Dead Romance (New Adventures)

Rating:
Summary: Stars in their eyes...
Review: According to Christine Summerfield, the 'world ended on 12 October, 1970'. This is the first of many conundrums in Lawrence Miles' fascinating novel in the New Adventures series. Immediately we are led to question the main narrator, a technique the author has used before, but never to such devastating effect. We are forced to witness the barbaric destruction of a whole culture - 'our' culture. Lawrence Miles uses the form of a pulp novel to dismantle the very conception of reality. All the motifs of the New Adventures are here: from Jack the Ripper who threatens Christine's life, to the mysterious race of time travellers, but nothing is quite what it seems. 'Dead Romance' sees the return of Chris Cwej, who appears to be working for the time travellers, who are in trouble. They find their power base usurped by sudden re-emergence of the incomprehensible and unknowable 'Gods'. Christine must help Cwej in his bid to build an escape route for the benevolent time travellers, via an entire universe entrapped within a bottle. However, the owners of the bottle don't want their space to be corrupted, and something much more horrifying has followed Chris in... 'Dead Romance' is a witty, macabre work by a novelist at the height of his powers.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I read in 2003.
Review: The thing I most applaud in any "series" book is that the novel stand on its own and not require the reader to already be familiar with the other books with which it is connected. "Dead Romance" fits the bill nicely. I had never read a "New Adventure" before, and I had no trouble following what was going on (well, it's more accurate to say that I had no more trouble following the proceedings than I think the author intended.) I think I'd even go so far as to say the reader needs no familiarirty with Dr. Who to appreciate it, but I can't say that for certain until I've field tested the book on a friend who isn't a Who-fan. The references to the T.V. show are all very oblique and indirect, and I think the narrative holds up perfectly well on its own.

It's difficult to tell much about the plot without spoiling the various unexpected twists, but I'll try. We begin with the narrator, young ex-bohemian Christine Summerfield, walking around a ruined landscape, writing in her notebook about how she survived the end of the world in October, 1970, with a vague implication that the world was destroyed by aliens. The writing style is that of a person telling something from memory, jumping around in time a great deal, suddenly remembering things that she ought to have mentioned earlier, and overall very informal, because she begins by saying that she is writing this record mainly for its therapeutic value and doesn't expect that another human being will ever come along to read it.

Add to this the fact that the narrator has a heavy drug history, and the story could easily become incoherent, but it doesn't. It ties up remarkably neatly at the end. There is a very good explanation for how Earth's civilization can have been destroyed 23 years ago and yet have left us here to read about it. It's not time travel--not really, anyway.

The book has some wonderful takes on the nature of reality, and yet the story is as much physics as metaphysics, all the cleverer because it's communicated through the words of a narrator who doesn't know any science (certainly no modern, post-1970 science). Great atmospheric stuff throughout the book describing London in 1970 (Not that I was in london in 1970, of course, so maybe it's wrong. It feels right, though). The alien civilizations and technologies feel genuinely alien and nigh-incomprehensible, not just people in funny costumes carrying zap guns. The Time Lords (never named, of course) come across as vastly more powerful, inhuman, and terrifying than they ever did on the TV series, and their adversaries are odder still.

I suppose what I most appreciate is that, when dealing with subject matter this strange, with a narrator who confesses at the outset that her memory is not reliable, most authors would be tempted to cop out and not even worry about the plot making sense, let alone being scientifically credible, and perhaps leave you with a book-length version of the last twenty minutes of 2001 (or perhaps one of those long, lumbering serialized TV shows like The X-Files that acquire so many disconencted loose ends that there's no way to tie them together in a way that doesn't feel incomplete or contrived). Here, the plot pays off, in a way that you don't see coming until it happens at the very end, and the best part is that it seems so logical, even inevitable, that you feel that you should have seen it coming and yet you didn't.

Christine is well-characterized, and even though her life (even before any aliens show up in it) is an utter, drug-addled mess of her own making, you really identify with her and sympathize with her. For all the bad choices she's made, she's anything but stupid.

In terms of tone, make no mistake, it's an extremely grim, cynical story. It's the end of the world, after all (after a fashion). Yet at the very end, after she has accepted and learned to live with all the revelations that have been thrust upon her, that acceptance, in and of itself, and an accompanying willingness to move on, offer a ray of hope. I think that's what really makes the story for me--to have everything, everything, EVERYTHING taken from you, and then to accept it, get up, and move on from it, because there isn't anything else TO do, is there?

