On to my 3rd 8th Doctor NA, and I had a lot more
difficulty with this one than Kursaal and Option
Lock...

SPOILERS!!!























It's hard to pin down what's wrong with Longest Day.  The
plot is actually very clever, and the Doctor and Sam are
VERY well written.  Let me go through my usual round up
to see if I can get a sense as to why this book failed for
me.

PLOT:  Rather complex, and at times I did have trouble
keeping track of it.  I think this was more the fault of
the pacing than the plot, though.  The plot was pretty 
interesting in and of itself.

THE DOCTOR:  Very well done, perhaps the best I've read so
far.  Michael Collier really manages to capture the present
tense-ness of the Doctor, his sheer living in the moment.
He also gets some primo angst time as well, but it doesn't
look out of place.

SAM:  Also well-done, though a bit wearying.  Watching Sam
going through her life-lessons had a tendency to exhaust
me while I was reading it, and while I sympathised with
her, I wish she could have developed a bit quicker. ^_^

VILLAINS:  Um...choose one from the hat, really.  Felbaac
was an utterly irritating git, Sangton was a sadistic dull
git, and the Kusks were just kinda there.  I did like the
Kusk leader, though.

OTHERS:  Anstaar worked best, perhaps.  Tanhith was all
right, and his comment about Sam falling for an ideal man
was good, if perhaps beating the point over the head.  The
others were cannon fodder.

STYLE:  Ah, now we get to the sticking point.  It took me
three weeks to finish this book.  Events move fast, and
you get the sense of things happening quickly.  Nonetheless,
this book *crawled*.  It was one of those books where every
ten pages you check to see how many pages you have till the
end.  The combination of fast-moving events and slow-moving
prose nearly did me in.  Another problem was the fact that
this book was very wearying.  The characters suffer through
one indignity after another, and by the end of the book I'd
gotten to the point where I didn't care.

OVERALL:  Michael Collier has a nice sense for character
and some interesting ideas, but his prose style definitely
needs work.  This book, considering how fast-moving the
plot was, should have rocketed along.  Instead, it moved
like a turtle.  Nevertheless, it shows nice promise, and I
look forward to his next one.  However...

6/10.

Next:  Alien Bodies, in about 10 minutes.

--SG