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Rating: 
Summary: Time-twisting Who
Review: Anachrophobia is a plot that's searching desperately for some interesting characters to inhabit it. Fortunately, unlike the previous Who book, Hope, this plot is interesting enough to compensate for it.The Doctor, Anji, and Fitz arrive on an unnamed planet after the TARDIS is forced to land by some unknown force. The crew gets taken to Isolation Station Forty, an outpost in a very strange war. Neither the Plutocrats nor the Defaulters have been able to make any progress in the war in over 100 years. Another unusual thing about this war is that Time itself is used as a weapon. Areas of accelerated time (where a person can age, die, and turn to dust in the space of seconds) and decelerated time (where a second of time can last days) dot the landscape. Isolation Station Forty is a research base where the residents are trying to send soldiers back in time to break the impasse. Unfortunately, something appears to have come back with them during the tests. Something that could make the war itself meaningless. I loved Jonathan Morris' first Who book, Festival of Death. It did wonderful, twisty things with time and causality. This time, Morris tells a more straightforward tale, and it's not as good. The lack of interesting characters detracts from the plot instead of the wonderful plot making up for the lack of good characters. Don't get me wrong: the story contains plenty of strange, interesting things. It's still a good book. But Morris' weakness for original characters asserts itself. Hopefully, if he writes a third book, he will be able to rectify this weakness. He does try to give some of them a bit of back story, but it just doesn't seem to work. The main characters are a bit better. The Doctor is the best of the bunch, with his manic energy manifesting itself as he tries to solve the problem. He's a virtual dynamo as he goes from situation to situation. Unfortunately, there are times where he's not like this, where he's instead tired and weak. This ties in with the ongoing storyline about his illness, and makes a nice counterbalance to his energetic periods. It also provides a nice clue to the ending. Anji and Fitz aren't nearly as good, but they are passable. There is a brief reference to Hope, which gives some nice moments to Anji. But mostly, they are pretty basic. They react to events, wondering what's going on, and having to have the Doctor explain it to them. There isn't a lot that is new to their characters. However, they are definitely in character, and what there is of them in this book is pretty good. The highlights of this book, though, are the wonderful ideas that it contains. Throughout the entire series, I can't remember Time ever being used as a weapon like it is in this book. The idea of intentionally accelerating and decelerating time is great. This also provides some nice imagery, as the Doctor and friends journey through parts of this world in vehicles that are insulated from the effects. They stumble upon a decelerated scene where a man is in the process of being shot, and it's chilling. Then there is the idea of getting part of a body into one of these fields. It can really make you shiver. Then there are the creatures that end up invading the base. They can do so many things with time that it seems they are impossible to stop. Some of the things they can do defy logic, but they are so interesting that you don't mind. This forces the Doctor to come up with new and creative ways of dealing with them, which just adds to the sense of impending danger. While the characters aren't very interesting, the fact that there's so few of them does add to the menace as the station is attacked. One neat aspect of the book, at least for long-time Who fans, is that this is basically a base-under-siege story. Early in the TV series, there was almost an entire season where the Doctor and companions arrive at some sort of base just as it's about to be attacked. It became a bit of a cliché. Fortunately, Morris puts enough of a spin on it that you don't really notice it. He also adds to it, as they then leave the base to prevent an even greater catastrophe. Ultimately, this book is a satisfying read. While good characters are missed, the plot more than makes up for it. The beginning has a marvelously creepy feeling, and the tense atmosphere continues to a very surprising conclusion. It's definitely a must read for fans of the series, and it's still a pretty decent read for non-fans.
