Within hours one of the Doctor's friends is caught in a deadly explosion, while another appears on television confessing to the murder of twelve people. The TARDIS is stolen by forces intent on learning its secrets. When the Doctor tries to investigate, his efforts are hampered by crippling chest pains. Someone is manipulating events to suppress humanity's development - but how and why? The trail leads to London where a cabal pushes the world ever closer to catastrophe. Who is the prisoner being held in the Tower of London? Could he or she hold the key to saving mankind? The Doctor must choose between saving his friends or saving Earth in the past, present and future. But the closer he gets to the truth, the worse his condition becomes...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Reject This Effect,
By Andrew McCaffrey "The Grumpy Young Man" (Satellite of Love, Maryland) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Domino Effect (Doctor Who) (Paperback)
It has been quite a while since I've read a book that makes this many little mistakes. Sure, it does a few things right, and there are also a couple of major blunders. But what eventually killed the story for me was the number of times I would be reading a short portion, roll my eyes, and utter, "Oh, come on!" At the outline stage, THE DOMINO EFFECT could only have been an adequate, mediocre adventure. But in execution, this book feels like death by a thousand cuts. I should have known right off the bat that this would be a poor one. The back cover gives us: "[the Doctor's] efforts are hampered by crippling chest pains." Our brave, fearless hero is facing the dastardly powers of crippling chest pains? Help! What next? Fitz stuck in the TARDIS with a hangover and Anji battling a ferocious Bad Hair Day?I'll get the positive stuff out of the way first. The pacing is quite good. I never felt bogged down or bored. This is an important consideration, since if the book had not been as swift, it would have turned from being merely bad into being totally excruciating. Of course, the downside for this sort of pace in this sort of book is that the narrative jumps merrily from mistake to blunder to miscue. The biggest "little" mistake that the author makes is something that I find particularly annoying. It's when characters are required to do really stupid things in order for the plot to advance. This is lazy enough when it happens to a character who exists only within the confines of the story. But it's unforgivable when it happens to a regular, continuing character. Anji has, through the EDAs so far, been portrayed as an intelligent and capable woman. Why is she so slow to realize that something is wrong with this United Kingdom? Why do all the anachronisms and inconsistencies fail to clue her in? Why is she acting so dumb? The fact that history is in a state of flux has been known since TIME ZERO. Even if part of the audience came to this book fresh, this is listed on the back cover. So, before the book has even begun, the reader already knows that this is not the "real" Earth and must wait for the character to catch up. Seriously, how can Anji not pick up on any of the obvious clues? Okay, I'm not expecting her to nip outside and check the back cover of the current book (at least, not in a novel not written by Steve Lyons), but she at least lived through the end of TIME ZERO, and the clues she's given are blindingly obvious. Each time an abnormality presented itself to her, I would say to myself, "Ah, okay, finally she'll figure it out now and we can move on to something else" -- only to have her obliviously continue on her way. Argh! I can't think of another book that I can see falling apart and falling out of control quite like this one. There are so many awkward passages that it gives the impression of being written in a single weekend. One can just imagine the author racing through to meet the deadline, clumsily throwing shallow, one-dimensional characters and implausible plot-points down on the page simply to have something to hand in. (Not to suggest that this is what actually happened -- that's simply how it felt to this reader.) The book never seems to know what it is doing. For example, the first thirty pages are told in a combination of flashbacks, and a straightforward, third person narrative voice. I actually liked the story being told in this way; it kept things interesting. But the journal extracts end within the first fifty pages, and the book continues normally. Why the switch? Why were they there in the first place? I enjoyed the first-person passages when I was reading them, but when they vanished without replacement, they retroactively came across as merely a pointless gimmick. Authors pick their narrative voice with reason, but I couldn't figure out what point this served in this novel. Nowhere is the rushed nature of the book more evident than at its conclusion. It's actually quite easy for me to discuss without providing spoilers because I simply didn't understand enough to describe in detail. I read the conclusion. I reread selected portions. I then read some sections a third time. It still didn't make any sense. This conclusion makes less sense the more one thinks about it. The book tells me that the uberstory situation is now worse than it was before, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. It's bad enough that the ending consists almost entirely of technobabble, but I really object to it consisting almost entirely of incomprehensible technobabble. Even if it had made sense (and I concede the possibility that there exists a simple explanation that I am simply too dimwitted to understand), it's terribly unfair to end a book like this with a solid chapter of scientific-sounding nonsense. I was quite disappointed with this book. David Bishop's WHO KILLED KENNEDY? was massively entertaining, engrossing, and utterly unforgettable -- in other words, the complete opposite of THE DOMINO EFFECT. Oh, and can anyone explain to me what the "domino effect" is as far as what it has to do with this story? Anji mentioned it in passing, but what it actually means here remains a mystery to me. Outside of the confines of this story, I would have said that it has something to do with one event in history having effects and repercussions long after the event has completed. Yet, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with this story, which is more a series of constant interference trying to produce one single circumstance.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Brutal world, brutal book,
By David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Domino Effect (Doctor Who) (Paperback)
Another Doctor Who novel, another alternate universe? Sadly, this will become the norm, as the current storyline is *about* alternate universes. As begun in The Infinity Race and Time Zero, alternate universes are springing up all over the place. This just adds another burden to a story that takes place in a continuing series, as we have to be given a reason to care about any of the characters in it, as we know it's not going to "matter" to the story in general. Otherwise, it's just going through the motions. Sadly, Bishop fails in this, as I didn't care about *any* of the characters, sometimes not even the continuing ones.
