From: Sean Gaffney Subject: Coldheart: Review by the Happy Guy Date: 23 May 2000 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <8gdi6p$4gt$1@nnrp1.deja.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.1 x64.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 207.171.147.17 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Tue May 23 09:15:13 2000 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDhotaru_chan Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 95; DigExt) This was a very hard book to review for various reasons, not the least of which was that it took me so long to get through it. And yet it wasn't exactly boring... well, lemme try and do the usual rundown. SPOILERS!!! Say this for Coldheart, it's relentlessly trad. Every single character, every single plot, every paragraph where the Doctor or Fitz rails against keeping free beings in poverty screams of classic Doctor Who, and only the most hardcore 'any book with Compassion is rad' fan could say otherwise. But is the book enjoyable? I'm not exactly a huge trad fan, after all... PLOT: Quite clever, actually. Yes, it's incredibly predictable, but the book is written so matter-of-factly that you go along with it anyway. The plight of the Slimers, the political wrangling, the Spulver Worm... it's The Mutants writ large. I should be more annoyed by its lack of originality, but I'm not. THE DOCTOR: Wonderfully well-written, and he manages to avoid making any incredibly moronic mistakes such as in Yquatine. I was very wary of seeing this portrayal, as I *hated* the Eighth Doctor in Baxendale's Queen of Eros short story, but luckily this isn't tortured angst Doc as much as bounce around the room and see what happens Doc. FITZ: Also well-written. Yes, he meets another girl, but this one has 'tragic romance' written all over it, and it's more of a mentor thing in any case. Plus we get to see Fitz be impassioned and care while actually being given reasons why he's doing so. Fitz as a character is developing so much better than Sam it's unbelievable. Speaking of which... COMPASSION: In the first part of the book, I was unimpressed, and felt Compassion was 'backsliding' to her 7of9-ish character we saw pre- Avalon. But once she and the Doctor go back to the ice mine, she really comes into her own, with long analyses of what she is, and how much of that is influenced by the Doctor. The Ancestor Cell is coming far too fast for me... I love Compassion's arc. VILLAIN: Well, Revan seems to fit the mould, being the standard mutated human turned mad by uncaring government-type. We also get Tor Grymna, a far more sympathetic evil tyrant type, and the ever popular worm from another planet. However... OTHERS: The weak part of the book, as none of the other characters really made much of an impression on me. Brevus gets a large role, but doesn't do much beyond being stalwart, the other Council leaders are cliches, and Florence exists to be tragic for Fitz. Shame. STYLE: Well, on the one hand this was a big flaw because the cliffhangers were certainly put-downable. I took a long time finishing this book, mostly as I felt no real compunction to see what happened next. On the other hand, the dropped textual one-liners were really well done, and made me laugh more than once. It was odd to see them, especially in a book this reassuringly straightforward (you'd expect it more from Dave Stone), but they didn't jar. OVERALL: Hmm... good book, but not a gripping page-turner. Nothing really wrong with it, aside from bland non-regulars, but nothing really soaring either, aside from very well-written regulars. 7/10. --SG --next up, Grave Matter, another trad book... I'm already getting dizzy --from too much trad... Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.