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The Domino Effect (Doctor Who)

The Domino Effect (Doctor Who)

List Price: $6.95
Your Price: $6.26
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Reject This Effect
Review: It has been quite a while since I've read a book that makes this many little mistakes. Sure, it does a few things right, and there are also a couple of major blunders. But what eventually killed the story for me was the number of times I would be reading a short portion, roll my eyes, and utter, "Oh, come on!" At the outline stage, THE DOMINO EFFECT could only have been an adequate, mediocre adventure. But in execution, this book feels like death by a thousand cuts. I should have known right off the bat that this would be a poor one. The back cover gives us: "[the Doctor's] efforts are hampered by crippling chest pains." Our brave, fearless hero is facing the dastardly powers of crippling chest pains? Help! What next? Fitz stuck in the TARDIS with a hangover and Anji battling a ferocious Bad Hair Day?

I'll get the positive stuff out of the way first. The pacing is quite good. I never felt bogged down or bored. This is an important consideration, since if the book had not been as swift, it would have turned from being merely bad into being totally excruciating. Of course, the downside for this sort of pace in this sort of book is that the narrative jumps merrily from mistake to blunder to miscue.

The biggest "little" mistake that the author makes is something that I find particularly annoying. It's when characters are required to do really stupid things in order for the plot to advance. This is lazy enough when it happens to a character who exists only within the confines of the story. But it's unforgivable when it happens to a regular, continuing character.

Anji has, through the EDAs so far, been portrayed as an intelligent and capable woman. Why is she so slow to realize that something is wrong with this United Kingdom? Why do all the anachronisms and inconsistencies fail to clue her in? Why is she acting so dumb? The fact that history is in a state of flux has been known since TIME ZERO. Even if part of the audience came to this book fresh, this is listed on the back cover. So, before the book has even begun, the reader already knows that this is not the "real" Earth and must wait for the character to catch up. Seriously, how can Anji not pick up on any of the obvious clues? Okay, I'm not expecting her to nip outside and check the back cover of the current book (at least, not in a novel not written by Steve Lyons), but she at least lived through the end of TIME ZERO, and the clues she's given are blindingly obvious. Each time an abnormality presented itself to her, I would say to myself, "Ah, okay, finally she'll figure it out now and we can move on to something else" -- only to have her obliviously continue on her way. Argh!

I can't think of another book that I can see falling apart and falling out of control quite like this one. There are so many awkward passages that it gives the impression of being written in a single weekend. One can just imagine the author racing through to meet the deadline, clumsily throwing shallow, one-dimensional characters and implausible plot-points down on the page simply to have something to hand in. (Not to suggest that this is what actually happened -- that's simply how it felt to this reader.) The book never seems to know what it is doing. For example, the first thirty pages are told in a combination of flashbacks, and a straightforward, third person narrative voice. I actually liked the story being told in this way; it kept things interesting. But the journal extracts end within the first fifty pages, and the book continues normally. Why the switch? Why were they there in the first place? I enjoyed the first-person passages when I was reading them, but when they vanished without replacement, they retroactively came across as merely a pointless gimmick. Authors pick their narrative voice with reason, but I couldn't figure out what point this served in this novel.

Nowhere is the rushed nature of the book more evident than at its conclusion. It's actually quite easy for me to discuss without providing spoilers because I simply didn't understand enough to describe in detail. I read the conclusion. I reread selected portions. I then read some sections a third time. It still didn't make any sense. This conclusion makes less sense the more one thinks about it. The book tells me that the uberstory situation is now worse than it was before, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. It's bad enough that the ending consists almost entirely of technobabble, but I really object to it consisting almost entirely of incomprehensible technobabble. Even if it had made sense (and I concede the possibility that there exists a simple explanation that I am simply too dimwitted to understand), it's terribly unfair to end a book like this with a solid chapter of scientific-sounding nonsense.

I was quite disappointed with this book. David Bishop's WHO KILLED KENNEDY? was massively entertaining, engrossing, and utterly unforgettable -- in other words, the complete opposite of THE DOMINO EFFECT. Oh, and can anyone explain to me what the "domino effect" is as far as what it has to do with this story? Anji mentioned it in passing, but what it actually means here remains a mystery to me. Outside of the confines of this story, I would have said that it has something to do with one event in history having effects and repercussions long after the event has completed. Yet, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with this story, which is more a series of constant interference trying to produce one single circumstance.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Yes, he's done it! He's made a book!
Review: What a surprise! A Doctor Who book that doesn't get all funny after page 150!

The Domino Effect succeeds brilliantly as a normal, modest Doctor Who book that does not try too hard. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable read, from one cover to the next.

Sure, sure we're dealing with parallel universes, quantum physics, Monsters from the Vortex, what have you. But guess what? I UNDERSTOOD THE WHOLE BOOK. Incredible! Unbelieveable!

The book is well-researched without being stuffy, the book has nice plots and twists, the book has a nice bit of suspense, the characters react believably under stress, it makes you think a bit about the world you're in, it even calls into question some things our pampered, computer-literate, wired, unrepressed western society revels in taking for granted.

It is, furthermore, topical in that it is linked to the psychology of terrorism and the issues surrounding its repression.

It falls just short of being a perfect candidate to initiate a friend to the world of Who; unfortunately some knowledge of the previous novels (Sabbath!) is helpful in understanding what's going on. Otherwise, it's just a great and at times thought-provoking read.


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