Book Review - Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer)

A while ago I was struck by a thought: I read the Artemis Fowl books compulsively when they were first published, yet today I can barely recall anything from them. I remember reading them while being dragged around on holiday by my parents. When I was around 11 I was on something of an Eoin Colfer kick and devoured just about everything of his I can lay my hands on: the Benny books, The Wish List, The Supernaturalist and the Artemis Fowl series.

I read his books because at the time, Colfer was one of those authors who seemed to be everywhere. I felt something of an obligation to read his work, even though I admit I can't remember enjoying much of anything he wrote (hence my failure to remember anything from them). Now in late adulthood, I thought it was time for a reappraisal of Colfer, and have begun with the first in his “cyber-fantasy” series, Artemis Fowl.

The simple-yet-absurd plot runs like this: a 12-year-old aspiring supervillain plans to kidnap a fairy so he can extort a fortune in gold from its comrades, which he means to use to rebuild his family's criminal empire. To Artemis Fowl's ill-fortune, the fairy he captures is Captain Holly Short, an officer of an elite police squad, which prompts the rest of her division to respond with extreme prejudice.

Artemis Fowl works largely because of its balance in tone. As said above, our protagonist's masterplan sounds like the sort of absurd scheme a child would come up with (though I'm sure plenty of adults have concocted far worse), yet is carried through with unwavering efficiency by Artemis and his allies. Artemis himself is something of a Stewie Griffin-type. He has the brains and audacity to potentially be a master criminal, but is tempered by a childlike sensibility. For instance, his scheme kicks off when he puts out an online advertisement which effectively says: Irish billionaire will pay lots of money to meet a fairy. This is the type of joke I only got as an adult – Colfer I've found is really good at this sort of adults-only stuff – but for Artemis it never crosses his mind that such an ad could be misinterpreted.

Artemis is also given some depth in his interactions with his henchman, Butler, and his demented mother. It's unsurprising that Artemis's only real friend would be his bodyguard, which gives the concept (a small boy giving orders to an immense, trained killer) a touch of poignancy. His relationship with his mother is even worse. YA books often have one or both parents missing, most often dead. In this case, Artemis' father has vanished and his mother is deeply traumatised by it, even haranguing her own son when she doesn't recognise who he is. It's a nasty bite to give to what is otherwise a punchy action-comedy. Thankfully Colfer doesn't wallow in it enough to make it melodramatic, but gives it enough attention to make Artemis more depth.

Of course, the fairy side of things is where Colfer really starts to go crazy with the concept. Our focus here is the Recon division of the Lower Elements Police – ie, LEP Recon. They live underground and travel in magma-driven capsules. The elves try to keep peace between warring goblins and dwarves. Occasionally they're forced above ground to deal with any escapees that may blow their cover, in one case a marauding troll.

Holly Short and Commander Julius Root give our insights into this world and how it functions. These are both likeable, engaging characters, though a bit too cliché. Holly is the young rookie eager to prove herself (first female Recon officer as well, in case it wasn't obvious enough), while Root is the short-tempered, cigar-chomping boss who always gives his team a hard time (but has a heart beneath it all). Nothing particularly wrong with any of this, but it's something we've all seen before in some variation.

One character who I remember enjoying even as a child (and still did this time) was Mulch Diggums, the kleptomanic dwarf who's roped into burglarising Fowl Manor. Mulch is the one character whose motives are not directly connected to anyone else's. He doesn't seem to care about stopping a war or about helping Artemis' plan. He only wants his freedom and helps anyone he can as long as it gets him that. He's like a far, far less annoying Jack Sparrow. His interactions with Root and Foaly are really funny (again, it's the sort of disgruntled dynamic adults would easier relate to) and his brief encounters with Butler are a highlight of the book. I only wish we'd had more of a confrontation between Mulch and Butler, though Colfer promises more in later books.

With Mulch we also come to the part that might divide people over the books and their appeal to adults, namely the scat humour. While a dwarf explosively defecating on someone's head sounds like something you'd find in a Seltzerberg movie (I'm sure it exists but I don't hate myself enough to check), I think Colfer saves it with his dry tone. As I said before, the book's balancing of ridiculousness and seriousness is one of its strongest points. The clipped narrative (by a fairy psychologist) makes a nice contrast with the crudity of the subject matter. I was anxious that Mulch's combustible bowels would turn me off the rest of the story, but it wasn't half as cringeworthy as I thought it would be.

