Customer Reviews

Eater of Wasps (Doctor Who)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The TARDIS takes the Doctor, Fitz and Anji back to Earth in the 1930s. There is something on the loose, and it has affected some wasps. They attack people, endeavoring to force themselves into their victims' mouths...

Not a book for those of very delicate stomachs, this story pits the TARDIS crew against a bizarre threat. With a moderate size cast, exactly what is going on will not be obvious at the start. And there are secrets in the pasts of the inhabitants of the village of Marpling which make matters even more complicated.

Like some Agatha Christie books, the number of suspects is slowly whittled down as the story progresses. This seems more that reasonable, given the number of contemporaneous Christie mysteries set in English villages in the 30s...

Not afraid to concentrate on the more gruesome aspects of the story, Trevor Baxendale constructs a story whose difficulties increase as time passes. If you have rad previous book from this author's pen, I believe this is better than his prevous work.

The Doctor, Anji and Fitz land in the English village of Marpling in the 1930's. here they discover strange deaths occurring due to wasp attacks. Alongside this is the crack commando team from the future plus the man who houses the wasps in his body.

Characterisation of all characters is excellent, especially Anji, who is finally coming to terms with who the Doctor is, what he does and the ever present danger everywhere he goes. Plus a mention for the characterisation of Mr. Rigby (the wasp eater) is superb, with the gradual take-over of his body as well as mind portayed wonderfully.

The sleepy village setting is perfect for the story and I find has always worked well with Doctor Who, especially with the town gossip that everyone can relate to, Mrs Havers. Trevor Baxendale must have a thing for `creepy crawlies' as this is the third Dr Who novel featuring them - the first two being Giant Spiders then giant slugs, now killer wasps. - cant wait for the next bug. Also a hint maybe of the outcome of what is happening in the universe following the destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords.

Overall, an excellently pace, high action Doctor Who monster story to enjoy. RECOMMENDED!!!

This is one of the worst book covers I've ever seen. What are we looking at? The wasps are easily identifiable, but just what are they flying on? It doesn't look anything like a mouth, although I gather that's what it's supposed to be. Would you want to buy this based on the cover alone?

However, the story itself is a real treat, "Doctor Who"'s trademark horror in pastoral setting. It's England, late summer 1933, one of those parochial villages where spinsters on bicycles terrorize local libertines, where vicars stroll around giving poor advice, a single mother bears a terrible secret, and a loutish American (charmingly described as having an "American" accent) dies early on. The village, in short, is full of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and these WASPS don't fare very well when Terror flies down the garden path.

An alien device lands in a dentist's toolshed and almost immediately a nest of garden wasps is transformed into something more than insect. The dentist is stung and slowly, painfully transformed into something neither WASP nor wasp. The Doctor tracks him, loses him, tracks him, loses him, until the stakes are real and everyone is in mortal terror.

"Eater" becomes a true page-turner with some stunningly good moments, such as the dentist's final thoughts before the wasp infection consumes him completely. In the mix is a pair of human time travellers on a secret mission to destroy the alien artifact. Quite thankfully we don't find out where they come from or, indeed, just what that object was. This poses a mystery that will reportedly be addressed in later books.

The Doctor here is as perfectly Tom Baker as we've seen since the mid-1970s. The Eighth Doctor was never very effective in the early books and it's good to see that his personality has been consumed by the larger-than-life humor and horror of his most popular predecessor. Companion Anji is not impressed by his occasionally cavalier attitude, and this too is a conflict I'd love to see resolved further on.

"Eater of Wasps" is a deftly-told tale and a great read, and if it had come with a better cover I'd recommend it to my non-DW-fan friends. It also plants interesting seeds for future 8th Doctor novels and I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment.

To be honest, I had not received much enjoyment from either of Trevor Baxendale's previous efforts. COLDHEART was an overly simplistic tale that, while being faintly enjoyable, was stretched far too thin for its page count. THE JANUS CONJUNCTION was almost painful for me to read - bad science, a horrible plot, and shallow characterizations. Those two stories played far too safe for my liking. While I don't expect every book to be groundbreaking in every conceivable department, I quickly become bored with those stories that seem content never to be anything more than just simple rehashes of Doctor Who serials from decades ago. That said, however, EATER OF WASPS manages to be entertaining by taking several stock Doctor Who elements and weaving a new story around them.