It's hard to decide where to begin on The Domino Effect. Characterization takes a back seat to imagery in the book, with none of the incidental characters eliciting anything other than disgust or boredom from this reader. The bad guys are super bad, moustache-twirling evil minions (Hastings is the worst), and the good guys are sniveling dweebs (except Dee, who is a violent good guy, thus not necessarily twirling her moustache). Instead, we're given an almost brutal book. Hastings, the main character who interacts with Fitz, is just sadistic and nothing else (except when he turns into a sniveling dweeb). All of the scenes with Fitz consist mainly of beatings and torture in some fashion and that's about it. There's a point to Fitz's captivity, though he ultimately doesn't really do anything except introduce us to a character who becomes important elsewhere. But the beatings? They're overdone. The atmosphere of the world has the same brutality, and Bishop constantly lets us know how oppressive everything is, sometimes to a fault. All of this is being done in the name of stopping progress. There is a nice confrontation at the end spelling everything out, identifying just what the purpose of the scenes taking place in the past (where various instances of potential technological advances are nipped in the bud) is and how they interact. However, this scene suddenly takes a sharp left turn into the realm of technobabble that really doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I'm still not sure what the other prisoner has to do with the whole thing. This technobabble goes on for pages at the end, trying to explain the whole plot, and worse: trying to set up subsequent books. This does not make me feel good. Are there other silly aspects to this book? Of course there are. How about a policeman who's conveniently forgetful, who just happens to be the one policeman who runs into the Doctor and his cohorts. Gee, isn't it nice that he's so forgetful that he doesn't remember seeing the Doctor and Anji's pictures on the "Britain's Most Wanted" television show? Not to mention the briefing I'm sure he received just that morning! Nope, doesn't remember them. But gee, the Doctor sure looks familiar. Maybe he saw him on the telly! I'm sure Bishop thought this was a cute scene, but trust me, it wasn't. Not to mention the fact that the police force in this "timeline" is so brutally efficient that there's no way this person would be on the force. Whatever shred of my disbelief that was left suspended, the fraying rope finally snapped. This was absurd. Even worse, however, is Anji's complete *stupidity* in not knowing that something was wrong when she first arrives. She blunders through the first 50 or so pages, weathering all the overt racism, the scorn heaped on her when she does things like ask where the ATM machines are and tries to pay with money that has the Queen's picture on it instead of the King's. Anji is not an idiot, but you certainly couldn't tell from the beginning of this book. The TARDIS crew has just been through an adventure where the universe starts splitting, and their last adventure was *in* an alternate universe. You'd think she'd twig to the fact that this wasn't her 2003. But no, she doesn't. She keeps forcing her way through. Gee, great portrayal of the real Edinburgh there, David, that she might actually believe that this *is* the real Edinburgh for any length of time whatsoever. There is one line that attempts to rationalize this (blaming it on being shaken by her first encounter with the racism), but it doesn't wash. Even shaken, she is smarter than that. So what did Bishop get right? Not a whole lot in this case. The book begins with a flashback sequence for Anji, even though the Doctor & Fitz's scenes are told in the "present," but this only goes for about 50 pages and then disappears. It doesn't really work, but the rest of the prose is ok. Fitz is ok for what he does, though unless it has some ramifications for him in other books, it doesn't really work. He should lose some of his gung-ho attitude after his treatment in this book. If not, then Fitz becomes even less than useless. The Doctor doesn't really do a whole lot, but the final confrontation (before the technobabble virus hits) is quite well-done. Heather is also mildly interesting, though there turns out to be a reason for this that is, sadly, predictable. Until she turns into a pod person, she's actually an effective character, though that could be because she's the only true character in this book. There are multiple betrayals in this book, but none of them work because I didn't care about them at all. Unless you're a completist, give this one a miss. David Roy
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yes, he's done it! He's made a book!,
This review is from: The Domino Effect (Doctor Who) (Paperback)
What a surprise! A Doctor Who book that doesn't get all funny after page 150!The Domino Effect succeeds brilliantly as a normal, modest Doctor Who book that does not try too hard. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable read, from one cover to the next. Sure, sure we're dealing with parallel universes, quantum physics, Monsters from the Vortex, what have you. But guess what? I UNDERSTOOD THE WHOLE BOOK. Incredible! Unbelieveable! The book is well-researched without being stuffy, the book has nice plots and twists, the book has a nice bit of suspense, the characters react believably under stress, it makes you think a bit about the world you're in, it even calls into question some things our pampered, computer-literate, wired, unrepressed western society revels in taking for granted. It is, furthermore, topical in that it is linked to the psychology of terrorism and the issues surrounding its repression. It falls just short of being a perfect candidate to initiate a friend to the world of Who; unfortunately some knowledge of the previous novels (Sabbath!) is helpful in understanding what's going on. Otherwise, it's just a great and at times thought-provoking read.
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