I also found Holly's and Artemis' interactions all-too-brief, but fascinating all the same. The mutual disdain-cum-fascination teases a lot for their future encounters. Holly granting Artemis his wish at the end adds a further wrinkle, and I look forward to rediscovering how that develops.

Indeed, I look forward to seeing how all of this develops. Artemis Fowl proves a fun ride after all. I only wonder what I was missing out on as a youngster.

Film Review - Shaun of the Dead (2004)

If anyone's reading this (I know someone does because I check stats because I'm insecure), you might be surprised that it's taken me this long to post another review. This is partly due to laziness on my part, and partly to do with the general chaos and uncertainty of early adulthood. Enjoy your freedom while you have it, kids.

Today though I'm struggling to return to some sort of format by reviewing the 2004 comedy horror icon, Shaun of the Dead.

The movie centres on 29-year-old loser Shaun (Simon Pegg), stuck in a dead-end job, a failing relationship and living with his burnout friend Ed (Nick Frost). After a disastrous break-up with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), Shaun pledges to turn his life around. It's around this point that zombies begin to stalk the streets of London, massacring and feasting on anyone they catch. Shaun seizes the opportunity to prove himself by shepherding Liz and his mother to his local pub, the Winchester.

Shaun of the Dead is one of those movies that experts on British TV would call star-studded. The starring duo of Pegg and Frost, along with director Edgar Wright, all cut their teeth with the cult show Spaced, fans of which will enjoy the spiritual connection. Shaun may as well be Tim Bisley a few years down the line, where his dreams of comic book stardom have crashed and his life has lost all meaning. Nick Frost's Ed is an even more extreme example of loserdom, though Ed at least has accepted his lot in life, to the point where he fails to notice the impact his slothfulness has on other people.

The actors' real-life friendship adds a lot to the central dynamic, particularly when Ed tries to console Shaun after his break-up, and also when the two try to make a plan to survive the zombie apocalypse. Pegg is a charming enough actor to make you root for Shaun despite his major flaws, such as taking his girlfriend for granted. Ed, as a character, is a lot more obnoxious and is there more to lighten the film's darker moments. There are points where I felt (especially towards the end) where I feel Ed was a bit too over-the-top and I found part of myself wishing the zombies would just eat him already.

Kate Ashfield gives a decent performance, though she's relegated to playing the “straight man” to a host of more over-the-top characters. Black Books' Dylan Moran shines as her creepy wannabe-boyfriend, David, while also making for an interesting comparison with Shaun. David has a more successful career as a lecturer, and a girlfriend of his own, but his pining after Liz makes him seem somehow more pathetic – especially as he spends more of the film complaining then trying to be proactive. Lucy Davis also stands out despite a fairly small role as Di, Liz's friend and David's girlfriend. Like Ed, her character serves mostly for comic relief. However, this makes her dramatic shift towards the end of the film all the more impressive.

The film also has two British veterans as Shaun's mother Barbara (Penepole Wilton) and step-dad Philip (Bill Nighy). Wilton does a decent job but I feel like the film could have done more to establish a relationship between her and Shaun. In fact, I felt that Barbara's strangely muted reactions to the zombies was going to be a plot point – as in, perhaps the reason Shaun had been distant towards her was because she was going senile or something? Nighy is another performer who does a lot with a small role. His is another relationship with Shaun that really could have been expanded more, given all the potential it has. Shaun weeping as Philip dies is a great scene, but I feel it should have happened later in the film to add more weight. Then again, the film's final act is quite brutal for a comedy film, so perhaps Wright and Pegg wanted to space the deaths out a bit.

This brings me on to the next point. The first two acts of the film are a comedy with a few touches of horror here and there. The focus is less on the zombies and more on Shaun and Ed's confused reactions to them. The duo treat the epidemic more like an inconvenience than a threat to the human race. The climax of the film reverses this balance, turning into a bloody horror-thriller with only a few jokes here and there. When I first saw Shaun of the Dead (about ten years ago), I found the tonal shift off-putting and the gore and trauma to be incongruous next to the irreverence of the film's opening. This time around, I didn't find it quite so jarring, though I still feel Hot Fuzz did a better job maintaining a consistent tone. This is probably one of those cases where the first film is a learning process upon which later films build, though that's not factoring in The World's End (which I haven't seen since it's release and would need to revisit).

