Customer Reviews

Eye of Heaven (Dr. Who Series)

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

 

 

EYE OF HEAVEN is, by no means, an ordinary Doctor Who novel. Instead of moving from beginning to end, Jim Mortimore chose to tell the story out of order, flashing backwards and forwards using multiple first person narratives.

Does it work? Surprisingly so. EYE OF HEAVEN would have been a rather straight-forward story otherwise, involving a long sea voyage and Easter Island's statues. Instead, by shifting back and forth through the story, Mortimore is able to raise the suspsense level in an almost lyrical fashion.

EYE OF HEAVEN was Leela's first major outing in the Who novels, and it worked surprisingly well. I wouldn't recommend this style for all books, or for even most stories. For this, though, it worked admirably. The resolution of the plot is a bit flimsy, but the rest is enjoyable enough that it's not as big a deal as it would have been. Lots of fun for the reader who's ready to be challenged.

I must admit that I felt a little disapointed after reading this book. The sea journey promised to be quite a rousing sea adventure, but I kept being sidetracked with ill-placed chapters of previous events. If Mr. Mortimore had decided to tell this tale in chronological order (no pun intended for you Dr. Who fans!) the book would have been so much better. Saving graces: I liked how he kept switching the narrators; giving the reader a chance to see how other major characters felt and thought. We even get to learn how the Doctor thinks. Using him as a narrator is an unusual plot device, one I'd like to see again. I also enjoyed Leela's importance in this novel. She was always one of my favorite Dr. companions, and I'd like to learn more about her in future novels!

The Doctor decides to respond to a call for sponsors for an expedition to Easter Island by Horace Stockwood, whose previous expedition thirty years previously ended disastrously, including the death of his partner. The Doctor and Leela accompany Stockwood's expedition.

The book falls into two parts: the journey and Easter Island. There are a number of incidents on the journey there, making the first half of the book something of a sea-road trip. And then Easter Island, including the mystery of the well-known giant head statues.

Probably the best aspect of the book is the concentration on Leela's character. She was popular on TV, but this book truly concentrates on the noble savage in less-than-noble civilisation that makes Leela unique amongst the Doctor's many companions. Many little details of her life as part of the Sevateem are revealed, so if you are a Leela fan, make sure you get this one.

On top of this, the story is good. Some parts did press very hard against my suspension of disbelief, but it never got to the stage where I couldn't accept the book.

Worth a read.

I think a lot of people have focused on the manner in which the book is written - with the story events told out of order. Some have seen this as an innovation, others have found it confusing.

It would have been innovative if it wasn't for the fact that, with careful reading, the holes became apparent. It strikes me that the author probably jotted down a few ideas and then rather than try to work out the story that tied them all together, tied together what he could and then left the disparate sections as they were in the hope that no-one would notice the gaps.

While the book does try to surprise the reader familiar with Leela by focusing on her as the central character it fails to explore fully her sense of wonder and curiosity about the world around her. It fails to balance her background with the new vistas each journey with the Doctor exposes her to. Quiet often there are contradictions in the character both within the book and set against the original TV series.

If you want a book that ignores the TV series and tells part of a story in an interesting way then you might like this. If you want a book that uses the characters from the original series, takes what we know of them and tells a good story (regardless of whether the timeline is linear, in reverse or in disparate pockets) - then look elsewhere.

This one tends to get mixed reviews but I do have to give the author points for attempting something decidedly different. An adventure featuring the Fourth Doctor and Leela, it basically requires them to go on a long boat voyage, get menaced and/or attacked several times and finally get involved in the mysteries of the giant big head statues of Easter Island. The plot, when strung out in a linear fashion is really pretty straightforward, but what Mortimore does is complicate matters by having the chapters go out of order, so that different parts of the story are being told simultaneously. I'm not sure yet if this is good literary technique or just a way to beef the story up, it does add a certain level of suspense because you are constantly cutting to new situations without knowing what happened in the intervening time, forcing you to keep reading until all the plots catch up to one another. It does also force you to pay attention because even though the plots are decidedly nonlinear, there's no way to really tell what's happening when, so you have to really focus on background details and who knows what at what time. It's novel because I'm really not used to putting in that level of effort into a Doctor Who book, and while I'm not certain it's totally effective (toward the end I have no idea what's supposed to be occurring in what order) it does make the book stand out. The other sort of innovation, at least for the line, is telling the entire tale via first person narration. This makes things interesting, again, because all the experiences are subjective and you aren't sure who knows what when, or who's even lying about stuff. Leela comes off the best in this and the story really is a showcase for her . . . although newcomers to the character are going to be totally lost, as we're not given a whole lot of exposition on her background, so while she seems like savage jungle woman all the hints about being part of a readapted survey team from the far future are going to fly over everyone's heads. But the chapters narrated by her wind up being the best, as Mortimore seems to have a fairly good handle on the character, contrasting her natural instincts with her ignorance of most of the world. The chapters with the Doctor tend to fare the worst, as exciting as it is to get a peek into the Doctor's thoughts, a lot of it winds up being devoted to whatever special ability he uses to get out of a particular situation, so he doesn't seem alien as much as a guy with superpowers. As seen through other characters, you do get a good sense of Tom Baker's whimsical and commanding version of the Doctor, however. The book also gets high marks for not going with the typical alien threat, but in order to get to that stuff you have to deal with pages of people running around on boats, or discussing boats or being flung off boats. Reaching Easter Island almost feels like an anti-climax, and that's probably where the jumbled narrative does the most damage. But the author gets full credit for trying something decidedly different, and the nature of the island is a nice change of pace. Even if the experiment doesn't exactly succeed, I think we'd all think a little less of the BBC line if they didn't try something like this every so often.