Rating:
Summary: Time-twisting Who
Review: Anachrophobia is a plot that's searching desperately for some interesting characters to inhabit it. Fortunately, unlike the previous Who book, Hope, this plot is interesting enough to compensate for it. The Doctor, Anji, and Fitz arrive on an unnamed planet after the TARDIS is forced to land by some unknown force. The crew gets taken to Isolation Station Forty, an outpost in a very strange war. Neither the Plutocrats nor the Defaulters have been able to make any progress in the war in over 100 years. Another unusual thing about this war is that Time itself is used as a weapon. Areas of accelerated time (where a person can age, die, and turn to dust in the space of seconds) and decelerated time (where a second of time can last days) dot the landscape. Isolation Station Forty is a research base where the residents are trying to send soldiers back in time to break the impasse. Unfortunately, something appears to have come back with them during the tests. Something that could make the war itself meaningless. I loved Jonathan Morris' first Who book, Festival of Death. It did wonderful, twisty things with time and causality. This time, Morris tells a more straightforward tale, and it's not as good. The lack of interesting characters detracts from the plot instead of the wonderful plot making up for the lack of good characters. Don't get me wrong: the story contains plenty of strange, interesting things. It's still a good book. But Morris' weakness for original characters asserts itself. Hopefully, if he writes a third book, he will be able to rectify this weakness. He does try to give some of them a bit of back story, but it just doesn't seem to work. The main characters are a bit better. The Doctor is the best of the bunch, with his manic energy manifesting itself as he tries to solve the problem. He's a virtual dynamo as he goes from situation to situation. Unfortunately, there are times where he's not like this, where he's instead tired and weak. This ties in with the ongoing storyline about his illness, and makes a nice counterbalance to his energetic periods. It also provides a nice clue to the ending. Anji and Fitz aren't nearly as good, but they are passable. There is a brief reference to Hope, which gives some nice moments to Anji. But mostly, they are pretty basic. They react to events, wondering what's going on, and having to have the Doctor explain it to them. There isn't a lot that is new to their characters. However, they are definitely in character, and what there is of them in this book is pretty good. The highlights of this book, though, are the wonderful ideas that it contains. Throughout the entire series, I can't remember Time ever being used as a weapon like it is in this book. The idea of intentionally accelerating and decelerating time is great. This also provides some nice imagery, as the Doctor and friends journey through parts of this world in vehicles that are insulated from the effects. They stumble upon a decelerated scene where a man is in the process of being shot, and it's chilling. Then there is the idea of getting part of a body into one of these fields. It can really make you shiver. Then there are the creatures that end up invading the base. They can do so many things with time that it seems they are impossible to stop. Some of the things they can do defy logic, but they are so interesting that you don't mind. This forces the Doctor to come up with new and creative ways of dealing with them, which just adds to the sense of impending danger. While the characters aren't very interesting, the fact that there's so few of them does add to the menace as the station is attacked. One neat aspect of the book, at least for long-time Who fans, is that this is basically a base-under-siege story. Early in the TV series, there was almost an entire season where the Doctor and companions arrive at some sort of base just as it's about to be attacked. It became a bit of a cliché. Fortunately, Morris puts enough of a spin on it that you don't really notice it. He also adds to it, as they then leave the base to prevent an even greater catastrophe. Ultimately, this book is a satisfying read. While good characters are missed, the plot more than makes up for it. The beginning has a marvelously creepy feeling, and the tense atmosphere continues to a very surprising conclusion. It's definitely a must read for fans of the series, and it's still a pretty decent read for non-fans.
Rating:
Summary: Anachrophilia
Review: For the first thirty or forty pages, I wasn't sure if I was going to like ANACHROPHOBIA at all. The beginning felt slow and unengaging. The characters that Jonathan Morris introduced initially failed to interest me. But as the book progressed I found myself becoming more and more intrigued by the story-line and the carefully constructed plot. By the time I reached the end, I had become completely engrossed, and I was still thinking about the complexities of the plot for some time after I completed the book. ANACHROPHOBIA is mainly a plot-driven story and it seems clear that there must have been a very complicated outline behind this book. It's a story that involves a lot of messing around with time travel and related temporal jiggery-pokery, but everything fits together just perfectly. The plot has been meticulously structured, yet it is never obscure or confusing. While it takes a little time to get started, once you get into the story, it never lets you go. Even some spots in the middle of the book that seemed like unrewarding padding take on a new meaning as later events unfold. It's a clever and well told story that carefully reveals just enough of the plot along the way to keep one's interest, but not so much that the reader figures out what is going on before the characters do. The characterization of the Doctor is another aspect of the novel that I initially thought I was going to hate. The Doctor spends far too much time at the beginning doing little apart from a lot of grinning. I was hoping that this wasn't going to be an unwelcome flashback to the ineffectual, smiling Eighth Doctor Idiot of many of the pre-BURNING books. My fears were for naught. Morris manages to slowly increase the Doctor's role as the story progresses until, by the time one reaches the end, the Doctor has taken the center stage and is the powerful, intelligent and