As for the overall theme of growing up, what I found interesting about the film is that . . . it doesn't really tackle it. A conventional movie would reduce the zombie epidemic to an allegory for the tribulations of life, with Shaun rising to the challenge and proving himself a hero – and also that he's ready to grow up.

Instead, the movie's treatment of this theme is more cynical. Look at the sequence where Shaun forms and then rapidly adjusts his survival plan: “Take car. Go to Mum's. Kill Phil. Grab Liz. Go to the Winchester. Have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over.” This is, I feel, one of the film's funniest moments. It also demonstrates Wright's manic editing style, which is well-suited to Shaun's short-hand.

The sequence shows Shaun's refusal to take the crisis serious, using it as an excuse to have another pint. One would expect Shaun to grow and become more noble as the film progresses, and he certainly tries, growing more empathetic to the plight of those around him. However, by the film's end, with the crisis averted, Shaun is back to where he was at the start, only now he's lounging on the couch with Liz instead of Ed. Liz, by contrast, goes from wanting to try new and exciting things (and dumping Shaun for lacking her enthusiasm), to happily settling for a life of ease.

The film starts off poking fun at the “zombifying” effect the rat race has on people, and yet by its end society hasn't really progressed. In World War Z (the book, not the movie), the epidemic has a profound psychological impact on the survivors, who radically reassess their lives in the face of the horror they've witnessed. In Shaun of the Dead, the survivors incorporate the epidemic into the tedium of before, with zombies showing up in talk shows and reality TV. Despite its unconventional style and heavy use of humour, Shaun of the Dead stays true to the Romero-interpretation of zombie-dom – that zombies are an allegory for the drudgery and inescapability of modern day life.

Is it worth seeing though?

Yeah boyyyyyyyy!

Book Review - The Fatal Eggs (Mikhail Bulgakov)

Today I review Mikhail Bulgakov's 1928 novel, The Fatal Eggs.

In Moscow 1928, zoology professor Vladimir Persikov stumbles across a momentous discovery: a ray of light generated in a microscope that causes cells to evolve at a lightning rate. This causes the frog population in his lab to explode, becoming more virulent and more aggressive to one another. As the media and the authorities begin to intrude more into his personal life, Persikov has to fight to contain an even greater threat: a plague of giant mutated reptiles.

To anyone who knows their history, The Fatal Eggs was published at a crucial point in Russian history. Josef Stalin had just gained control of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, and would soon impose his brutal dictatorial governorship on all of Soviet society. Given the tight control of all forms of cultural expression in Stalinist Russia, it's impossible to read The Fatal Eggs without trying to separate it from its historial context.

Bulgakov came under investigation following the book's publication for being an alleged counter-revolutionary. It becomes clear soon enough why that should be the case, as Professor Persikov hardly comes across as the model Soviet citizen. He's short-tempered and anti-social, is more concerned with his experiments than engaging with the society around him, and doesn't hide his irritation and contempt for the authorities who keep intervening in his life.

The novel opens with a brief prologue about Persikov's career during the Civil War (1918-1922). Rather than go off on a rant against the Whitists or the Trotskyists, Bulgakov focuses on how the constant rationining and War Communism (confiscation of food by the Red Army) causes Persikov's specimens to starve to death. This causes Persikov far more upset than the wider geopolitical forces tearing his country apart.

Persikov emerges as the sort of bourgeois scientist you'd find in the works of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells (Bulgakov gives a nod to Wells's story, Food for the Gods at one point). Like Verne's Phileas Fogg, or Wells's time traveller, Persikov is dedicated to science itself, caring little for personal relationships. One of the first things we learn about him is that his wife ran off with another man, leaving a note where she expresses her disgust with his keeping of frogs and reptiles. Right from the start, Bulgakov establishes a dichotomy between science and interpersonal relations, with Persikov choosing the former to give his life meaning.

Persikov is at times a comical figure with his constant grumbling and irritation at the world around him, like a Stalinist-era Victor Meldrew.