An excellent, excellent novel. Exactly the sort of intellectual workout you want from a really good science fiction story, without in any way compromising its worth as basic fiction (strong central character, strong plot, strong tone and theme).

Rating:
Summary: The best book I read in 2003.
Review: The thing I most applaud in any "series" book is that the novel stand on its own and not require the reader to already be familiar with the other books with which it is connected. "Dead Romance" fits the bill nicely. I had never read a "New Adventure" before, and I had no trouble following what was going on (well, it's more accurate to say that I had no more trouble following the proceedings than I think the author intended.) I think I'd even go so far as to say the reader needs no familiarirty with Dr. Who to appreciate it, but I can't say that for certain until I've field tested the book on a friend who isn't a Who-fan. The references to the T.V. show are all very oblique and indirect, and I think the narrative holds up perfectly well on its own.

It's difficult to tell much about the plot without spoiling the various unexpected twists, but I'll try. We begin with the narrator, young ex-bohemian Christine Summerfield, walking around a ruined landscape, writing in her notebook about how she survived the end of the world in October, 1970, with a vague implication that the world was destroyed by aliens. The writing style is that of a person telling something from memory, jumping around in time a great deal, suddenly remembering things that she ought to have mentioned earlier, and overall very informal, because she begins by saying that she is writing this record mainly for its therapeutic value and doesn't expect that another human being will ever come along to read it.

Add to this the fact that the narrator has a heavy drug history, and the story could easily become incoherent, but it doesn't. It ties up remarkably neatly at the end. There is a very good explanation for how Earth's civilization can have been destroyed 23 years ago and yet have left us here to read about it. It's not time travel--not really, anyway.

The book has some wonderful takes on the nature of reality, and yet the story is as much physics as metaphysics, all the cleverer because it's communicated through the words of a narrator who doesn't know any science (certainly no modern, post-1970 science). Great atmospheric stuff throughout the book describing London in 1970 (Not that I was in london in 1970, of course, so maybe it's wrong. It feels right, though). The alien civilizations and technologies feel genuinely alien and nigh-incomprehensible, not just people in funny costumes carrying zap guns. The Time Lords (never named, of course) come across as vastly more powerful, inhuman, and terrifying than they ever did on the TV series, and their adversaries are odder still.

I suppose what I most appreciate is that, when dealing with subject matter this strange, with a narrator who confesses at the outset that her memory is not reliable, most authors would be tempted to cop out and not even worry about the plot making sense, let alone being scientifically credible, and perhaps leave you with a book-length version of the last twenty minutes of 2001 (or perhaps one of those long, lumbering serialized TV shows like The X-Files that acquire so many disconencted loose ends that there's no way to tie them together in a way that doesn't feel incomplete or contrived). Here, the plot pays off, in a way that you don't see coming until it happens at the very end, and the best part is that it seems so logical, even inevitable, that you feel that you should have seen it coming and yet you didn't.

Christine is well-characterized, and even though her life (even before any aliens show up in it) is an utter, drug-addled mess of her own making, you really identify with her and sympathize with her. For all the bad choices she's made, she's anything but stupid.

In terms of tone, make no mistake, it's an extremely grim, cynical story. It's the end of the world, after all (after a fashion). Yet at the very end, after she has accepted and learned to live with all the revelations that have been thrust upon her, that acceptance, in and of itself, and an accompanying willingness to move on, offer a ray of hope. I think that's what really makes the story for me--to have everything, everything, EVERYTHING taken from you, and then to accept it, get up, and move on from it, because there isn't anything else TO do, is there?

An excellent, excellent novel. Exactly the sort of intellectual workout you want from a really good science fiction story, without in any way compromising its worth as basic fiction (strong central character, strong plot, strong tone and theme).

Rating:
Summary: The best book I read in 2003.
Review: The thing I most applaud in any "series" book is that the novel stand on its own and not require the reader to already be familiar with the other books with which it is connected. "Dead Romance" fits the bill nicely. I had never read a "New Adventure" before, and I had no trouble following what was going on (well, it's more accurate to say that I had no more trouble following the proceedings than I think the author intended.) I think I'd even go so far as to say the reader needs no familiarirty with Dr. Who to appreciate it, but I can't say that for certain until I've field tested the book on a friend who isn't a Who-fan. The references to the T.V. show are all very oblique and indirect, and I think the narrative holds up perfectly well on its own.