This is a magnificent novel. So it doesn't quite resemble the Leela you know and love, eh? Well, this is who we all wanted her to be. Get your small minds out of the wastes of the ho-hum-ness of the TV-show-like tedium of so many of the Who novels that merely attempt to recreate the three sets and ten characters of the TV stories. This is one of the best Who novels by one of the best Who novelists, Jim Mortimore, whose every book I admire -- flawed or not.

Eye of Heaven is challenging, but mind-blowing-ly huge. The Leela here is far more than what you've seen before. The opening on to another world through Easter Island and the whole passage to it in the first half of the book, tying the needle through the "eye of heaven" at the center of the novel, and then passing backwards back out into our world again at the end, it's all a fantastic ride. What an imagination Mortimore has!

Don't avoid this one, folks! It's one of the very best Missing/Past Doctor Adventure novels. It's on the level of The Witch Hunters, The Plotters, The Dark Path, Last of the Gaderene, Tomb of Valdemar, Managra, and The Well-Mannered War. Treasure it.

Eye of Heaven is setup by the Doctor thinking that Leela needs to know more about her past. So he takes her to Victorian England and quickly finds an expadition he would like to fund. So the Doctor buys a ship (one of the rare examples of the Doctor using his wealth) and hires a crew to take him and Leela to Easter Island.

The most interesting thing (and admittedly the thing which scared me the most at first) is the use of a first person anrrative throughout the book. My experience with first person narrative, for the most part, has been negative. Aside from Robinson Carusso (damnit, I KNOW I'm spelling that wrong), it's been tough to find a book that does it right. Suprisingly Eye of Heaven does just that. It pulls off a brilliant switching of narrative between Leela (giving us an excellent outlook into her life, past and amusing religious background), the Doctor (suitable vague) and the supporting charecters. Up until the very end this works well. There is a short chapter or two where this falls completly flat, but for the most part this is executed suprisingly well.

The story itself is quite gripping. There is a genuine mystery about the origins of the Moai (the Easter Island monoliths) and the fate of the islanders. It only falls flat towards the end. The origin itself falls quite flat (why would an alien race use huge rocks to spread a virus) and the sense of wonder about them is obviously pulled directly from Contact (at least the author is honest about his infuences).

One of the most refreshing things about Eye of Heaven is that there are no visits from "guest stars". The BBC line was beginning to feel like the DWM strips in that a return villian had to show up in each story.

Overall a great read which expands the boundaries for Past Doctor Adventures, but also another victim to the rushed resolution syndrome.

Overall the novel was a pleasure to read. Jim Mortimore is masterful at portraying Leela. The way Mortimore described the 4th Doctor's companion forced me to completely re-think of what I thought of her -- this aspect I found to be the most pleasant experience while reading the novel. There are many memorable moments in the book especially during the trip back to Easter Island. I did find, however, that some of the sequences were somewhat difficult to understand but near the end of the book it made sense. The novel had a well-balanced plot and the pace was consistent throughout.

One star as we learn a bit more about Leela, yet her character is written as one step above a chimp in attitude and language. The first person narrative is very confusing as with over six major characters, you never know who is speaking until three lines into their speach, not to mention where they are in the story. Overall a minor sci-fi new concept but for me, the worst 4th Dr. book in my collection.

The narrative is told in an extremely disjointed fashion for no discernible purpose, other than to indulge in rather tedious foreshadowing, or perhaps to disguise the fact that, told in a straightforward narrative style, the plot is tedious int he extreme. Additionally, for purists of the series, the character of Leela bears almost no resemblance to the series character and is portrayed more as if she is Superman's sister than a real human being. There is a sequence when she is in the ocean--fighting off sharks and giant squids, and hitching rides on whales and surviving tornadoes, etc., etc. that is simply too ludicrous for words. As with most of the Doctor Who novels put out by BBC Books (and, for that matter, the earlier novels from Virgin), it would also benefit from tighter editing and a reduced page count.