Bulgakov only adds to his consternation (and perhaps Stalin's as well) by depicting Russia as a grotesque parody of a country. He makes constant reference to neon news reports delivered by garish spotlights. The reporters who pester Persikov skew the facts to give him a celebrity status he tries to reject. Whether at home or in his lab, Persikov is bedevilled by the sounds of the outside world: trams, loudspeakers, broadcasts from the Bolshoi Theatre. Even the secret police, the symbol of Leninist and later Stalinist terror, come across as nothing more than a nuisance to him.

Instead of a flowering utopia built on equality and hard-work, Bulgakov portrays a Russia that's succumbing to a sort of insanity.

In an absurdist twist, the reptilian disaster is not caused by an evil plot, but by bureaucratic incompetence. A Party apparatchik persuades Persikov to let him use his ray on a batch of chicken eggs in the hopes of procuring a bountiful source of food for the people. A screw-up in the postal service means a batch of Persikov's own snake eggs are delivered to the experiment farm instead, resulting in a plague of enormous man-eating snakes terrorizing the countryside.

Furthermore, the day is saved not by Soviet might but (in another Wellsian parallel), by a fluke of nature: the Russian winter sweeps in and kills off the reptiles. Sadly, this isn't enough to save Persikov from a furious mob who blame him for the disaster. Bulgakov ends his black comedy with a suitable ending: the bourgeois scientist (an icon of 19th century literature) is destroyed by that symbol of Soviet fury, the angry mob.

At 100 pages exactly, The Fatal Eggs is a nifty read that nonetheless leaves the reader a lot of food for thought. Bulgakov follows a man at the mercy of greater events than himself, yet just about finds enough ridiculousness in the scenario to poke fun at it. In doing so, he creates a surreal yet poignantly apt depiction of a dark chapter in Russian history.

TV Review - Primeval Series One Overview

Today I start a series of overviews of ITV's science-fiction adventure series Primeval, which debuted ten years ago today.

I was fascinated with dinosaurs when I was a kid, so this show came out at just the right time for me. My love of all things prehistoric stemmed from the BBC's Walking with franchise, co-created by Tim Haines, who was also one of Primeval's co-creators.

The show sadly was never renewed in 2011, nor was its Canadian spin-off picked up after one season. Primeval largely seems to have fallen by the wayside since. While it was a far from perfect show, it was still a pretty big deal for ITV, a channel which hardly ever makes high concept drama of this sort. The show did also last for five seasons, far more than ITV's subsequent attempts like Demons or Jekyll & Hyde.

This series of reviews will revisit this old favourite of mine, and hopefully might tempt a few readers out here to check out or else revisit the show themselves.

Primeval centres around a sudden outburst of wormholes that begin opening across England. These wormholes (called anomalies) lead to the distant past or the future and allow all manner of weird creatures to enter the 21st century. An assortment of people become involved in the phenomenon and are hastily recruited by the British Home Office to contain the creature incursions, while keeping the anomalies' existence a secret from the public.

The team is led by Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall), a palaeontologist whose wife Helen (Juliet Aubrey) vanished eight years previously. He's aided by his assistant Stephen (James Murray), wide-eyed student Connor (Andrew Lee Potts) and herpetologist Abby (Hannah Spearritt).

Primeval's first series doesn't really have much of a story arc, apart from Cutter trying to find his wife. The mythology of the show, such as it was, wouldn't really be expanded on until future series. Series One acts more like a police procedural with prehistoric fauna instead of criminals. When I was younger, I felt Series One was one of the weaker ones for this reason, as I didn't get as much of a sense of drive from it as I got from subsequent series. On reflection this mentality has changed somewhat, though I'll expand more on that in future reviews.

The series pilot is a bit messy as they try to introduce every main character at once. We have an investigation into rogue predator attacks (a Gorgonopsid from the Permian), a local boy discovering a winged lizard, the introduction of the Home Office and the subsequent cover-up, and a foray into the Permian where the remains of a human campsite are found, setting up the series finale.

Cramming all this into 45 minutes, along with every major character, comes off as a bit of a misstep as it leaves the show feeling overly-ambitious and too thinly spread as a result. It does however leave later episodes a chance to specialise more in what Primeval does better: the creature attacks.