eccentric character he always can be. The Doctor is the center of the Whoniverse, and the last forty pages do a marvelous job of demonstrating this. On the other hand, many of the secondary characters fall into the trap of being distinguished almost solely by their job description. Near the halfway point in the story, Morris attempts to give some of them a dose of much needed humanization, and only has mixed results. This additional characterization (done almost purely for plot related reasons) manages to triumphantly pull some of the individuals out of the whitewash, but for others the undertaking mostly falls flat. I enjoyed the clever attempt to base some of the plot around key moments in the lives of the characters, but I don't think it was an entirely successful effort. Still, the thoroughly engaging plot and the wonderful use of the Doctor more than make up for any misfires on other fronts. It's great to get a book on time travel that makes heavy use of the device and manages to stick so well to its internal logic. Morris made the art of explaining complicated plots look easy, and he effortlessly constructed an engaging, compelling tale. Definitely a book to enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Anachrophilia
Review: For the first thirty or forty pages, I wasn't sure if I was going to like ANACHROPHOBIA at all. The beginning felt slow and unengaging. The characters that Jonathan Morris introduced initially failed to interest me. But as the book progressed I found myself becoming more and more intrigued by the story-line and the carefully constructed plot. By the time I reached the end, I had become completely engrossed, and I was still thinking about the complexities of the plot for some time after I completed the book. ANACHROPHOBIA is mainly a plot-driven story and it seems clear that there must have been a very complicated outline behind this book. It's a story that involves a lot of messing around with time travel and related temporal jiggery-pokery, but everything fits together just perfectly. The plot has been meticulously structured, yet it is never obscure or confusing. While it takes a little time to get started, once you get into the story, it never lets you go. Even some spots in the middle of the book that seemed like unrewarding padding take on a new meaning as later events unfold. It's a clever and well told story that carefully reveals just enough of the plot along the way to keep one's interest, but not so much that the reader figures out what is going on before the characters do. The characterization of the Doctor is another aspect of the novel that I initially thought I was going to hate. The Doctor spends far too much time at the beginning doing little apart from a lot of grinning. I was hoping that this wasn't going to be an unwelcome flashback to the ineffectual, smiling Eighth Doctor Idiot of many of the pre-BURNING books. My fears were for naught. Morris manages to slowly increase the Doctor's role as the story progresses until, by the time one reaches the end, the Doctor has taken the center stage and is the powerful, intelligent and eccentric character he always can be. The Doctor is the center of the Whoniverse, and the last forty pages do a marvelous job of demonstrating this. On the other hand, many of the secondary characters fall into the trap of being distinguished almost solely by their job description. Near the halfway point in the story, Morris attempts to give some of them a dose of much needed humanization, and only has mixed results. This additional characterization (done almost purely for plot related reasons) manages to triumphantly pull some of the individuals out of the whitewash, but for others the undertaking mostly falls flat. I enjoyed the clever attempt to base some of the plot around key moments in the lives of the characters, but I don't think it was an entirely successful effort. Still, the thoroughly engaging plot and the wonderful use of the Doctor more than make up for any misfires on other fronts. It's great to get a book on time travel that makes heavy use of the device and manages to stick so well to its internal logic. Morris made the art of explaining complicated plots look easy, and he effortlessly constructed an engaging, compelling tale. Definitely a book to enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: As good of an eight doctor story as you can think of.
Review: I'm a pretty big fan of DOCTOR WHO. With the arrival of the internet (and the way it's made easier for a fan in Holland in obtaining WHO related items) my fandom has grown, and over the last few months I must admit it even has become kind of an obsession.
I really like the DOCTOR WHO novels the BBC has churned out these last few years (too bad the've cut back recently) and I am in awe of the more than brilliant writers that since have contributed to this series. Think of people like Mark Gatiss, David McIntee, Christopher Bulis and Lance Parkin.
...And now you can add Jonathan Morris to that list. Although this is the eight and last incarnation of the Doctor (so far anyway, I heard rumors about a new BBC tv-series coming up) ANACHROPHBIA is almost vintage WHO with it's claustrofobic/ under siege/ Pat Throughton kind of setting and the science based theories concerning timetravel and future societies.
I must say I really like the Doctor's latest companions Fitz and Anji and Morris makes the most of them, along with a few great supporting annex guestplayers. There's betrayal, mutations and transformations everywhere. I won't go into the plot (for this please read the Amazon description and the other reviews) I just have to tell you there's some great concepts (something evil lurking in time itself, the greed and profit based future etc) and the icy, snowcovered planet and abandoned, bunkerlike facility as locations really work.
Also worth mentioning is the very creepy bad guy, as represented as a typical English administrative clerk, complete with bowlerhat and umbrella. Man that works! I always thought of DOCTOR WHO as a marriage between science fiction and horror and that guy sure scared me witless. On the strenght of this I also bought Jonathan Morris' other BBC DOCTOR WHO novel; FESTIVAL OF DEATH (featuring another favorite of mine, the fourth doctor). I just can't wait to gobble that one up!
Meanwhile, please take it from me. This is the best WHO there is.