The plot flows along fairly nicely here. There are some interesting twists that pop up and manage to raise some genuine surprise in the reader. But the greatest advantage that this story has over Baxendale's previous two is that he has finally managed to do the horror aspect correctly. The previous two stories attempted to frighten by describing numerous scenes of pure disgusting material: flesh dissolving, skin falling off and mucus, mucus, mucus as far as the eye can see. These elements were all far more gross than frightening, but the importance is that weren't really memorable; they didn't stick in the reader's mind for more than a page. However, in EATER OF WASPS, Baxendale got it right. Tiny bugs and insects aren't terribly frightening by themselves, but the various descriptions of wasps are legitimately unsettling and are quite good at crawling under the reader's skin (no pun intended). While the fear factor doesn't completely manage to sustain itself throughout the entire book, the sections at the beginning and middle are excellent. However, at some point you just become immune to the wasp eater sequences, creepy though they may be.

The prose is workmanlike. There are no real fancy turns of phrase here, and there is very little that you'll be quoting to your friends (provided you're a secure enough person who would ordinarily go around quoting from Doctor Who). This makes the book quite readable, though there are a few spots here and there where the reader may wish that Baxendale was slightly better at turning out a sentence. Character motivations are often spelt out in painstaking detail, making the book seem far less polished than it could have been.

The companions, Fitz and Anji, are given almost nothing important to do here other than to carry objects around from place to place. The secondary characters are the ones who receive most of the attention, and they do come across quite well. While most of them don't escape from the stereotypes that we expect from a Doctor Who story set in a 1930s sleepy English village (nosy old lady; dithering, uncertain old priest; no-nonsense police officer; etc.), there are occasionally moments scattered here and there where they do come alive, if only for a brief paragraph.

Overall, this is an enjoyable tale. It's not the best thing ever written in the line, but it makes for an entertaining read on a quiet weekend afternoon. The story is solid, (for the most part) fast-moving, and straightforward without being overly simplistic. Trevor Baxendale's novels have been steadily improving since his dubious debut. If his next novel continues this trend, then it should definitely be a wonderful book.

Eater of Wasps is another EDA co-starring Fitz and Anji Kapoor. The novel takes place in 1930s Europe where a weapon from Earth's future ends up in this time and indirectly transforms an innocent victim into a bloodsucking abomination. Not only does the Doctor have to stop this creature but worry about a temporal hit squad that wants him to stay out of the picture.
This is Baxendale's third novel, and like Coldheart, he heavily utilizes dialogue and gets right into the story without any boring prologues. I enjoyed the idea of the Doctor having to solve two problems at once. There is a part in the novel where Anji and Fitz question whether the Doctor's has become a cold-blooded realist (during his second exile on Earth) when he attempts to snap the neck of the dying Hilary Pink after he was attacked by the wasps.
The title is very original and snags the attention of the reader. High marks for this novel : )

Interesting cover (not that you can see it on Amazon, but you probably can on its UK site).

I have not been a fan of Baxendale's previous works. The Janus Conjunction was rather dull and Coldheart was just plain bad.

Eater of Wasps, however, was *very* good. I do not like wasps, and thus this book really creeped me out. Baxendale's descriptions of wasp attacks were well done. Every time he did it, I had to suppress a shudder. The supporting characters, while cliched, were interesting personalities. There were a couple of surprises in them, as well. There are secrets amongst the populace: some of them obvious, but one that is very well hidden until near the end.

The regulars are well characterized also. The growing distrust between Anji and the Doctor should lead to an interesting conclusion sometime further along in the series. Anji's still new at all this, and the Doctor is not acting like the Doctor we all know. He's erratic (more so than usual), sometimes violent (which is *very* unusual) and sometimes very dismissive of humans (who are his favourite species). For Fitz, this is just something to endure while hoping he can help snap the Doctor out of it. For Anji, this is all she knows, and she doesn't like it. She can't understand Fitz's apparent blind trust in the Doctor. Sometimes, he doesn't appear to be deserving of it.

This is a book that should satisfy both traditional fans, and fans of "New Who" that want a little more from their Who books. It's a traditional story that's set in a radical setting.

I hope Trevor can keep this up for his next book.

I'll have to concur with the person who commented on the unpleasantness on the cover. If I wasn't already a fan of the series and came upon that cover in the bookstore I would probably treat it the same way that I treat that shambling man in rags who is mumbling while he comes towards me . . . cross to the other side of the aisle.