Given it's Framestore and Impossible Pictures, the special effects are pretty impressive for a TV show. There are a few moments though that feel a bit too gimmicky - moments where a monster will lunge straight at the camera, as if the show is trying to milk some cheesy, non-existent 3D feature. The Walking with series were portrayed as documentaries, so the subjects behaved in a more naturalistic fashion. Here, the prehistoric creatures play the role of movie monsters; the more frenetic pace doesn't gel quite as with the real environments, making the creatures seem a bit more artificial. Not that this is a huge turn-off if you watch Primeval with a mind solely to be entertained.

Kudos to the writers for generally avoiding the more cliched dinosaurs and sabre-toothed cats, at least for this series. Instead we get relatively obscure Permian and Carboniferous monsters, as well as some Cretaceous sealife. Dodos show up briefly, but this quickly swerves into a parasite horror story. While I like that the show tries to leave its comfort zone a few times, I found this plot a little too outlandish even for a show like Primeval - the show even tries to work in some Devil-possession-overtones with a deep voice and purple eyes. The end result is pretty laughable, which is especially unfortunate as the episode in question is meant to be a tragedy. Furthermore, there's a flock of dodos wandering from one anomaly to another in the past, no doubt spreading their parasites to God knows how many time periods, but this is never remarked upon.

The series finale really takes a turn though with the introduction of the terrifying Future Predator. The homages to the Alien and Predator franchises are pretty stark, but the conception of the creature itself is still effective. The Predators (who would go on to be a recurring threat) are a frightening glimpse into the future evolution of life on earth. It's quite a bleak statement for a prime time show watched by kids, though Doctor Who had helped pave the way with its own conceptions of a future gone to shit. It also culminates in an exhilarating creature-fight, ending the series on a strong note.

In terms of character, Nick, Helen and James Lester (Ben Miller) are the standouts. Douglas Henshall strikes a great balance between gruffness and endearment with his character. Cutter's more interested in the anomalies than having good relations with the army or the government (or even his colleagues), but there are some nice moments of humanity here and there. Two of my favourites are him rejecting Helen's offer to run away into the past ("You call yourself a scientist?" "I call myself a human being.") and consoling Connor after one of his friends is killed by a parasite. Henshall also gives the character a sense of authority, making for a good leading man.

His wife, Helen, is an enigmatic figure with no clear allegiance. Juliet Aubrey plays to her strengths with a beguiling yet weirdly sinister turn. Season One is definitely Helen's finest due to her ambiguity; she doesn't come off as malevolent, just preferring not to have to put up with the government telling her what to do. Her behaviour around Nick throws up questions of whether her isolation has made her this way, or whether this was the cause of their estrangement before her disappearance.

And then of course there's the fantastic Ben Miller, whose cold detachment causes plenty of friction between himself and Cutter. Like Helen, Lester is at his most fascinating in this series. He really comes across as a guy who could disappear someone if he felt they posed a threat to national security. He also gets all the best lines: "You spend all your life preparing for every single eventuality - up to and including alien invasion - and this happens. So much for thinking outside the bloody box."

The rest of the cast are decent, doing the best they can with their material, but the writing doesn't help them much. Stephen's a more stolid counterpart to the maverick Cutter, but often comes across as a piece of male eye candy. Connor can be downright irritating at times. Abby and Claudia (Lucy Miller) are decent, but like Stephen, they didn't stand out much for me.

Primeval Series One is one that I enjoyed more on a rewatch than I thought I would. I'll get around to the later series at some point, but for the moment I can say I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this series, despite its weaknesses and many lapses in internal logic. Worth checking out if you're a prehistory fan.

Film Review - Legend of the Werewolf

Today I review the 1975 horror, Legend of the Werewolf.

In 19^th century France, a young boy is found living wild in the forest by a travelling troupe of entertainers. The boy, christened Etoile, is taken in and raised into a strapping young man (David Rintoul). After attacking another entertainer in a sudden fit of rage, Etoile flees to Paris where he's taken in by a zoo keeper (Ron Moody), where he develops an affinity with the wolves. Before long, a series of grisly murders begins in the streets, and a local coroner (Peter Cushing) fears there may be a supernatural cause of it.