Rating:
Summary: Arc Fever
Review: If you're reading this review, you probably already know author Jonathan Morris from his 4th Doctor story "Festival of Death". You also probably know that he looks to be one of the most brilliant talents churned out by the decade-old "Doctor Who" books series. Here's a guy who can tie together complicated sci-fi concepts, air-tight plotting, and nifty characterizations, all without breaking a sweat. After one chapter of "Anachrophobia" I was looking to petition Amazon.com to allow me to give this book 6 stars. Then, I hit the rest of the book. Make no mistake, "Anachrophobia" has a brilliant setup. The early scenery is crisp: a planet stuck in time on a winter's night in a leafless forest. The story background is Douglas Adams funny: a plutocratic empire wages war against a ragtag team of loan defaulters. And there's real horror, as characters are killed not by bullets, but by accelerated (or decelerated) bursts of time itself. What bogs the book down is the lack of that something Extra. Maybe I was waiting too long for the book to tie back into the arc-changing events of "The Adventuress of Henrietta Street" a few books back. After the clock villains arrive... they simply lumber around for 150 pages, and become less menacing with each attack. It takes forever for the action to get out of the tiny underground bunker and back into the forest (or elsewhere). A character arrives on page 100 who's so obviously a decoy that I found myself skipping ahead (unsuccessfully) to the final pages in search of the name of the character he simply had to be. When the climax finally arrives, the book returns to brilliance. The sequence in which the Doctor is offered a chance to reshape his own past is of high TV-quality (I'd love to see this filmed). However, the Big Revelation is saved for literally the final three pages, and I'm afraid I was left scratching my head more than I was picking myself up off the floor. Raising more questions than you answer is a good thing... but this one basically negates the entire book and, while it's not a cheat, I thought it could have been revealed 20 pages earlier. In the final analysis, "Anachrophobia" continues the vast upward trend of the 8th Doctor books since the recent story arc began. Editor Justin Richards gets massive credit for his ability to link each of the books together, through well-placed references to the past 2 or 3 adventures. The events of "Adventuress" have paid off immediate dividends, unlike earlier EDA arcs which never quite managed to create cliffhanger tension from book to book. Add this to Morris's crisp writing and brilliant ideas (the Doctor's quote on pg 136 is possibly the funniest thing he's ever said) and you still have one of the best EDAs yet produced.
Rating:
Summary: Arc Fever
Review: If you're reading this review, you probably already know author Jonathan Morris from his 4th Doctor story "Festival of Death". You also probably know that he looks to be one of the most brilliant talents churned out by the decade-old "Doctor Who" books series. Here's a guy who can tie together complicated sci-fi concepts, air-tight plotting, and nifty characterizations, all without breaking a sweat. After one chapter of "Anachrophobia" I was looking to petition Amazon.com to allow me to give this book 6 stars. Then, I hit the rest of the book. Make no mistake, "Anachrophobia" has a brilliant setup. The early scenery is crisp: a planet stuck in time on a winter's night in a leafless forest. The story background is Douglas Adams funny: a plutocratic empire wages war against a ragtag team of loan defaulters. And there's real horror, as characters are killed not by bullets, but by accelerated (or decelerated) bursts of time itself. What bogs the book down is the lack of that something Extra. Maybe I was waiting too long for the book to tie back into the arc-changing events of "The Adventuress of Henrietta Street" a few books back. After the clock villains arrive... they simply lumber around for 150 pages, and become less menacing with each attack. It takes forever for the action to get out of the tiny underground bunker and back into the forest (or elsewhere). A character arrives on page 100 who's so obviously a decoy that I found myself skipping ahead (unsuccessfully) to the final pages in search of the name of the character he simply had to be. When the climax finally arrives, the book returns to brilliance. The sequence in which the Doctor is offered a chance to reshape his own past is of high TV-quality (I'd love to see this filmed). However, the Big Revelation is saved for literally the final three pages, and I'm afraid I was left scratching my head more than I was picking myself up off the floor. Raising more questions than you answer is a good thing... but this one basically negates the entire book and, while it's not a cheat, I thought it could have been revealed 20 pages earlier. In the final analysis, "Anachrophobia" continues the vast upward trend of the 8th Doctor books since the recent story arc began. Editor Justin Richards gets massive credit for his ability to link each of the books together, through well-placed references to the past 2 or 3 adventures. The events of "Adventuress" have paid off immediate dividends, unlike earlier EDA arcs which never quite managed to create cliffhanger tension from book to book. Add this to Morris's crisp writing and brilliant ideas (the Doctor's quote on pg 136 is possibly the funniest thing he's ever said) and you still have one of the best EDAs yet produced.