It's difficult to tell much about the plot without spoiling the various unexpected twists, but I'll try. We begin with the narrator, young ex-bohemian Christine Summerfield, walking around a ruined landscape, writing in her notebook about how she survived the end of the world in October, 1970, with a vague implication that the world was destroyed by aliens. The writing style is that of a person telling something from memory, jumping around in time a great deal, suddenly remembering things that she ought to have mentioned earlier, and overall very informal, because she begins by saying that she is writing this record mainly for its therapeutic value and doesn't expect that another human being will ever come along to read it.

Add to this the fact that the narrator has a heavy drug history, and the story could easily become incoherent, but it doesn't. It ties up remarkably neatly at the end. There is a very good explanation for how Earth's civilization can have been destroyed 23 years ago and yet have left us here to read about it. It's not time travel--not really, anyway.

The book has some wonderful takes on the nature of reality, and yet the story is as much physics as metaphysics, all the cleverer because it's communicated through the words of a narrator who doesn't know any science (certainly no modern, post-1970 science). Great atmospheric stuff throughout the book describing London in 1970 (Not that I was in london in 1970, of course, so maybe it's wrong. It feels right, though). The alien civilizations and technologies feel genuinely alien and nigh-incomprehensible, not just people in funny costumes carrying zap guns. The Time Lords (never named, of course) come across as vastly more powerful, inhuman, and terrifying than they ever did on the TV series, and their adversaries are odder still.

I suppose what I most appreciate is that, when dealing with subject matter this strange, with a narrator who confesses at the outset that her memory is not reliable, most authors would be tempted to cop out and not even worry about the plot making sense, let alone being scientifically credible, and perhaps leave you with a book-length version of the last twenty minutes of 2001 (or perhaps one of those long, lumbering serialized TV shows like The X-Files that acquire so many disconencted loose ends that there's no way to tie them together in a way that doesn't feel incomplete or contrived). Here, the plot pays off, in a way that you don't see coming until it happens at the very end, and the best part is that it seems so logical, even inevitable, that you feel that you should have seen it coming and yet you didn't.

Christine is well-characterized, and even though her life (even before any aliens show up in it) is an utter, drug-addled mess of her own making, you really identify with her and sympathize with her. For all the bad choices she's made, she's anything but stupid.

In terms of tone, make no mistake, it's an extremely grim, cynical story. It's the end of the world, after all (after a fashion). Yet at the very end, after she has accepted and learned to live with all the revelations that have been thrust upon her, that acceptance, in and of itself, and an accompanying willingness to move on, offer a ray of hope. I think that's what really makes the story for me--to have everything, everything, EVERYTHING taken from you, and then to accept it, get up, and move on from it, because there isn't anything else TO do, is there?

An excellent, excellent novel. Exactly the sort of intellectual workout you want from a really good science fiction story, without in any way compromising its worth as basic fiction (strong central character, strong plot, strong tone and theme).

Rating:
Summary: The flip side of the Doctor Who universe
Review: While The Doctor (from Doctor Who) is trapped in his own nightmarish story arc, his personal history collapsing, other effects are being felt by some of his former companions.

Bernice, battered from recent adventures, does not appear in this book. Rather, the story focuses on ex-Seventh Doctor companion Chris Cwej. Only he isn't quite the man he used to be.

An agent for a nameless, time-travelling race, he believes he used to travel with an "Evil Renegade" who manipulated and tortured him and killed his colleague Roz.

In London in the 1970s, he meets a young woman called Christine Summerfield, who narrates the novel in the form of a diary. Only it's not the London of the "Doctor Who" universe, where the solar system has fourteen planets and the fifth is locked in a time loop. This is our rather more ordinary Earth, recovering from the Summer of Love, entering the hangover period induced by the 1960s.

Cwej is cagey about his mission, which somehow involves Christine, and shows a cynical, manipulative side which signifies the end of the naive character we know and love. The apocalypse the book promises is a fitting closing chapter in the life of the younger Chris.

Dead Romance ranks among my favourite New Adventures (including the old Doctor Who books), with the guts to take an established universe: Time Lords, Daleks, The People, The Doctor and get under their skin, re-writing them where necessary, showing them from an outsider's point of view.

The Eighth Doctor might be in the middle of all the action, but it's these very real characters who experience and suffer the consequences and side-effects of what he does.

Brilliantly written and eminently re-readable.