree about the title though, not very wise really...the reason for using it, I mean.

The characters are very well put across though, in all the books. They're just how they appear in the series and I think I get more out of reading the ninth Doctor books because I can hear them as I read them

Ace

[SharazJek]

Just finished this one.

I enjoyed it more than Stealers of Dreams but not as much as Only Human, which still ranks as my favourite out of all 6 of the ninth Doctor releases. Captain Jack on the cover might have been nice for the second three though.

As Greg stated earlier, around the middle of the story it turns rapidly from a mystery into an all out action adventure, but it was told reasonably well, and I never lost interest.

I don't particularly like some of Justin's phrasing. It feels in some cases like he is still in 'Children's Book' mode. But let's face it, that is mainly what he writes. But I don't think children should be written down to quite as much as he does in this story. Why not write properly so children can learn how to read, write and speak properly?

Characterisation was not quite on par with some of the other books, especially Captain Jack. He spends most of this one in a very angry and millitary mood, which I guess we saw in Parting of the Ways on tv, but the comic banter between he and the Doctor which I enjoy immensely was sorely missing. Rose seemed to be missing something too but the Doctor was written very nicely I thought. In any case the story appealed to me so I wasn't too concerned.

I couldn't get images of Fargo out of my head while reading this, and towards the end I couldn't help but think of Ray Harrihausen animation.

I can't rate most of the 9th novels above good, as I'm not really from the target age group and the style doesn't really appeal to me. But if I were back in my early teens I would be revelling in this series of books!

[Kerr Avon]

[the wheel]

i voted for fantastic simply because this story was so exciting i read it in one sitting

it may not have deep characters but it kept me hooked for a couple of hours

[montypython]

For me this was a real page-turner. I really liked the action and the plot twists. The ending was also really nice.