Rating:
Summary: Anachrophobia - Review
Review: Johnny Morris has built himself quite a reputation based
on one past Doctor adventure, the macabre yet utterly
Season 17 "festival of Death". For his sophomore effort
he has turned to the heavier world of the Eighth Doctor
adventures with "Anachrophobia". Let me start out right away by telling you that this
book is utterly superb. I may be biased in that I loved
Festival, but this book easily surpasses it. Plot wise
it's quite straight forward on the surface, Doctor visits outpost, outpost is conducting time experiments,
aliens invade, Doctor saves the day; but there is much
much more than this. The book constantly plays on themes
of "What If?" and regret, something that with the way
the line is going at the moment the Doctor is very
familiar with. Fitz and Anji get very little to actually do except run
around a bit, and the supporting character saren't
terribly likeable. The ideas behind the Plutocrats and
the Defaulters are interesting and added a certain
satire to the proceedings. The ending is ingenious and fun. Then when you think
it's all over the book blows you away in the last 3
pages. One of the twists is pretty well sign posted;
however the rest isn't so obvious and suddenly this book
turns from a great read into potentially one of the most
important books of the year. There is a great
cliffhanger too; is it really a month til Trading
Futures?
Rating:
Summary: Anachrophobia
Review: Oh, here we have another perpetual war going on somewhere in the Who universe. It seems I just read about the very same thing, not two books ago, in Paul Leonard's Dr Who effort called Toy Soldiers. I would easily report that the two books cover much of the same thematic ground...if not the same actual ground (yes, Toy Soldiers features the more traditional war-zone mud of the trenches, while this here tale, Anachrophobia, features snow and ice, and time storms). Morris's perpetual war is fought--between the Plutocrats and the Defaulters--with a smattering of time-manipulation thrown in with the grenades. Accelerated Time can be used against a soldier--the enemy soldier ages quickly and dies. Decelerated Time can freeze a soldier in place while enemy is chronally free to move around him. Best that a soldier not even catch a part of his body in any of these danger areas. Anyway, the big news is that, at Isolation Station Forty--where the Doctor, Anji, and Fitz hole up--the Plutocrats are trying to perfect a time-sphere that would allow them to end all the nonsense by going back to the beginning of the war and altering it in their favour. But this experiment looks to be the most likely cause of people turning into living clocks, and worse yet, this strange condition looks to be contagious once it gets loose. The Doctor works to stop the bizarre transformations before he, or his friends, get infected. The main problem of the book, the one that makes it less than brilliant, is the fact that the plot gets stuck at Isolation Station Forty for a heckuva long time. This limits characters to the same few rooms and corridors. Back and forth, back and forth. Into the medical bay; over to the control room; trouble in the time-sphere bay, better get over there; oops, back to the medical bay (a clockface person could get loose); down this corridor, through this airlock--oops, no, back inside, back in airlock, down this corridor, down that corridor; captured, locked in storage room; free, down that corridor, back to control room. Lots of that, lots of Isolation Station Forty. Thankfully, the final stages of the novel release the characters from their quarters, and the corridors, and the medical bay, and the control room, etc., at the Station--and we all get to go outside for a breath of fresh air. The Doctor races to a Defaulter village-outpost to finally discover who is really behind the war, and stop the weird infection. The coolest thing about the clockpeople is their ability to reverse time within a small area around themselves, so that they can "jump back" to a few seconds before they were in danger, or even killed, making them frustrating opponents. Their scariest ability turns out to be the offer they can make to anyone: go back and change the part of your past you most regret. But there is a terrible consequence for doing the irresistable. The book is again like Toy Soldiers, in its loony explanation for the perpetual war (different explanation, just as loony). So with that in mind, and also remembering that Isolation Station Forty gets a bit dull after characters have run around it for the fifth time, enjoy this entry despite its clunkiness at times.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, But Padded
Review: This is my second Jonathan Morris novel after Festival of Death. I enjoyed the book overall. The plot and story are orginal, inventive, and unique, yet still very Doctor Who. The dialogue is good, and the supporting characters are well-written. I especially liked the "monsters" The Doctor has to stop in this book. Morris has a very clever idea which is fleshed out well and explained satisfactorily at the end.
However, I noticed at times, the book felt padded in some places to meet the required number of pages by BBC Books. It seemed to get slow in certain places, and events seemed to drag on, and dialogue seemed to drag on, and nothing much would happen. Or the same things would happen, or it would take forever to explain how an event happened. Such padding, while annoying, is actually ironic for a story about time repeating itself, slowing down, or speeding up, but I don't think this irony was intentional.
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