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Title: Camera Obscura (Doctor Who) by Lloyd Rose ISBN: 0-563-53857-0 Publisher: BBC Worldwide Pub. Date: January, 2003 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: 8 out of 8 for Octave
Comment: Unbelievable! A good 8th Doctor book. Even more unbelievable, after literally years of bland, boring and/or just plain bad BBC books, two excellent books (Camera Obscura & Suns Of Caresh) come along in the same month.
Camera Obscura has a plot. Well written, interesting characters that have a purpose - they drive the plot, they don't just go with the flow, wherever the plot may take them. A great setting. Doctor Who always seems to fit so well into Victorian London. In this case Lloyd handles the period extremely well. I could almost believe I was at the Crystal Palace? This book was generally a joy to read.
It was nice to read a book that can surprise me. I'm referring here to the 'unique' character of Octave. I assumed he was 'flitting about in time' for his stage act. The revelation of his true nature was quite a shock - obvious in hindsight. Unfortunately this brings up my first criticism of the book - I can understand the need for the different Octaves to take differing routes to and from the theatre. He can't afford for anyone to know there are more than one of him! But all 8 versions of him are living together in a small apartment, and none of the neighbours noticed? Again, all 8 Octaves are at the theatre every night and no-one noticed? Ridiculous.
Oh dear. Making the Doctor 'unable to die' (just because his 'old' heart is still beating elsewhere) is a bit far-fetched! But it gets even worse.
How to ruin a good book in one easy lesson, Get the Doctor to purposely get himself killed, so he can go to hell and ask the dead Dr Chiltern where the live Dr Chiltern may be hiding the time machine, knowing that since he can't die, he'll be resurrected by Sabbath's new heart (his old one), then go to the destination told to the Doctor by the dead Chiltern, only to find it's a wild goose chase, so go back to London and uselessly waste 2-3 chapters on a ludicrous premise that Hell actually exists and the Doctor is immortal!
Simple, wasn't it?
Do yourself a favour, when you read the book, skip the 2-3 chapters immediately following where the Doctor gets stabbed. They serve no purpose and the book is much better off without them.
9 out of 10. Read without the two offending chapters, 10 out of 10.
Rating: 4
Summary: What a ride...
Comment: CAMERA OBSCURA is a very good novel. It's not as good as Lloyd Rose's previous offering, CITY OF THE DEAD, as it lacks that story's rich attention to detail. On the other hand, while it may be lacking overall in comparison, it has some brilliant individual sequences that surpass the first book, and rival anything seen so far in Doctor Who book fiction. It has a few problems, but what the book does well more than outweighs the novel's few missteps.
I found many passages in CAMERA OBSCURA to be completely riveting, surprising and fantastic. There are sequences in which it is absolutely impossible for the reader to attempt to put down the book. And yet (and I do feel a little greedy for complaining about this) I'm not quite sure that the book flowed as well as it could have. Loads of the individual set pieces are amazing, but the glue holding them all together just feels a little lacking. Instead of the portions combining together to a gigantic crescendo at the conclusion, it seemed as though the book was forever starting and stopping, without really building on any of the brilliance. Again, this does feel a little unfair of me, because those standout pieces are indeed fantastic, but overall I couldn't help but believe that the sum was just a tiny bit less than all of the parts, given how wonderful some of those parts were.
As for what those wonderful parts were. Well, there are some absolutely fantastic sections of prose here. Chapter Twenty (the Doctor's decent) is as magical as anything I've ever read in Doctor Who. The Doctor's conversations with Sabbath, while occasionally coming across as gimmicky, are nevertheless penetrating in their insight as to how the two men see their place in the universe. The setting adds a lot to the story, although it doesn't feel quite as overwhelming as the New Orleans of CITY OF THE DEAD did. The carnival sequences work, not only because of their description, but, more importantly, because of the way the outlandish freaks and geeks react to the Doctor.
The humor in this story is something that I haven't seen much written about, but there were a handful of sequences that had me laughing out loud, and that's a wonderful thing that happens all too infrequently in Doctor Who books. Overall, this is a really good book that comes recommended. Comparisons to Rose's previous book are no doubt inevitable, and while I found CAMERA OBSCURA to be vaguely lacking in contrast, that doesn't take away from the book at hand. Occasionally magical, and never less than enthralling, its minor flaws don't stop this from being a required read.
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Title: The Domino Effect (Doctor Who) by David Bishop ISBN: 0563538694 Publisher: BBC Worldwide Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Reckless Engineering (Doctor Who) by Nick Walters ISBN: 0563486031 Publisher: BBC Worldwide Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Blue Box (Doctor Who) by Kate Orman ISBN: 0563538597 Publisher: BBC Worldwide Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Doctor Who: The Last Resort (Doctor Who) by Paul Leonard ISBN: 0563486058 Publisher: BBC Worldwide Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: The Suns of Caresh (Doctor Who) by Paul Saint ISBN: 0563538589 Publisher: BBC Worldwide Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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