Legend of the Werewolf has all the hallmarks of a Hammer horror without actually being Hammer – it was produced by Tyburn studios. The shoestring budget is made clear from the measly carnival and zoo sets, but these in a way add to the feeling. The world of the movie is a seedy and awkward one. The cheap sets suit its weird characters, like Hugh Griffith's bombastic showman and Ron Moody's ratty yet somehow endearing zoo keeper.

It's a weirdness that reflects Etoile's strange relationship with the people he meets. The travellers treat him like an animal and keep in a cage, yet somehow the narrator (also played by Cushing) tells us that they become a sort of family to him. Likewise, Moody's zoo keeper comes off as a sleaze from the start, but has very brief moments of affection towards his strange young charge.

These weird tonal shifts add a charm of sorts to the movie, but I doubt this was the filmmakers' intention. The script and characters are paper-thin, and its up to the actors to wring any sort of life from them.

Fortunately, the film does have a fairly decent cast. Moody gives his zoo keeper perhaps more personality than such a thin role deserves. Lynn Badly plays Christine, a local prostitute and the object of Etoile's affections. She also brings some life to her role as a sweet but in no way timid heroine. Entertainer Roy Castle (best known for his children's show Record Breakers) provides some comic relief as a twitchy photographer.

Rintoul was clearly cast more for his beefcake looks than for his acting. However, I do remember enjoying his reading of an audiobook of Susan Cooper's The Boggart when I was a child, so it's not that he doesn't have charisma, it's just there's none to be seen here.

But of course, the real star of the show here is Peter Cushing, one of the stallwarts of British B-movie horror. Cushing seems to elevate the movie to a higher class by his very presence, playing an intelligent and rational coroner, Professor Paul, who seeks to find the werewolf before the police do, not to destroy it but to understand it. It's no accident that the film drastically improves when Cushing becomes the focus, who not only lights up the screen but delivers a welcome note of doom to the story.

If you're at all familiar with this particular genre of horror, you'll know what to expect from Legend of the Werewolf. Cheap sets, corny red-screen shots and thin plot abound. But it also retains some charm from its cast, and especially from Peter Cushing.

Book Review - Knots & Crosses (Ian Rankin)

This is a review of Ian Rankin's 1987 novel, Knots and Crosses, the first in the John Rebus series.

The story takes place in Edinburgh, where a serial killer is targeting pre-teen girls and strangling them. The police are baffled by both the seemingly random nature of the crimes and the lack of a sexual element. Meanwhile, DS John Rebus is being hounded by anonymous letters as well as a journalist who suspects he's involved in a drug-dealing operation.

This is quite an unusual crime novel. In the introduction to the 1999 omnibus, Ian Rankin says that he didn't set out to write a crime novel and was surprised when the book was categorised as such. It certainly shows as Knots and Crosses is far less preoccupied with the mechanics of the investigation than with the analysis of Rebus himself.

From the get-go, Rankin establishes Rebus as a deeply damaged individual. He has a disastrous relationship with his brother, ex-wife and daughter, still suffers PTSD from a period in the SAS, and has a poisonously cynical attitude to the city around him. Rankin avoids wallowing in his protagonists' misery however, and keeps the plot moving at a brisk pace to ensure the reader is never bored. Rebus' little bouts of depression (and there are more than a few) are enough to establish the character to the reader, but never feel drag on to the point that they feel self-indulgent.

The actual investigation is left to the supporting characters, mostly Rebus' fellow DS Jack Morton. Rebus spends most of his energy struggling to connect with his remaining family, while puzzling over the sinister but oddly vague letters he keeps receiving.

In a darkly comic twist, Rebus is also unknowingly being followed by journalist Jim Stevens, who suspects he's involved in a drug ring. Stevens has a similarly unfulfilling life situation, but expends his energy on his work. This manifests itself in an obsession with a drug story he's not even attached to, as well as pining for a female DI that Rebus is involved with. In a way, Stevens is a slightly more interesting character than Rebus as he's more proactive and drives the plot more, as opposed to Rebus who mopes around waiting for the plot to happen. That may sound like criticism but it's really not, as Rebus' self-paralysing depression becomes a mjor plot point (and again, Rankin knows not to push this trait too far to make him insufferable).