That spectacularly awful cover (and I wonder if it was envisioned to be something entirely different than what they got but there wasn't any time to change it) actually hides a surprisingly decent Doctor Who novel. I wasn't a huge fan of his last Who novel ("Coldheart") but the difference between that novel and this one is so dramatic that either the author spent the time in between really brushing up on his feel for the characters or he just has a better feel for this particular TARDIS crew. Or he just had a better idea entirely. It's really striking.

Thus: in an English village that practically screams "sleepy English village hiding great dangers" a strange object lands in a shed of the local dentist. Said local dentist goes to investigate and finds that he has stirred up a nest of wasps. Really angry wasps. Really angry wasps that then proceed to drive the rest of the book's unpleasantness. Soon thereafter the dentist is acting very strangely, wasps are everywhere and people are starting to drop from mysteriously aggressive insect attacks. Into this stumbles our plucky TARDIS crew with their usual good timing and immediately the Doctor sets about irritating the locals/trying to solve the case. Except he may not be the only one.

What made this novel interesting for me is that the Doctor figures out who the problem is right away and then has to spend the rest of the book dealing with wrinkles related to it, trying to put all the small fires that are being caused. And while this did lead to some small degree of vamping (especially in the middle portions where it seems like everyone is just driving from one location to another in different configurations, only to drive somewhere else) he managed to keep it entertaining enough so that while I was aware certain scenes seemed to be occurring just to fill up the page count, I didn't really care enough to be concerned by it.

It doesn't hurt that a sense of style can make a world of difference. Given a situation that can be undeniably horrific, the author goes the full mile with it and milks the gruesomeness of the premise for everything he can. Which means we get every possible instance of insect-related body horror that we can. Fans of the show know from stuff like "The Ark in Space" that bugs skeeve just about everyone except those people on the Discovery Channel who eat weird food out and this is just more proof. Scene after scene of crazed wasps crawling in and out of places where wasps just shouldn't go manages to never fail to be unsettling and adds a certain layer of flair to the proceedings, to the point where just the appearance of some bugs can add to the foreboding.

The dialogue zings, too. Given a decent amount of characters to juggle, he manages to not let anyone get buried. He also makes the case for this being the best modern TARDIS crew, continuing the trend started in the last novel. The Doctor acts as moral center while Fitz becomes the true believer and Anji the willing skeptic. Stripped of the current show's need to make every companion the center of the known universe lets Fitz and Anji be normal people caught in very bizarre situations, and reacting accordingly, with poor Anji torn between excitement at the prospect of adventure and wondering when everyone went mad. This leads to some nice teamwork and interplay with the trio (including an absolutely hilarious moment at the train station) and while I still have some minor quibbles (I understand Fitz can't show the Doctor up but the guy's practically a veteran at this now, be somewhat effective, man . . . and the bits with Anji doubting the Doctor comes a little out of left field, though I see where they're going with it and we do need some conflict) this is currently the crew I want to read about for the longest time (while I liked how Compassion constantly upset the equilibrium of things, she wasn't a character meant to be experienced for the long term). I actually like these people, which is something.

Nicely, this is one of the books where the Doctor takes center stage and rises to the occasion. While some past books have spotlit the crew more and had the Doctor show up just to administer the finale, the Doctor gets a lot of facetime here and uses it to the best of his ability. His personality appears to have settled in and he remains distant, but undoubtedly moral, comical in his quirks (while some of it seems to be taken from the Fourth Doctor, the running bit with the candy was funny here) and at the same time infected with a coldness in his approach that we haven't really seen before. His interactions with the future team tasked with taking care of the device causing the trouble by any means necessary are where a lot of the book shines, contrasting their approaches and giving us a glimpse of what a world without Time Lords might look like, without going all lonely and mopey and sad. It adds a further layer to all the going-ons. This Doctor doesn't take the easy way out. Not easily.

I come down hard on these books a lot (including the last book this author wrote) so I have to be as equally effusive when it goes right. And there's rarely a foot set wrong here, from setting to execution to atmosphere, while it might mine familiar territory and tweak old elements, it does so in a way that is never less than interesting. This is the first Who book in a while that could potentially count as a page turner and it's saying something that I kept turning pages because I was honestly engrossed as opposed to just plowing through with mild curiosity as to how it was all going to end up. He's not on the permanent list of Who authors to watch out for, but he's certainly much closer to making it.