Path: netaxs.com!usenet From: "Sean Gaffney" Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho Subject: Down: Review by the Happy Guy Date: 28 Dec 1997 23:36:28 GMT Organization: newsread.com ISP News Reading Service Lines: 88 Message-ID: <01bd13bf$30f6bdc0$ae80abcf@gaffney> NNTP-Posting-Host: nh-ts03-14.iconn.net X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1155 Xref: netaxs.com rec.arts.drwho:306108 Gee, if this keeps up, I may have to come out of semi- retirement. Nah. SPOILERS!! for Down... It's been a while since a weird NA has surprised me (after all, they do crop up a lot), but this one did. Down is...I don't know. I liked it a lot, but it's hard to say why, especially as most of the story we're told is doctored (so to speak). Lawrence Miles writes this sort of thing. Anyway: PLOT: Hoo boy. Complex. I thought Ship of Fools was complex. Ship of Fools was Ant and Bee compared to this. Messing with reality, archetypes all over the place (indeed, archetypes ARE the plot), once it gets started it rarely lets you think long enough to figure things out. BENNY: Well, for most of the book she acted exactly as we would expect Benny to act. However, this is thrown on its ear when we discover that a lot of it was 'rewritten' by Benny herself. Suffice it to say she's in character, and gets a ton of great lines. ASH and LUCRETIA: A study in relative opposites, both of these women are not quite what they seem. I'd like to have seen an epilogue where we find out if they really recovered, but...and the Appendix with Lucretia really needed to be seen. It's at the Shebeen website. VILLAIN: !X. Boy, talk about...well, calling him a nasty bastard would be utterly wrong. He just makes you uncomfortable, as all villains do, but without the reassurance of evil lurking round the corner. Certainly very much what a psychotic of The People would be like. OTHERS: Katastrophen was fascinating, as he made his journey of self-discovery and you began to understand him a bit. Kryptosa was a hoot. And Mr. Misnomer...reminded me of Jason, as I guess he was supposed to. STYLE: The high point of the book. There are incredibly awful puns, fourth-wall breaking, and even lots of serious tension. The mood of the book ends up being more light than dark, but not by much. OVERALL: Doesn't quite get the 10, as there were some slow bits about 1/3 of the way through, and the ending was rather rushed. But the book still drove you to finish it, despite its length. A worthy Benny book, and sets the stage for future books. 8/10. Next: Deadfall, starring Jason and Chris, and giving Bernice only a small role, as far as I can tell. The cover made me giggle. :-) --Sean Gaffney --then I may go back and do Beyond the Sun and The Dying Days...