As with many crime authors, Rankin gives as much personality to the setting as his characters. Rebus projects his misery on to Edinburgh itself, seeing the whole city as an enabler for appalling crime. It says a lot for Rebus' state of mind that he begins to see his own trauma reflected on the environment. I was glad however, that Rankin didn't stuff the book full of geographical pointers and map references (as say, Ben Aaronovitch does for London). While I'm sure this can be a lot of fun for readers familiar with the setting, it can be quite alienating to those with no knowledge of it.

Knots and Crosses is certainly not a happy book, but I still found it to be great reading. Rankin knows how to balance plot with introspection without making things self-indulgent, and also creates a very evocative setting. Highly recommended.

Book Review - Doctor Who; Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible (Marc Platt)

Today I review the 1992 Doctor Who novel, Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible by Marc Platt.

A mishap in the time vortex causes the Doctor's TARDIS to collide with another ship, but not just any ship: a primitive Gallifreyan time machine (a Time Scaphe) from before the age of the Time Lords. The incident catapults both crews into a nightmarish world where Time has broken down. Abandoned by the Doctor, Ace must team up with the suspicious other crew to discover what's happened.

Marc Platt is best known in Doctor Who circles for writing the 1989 TV story Ghost Light, a Victorian adventure notorious for its balls-out surreality and sketchy, seemingly random plotting. For some, it's a tribute to just how successful the Andrew Cartmel template could be in the right hands. For others, it demonstrates just how dismal Doctor Who had become in its final televised years, as straight-forward storytelling is sacrificed for pretentious faux-intellectualism.

I'd count myself firmly in the former camp. I think Ghost Light is a classic, but I understand why a lot of people hate it and its style. Unsurprisingly, Time's Crucible has a similarly controversial relationship with fans, especially on the Doctor Who Ratings Guide. Unbound by the constraints of shooting a TV series, Platt lets his imagination run riot on the page. It's a fantastic read if you're in the mood, but only if you're in the mood. Otherwise it can leave the reader surly with themselves for bothering to read it.

This review comes after my second reading of Time's Crucible. The first time, I was impressed by Platt's imagination and the shameless manner he exploits the print format to create a story that could never have been realised on TV. However, I found his characterisation rather poor except for Ace. I was also lukewarm towards the Gallifreyan backstory; while I understand the temptation to want to explore the mysteries of the Times Lords, I felt this was something that was best left to the imagination. Like the Doctor's own backstory, there are some things about the Doctor Who mythos that are just better left in the dark.

I came away from the second reading enjoying the story far more. For one thing, knowing the basic plotline meant I wasn't as overwhelmed by the surreality of Platt's concept and could better appreciate it. I also enjoyed the Gallifreyan parts of the book, to my pleasant surprise. I still won't insist that Platt's vision of Time Scaphes, ancient fortunetellers and inferitility curses should be the “canon” version of Gallifrey (Doctor Who tends to be more enjoyable when its mythology is open to debate), but I thought the execution was intriguing and made the backstory worthwhile.

The plot is actually fairly simple when all the surreal aspects are stripped away. The 7^th Doctor is for once in a fairly vulnerable position for much of the book; he fails to protect the TARDIS in the beginning, and is genuinely at a loss for much of the story as to what is going on. This almost feels like an attempt to counterbalance the usual super-powered 7^th Doctor we usually see. Platt captures the character beautifully. One of my favourite moments occurs early on when the Doctor and Ace are sitting in a diner in Perivale, and the Doctor can clearly sense something amiss, but can't put his finger on it. The contrast between a mundane setting and the cryptic Doctor is a striking way to open the story.

Granted, the characterisation goes a little askew midway through the book when the Doctor loses his memory, and has to spend a good chunk of the book catching up with himself. The problem with memory loss in fiction – especially if involves character we already know – is that the reader doesn't learn anything new about the character in the process, because so much of the character's “arc” feels more like a character “loop” because ultimately, the character is only coming back to where they were at the start of the story.

This was my impression of the Doctor here the first time I read this book. On a second reading, I found that the Doctor does change a little throughout the story (in that he realises the full significance of the Time Scaphe and its crew, and the implications this has for him as a Gallifreyan). However, this could have worked just as well without the memory loss. It comes across like an extreme attempt to counter the 7^th Doctor's usual all-powerfullness. While I appreciate the intention, I don't think Platt had to go quite as far as wiping his memory completely.

Thankfully, Ace remains a fairly straightforward protagonist. This is still very much TV Ace before her development takes a sudden swerve in Love & War. Platt does a great job of getting across her brashness as well as her uncertainty. Platt shows his grasp of the two characters' relationship, with Ace torn between her distrust of the Doctor's manipulative ways, and her genuine affection for him.

Another benefit of a second read was that I came to appreciate the secondary characters more. We're not given much backstory on the Time Scaphe crew or their personalities, but their grappling with their horrifying future did make for an engaging plotline. The breaking down of Time brings the crew face-to-face with their own futures, allowing the story to explore themes of fate and predestination. To be honest, I can't say how well the book covers these themes (what with the general insanity of the concept), but I was at least more involved with the Time Scaphe crew the second time around. I can't stress enough that this is a book that needs to be read repeatedly to try to appreciate it.

Our villains are a bit of a mixed-bag. The most prominent is Vael, the sixth member of the Time Scaphe crew. We first see him on Gallifrey as a student with pyrotechnic powers (that are never really explained), and ambitions of breaking out of Gallifreyan society and attaining some grand destiny for himself.

Vael is an example of one of my least favourite villainous archetypes: the power-hungry schemer. He's so obsessed with his own perceived specialness that he becomes insufferable. There aren't any layers to his morality or character; he's just a straight-up bastard who screws everyone over just because. Even worse, the Doctor seems to agree that Vael is a greater threat than anyone he's ever faced (Worse than Sutekh the Destroyer? Don't make me laugh!) when really he's just another weedy collaborator we've seen a hundred times. On a second reading, I wonder if Platt was trying to tease the reader that Vael could be the origin of the Master (another villain who I'm not too fond of).

Our next villain is the Process, who is certainly more interesting than Vael, if only because of the sheer weirdness of its concept: an enormous sentient leech with two mouths on each end of its body, who also has an older and younger self (who co-exist due to the Time breaking down) vying for power. The Process is fun to read just for the fact that you know Doctor Who could never have done this on TV with the budget they had.

There are a few issues here as well, however. Where does the Process get its name? Where did it actually come from? Was it a Chronovore in the Time Vortex? That seems to be implied but Platt could have done us the courtesy of making that clear.

Also, its dialogue is pretty cliched villainous affair. The Process spends much of its time boasting of its impending victory, or else demanding the Doctor's destruction. The time paradoxes also mean it speaks in mangled present tenses, which can get a little tiresome. As a character the Process is weak, but conceptually, its one of the most inventive creations I've ever seen from Doctor Who.

Our final villain is the Pythia, and this takes us into one of the more controversial aspects of the book. Time's Crucible delves into Gallifreyan history and the Time Lords' origins to an extent Doctor Who hadn't done since The Deadly Assassin. Like that story, this has caused quite a rift in the fandom. Some people find Platt's vision of Gallifrey's past uninteresting, whereas others argue that the very act of exploring Gallfrey's past is a mistake, as it demystifies the Time Lords.

I can sympathise with the latter viewpoint having felt the same way after my first reading. On a second reading, I came to appreciate Platt's intention more. The Pythia symbolizes the old guard of superstition, whereas Rassilon and his followers represent progress and iconoclasm. The Pythia's curse shows that even progress can have a terrible price.

Rassilon himself also gets an interesting depiction here. Here we see Rassilon before he became the ruler of the High Council, when he was an idealistic and inexperienced student. Platt wisely doesn't delve too much into Rassilon's own lifestory, but we see enough of him to get a sense of who he is as a character.

I can understand completely why so many people dislike Time's Crucible , especially since this business of ancient curses and cults of prophets is too much like high fantasy to be recognisable as Doctor Who. I personally don't mind when the series does fantasy as long as the story is good, which I felt was the case here, but I can see why the book has such a controversial reputation.

Whether you'll like Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible depends on what you want out of Doctor Who. If you want fun, irreverant stories or in-depth character studies, you're bound to be disappointed. If you prefer general mindscrewiness, time paradoxes and obsessions with the show's mythos, I'd say you'll like this book or at least be fascinated by it.

Oh, and it even has a moon that turns out to be a giant egg.