The year is 4991. The TARDIS is dead and Compassion is evolving into a sentient replacement for it. To avoid the Timelords, the Doctor decides to fit a Randomiser but the only place he can obtain the components is the planet Yquatine.
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A return to normal--with a twist,
By
This review is from: The Fall of Yquatine (Doctor Who (BBC Paperback)) (Paperback)
Following from the surprising conclusion of Shadows of Avalon, the Doctor attempts to avoid his pursuers by fitting a randomizer into the TARDIS. Of course, things don't go quite as planned (do they ever?) and the three time travelers are separated. The Doctor finds himself coping with the carnage unleashed by an apparent invasion of the planet Yquatine, while Fitz finds himself trapped a month in the past, determined to get off-planet and escape the future he has already seen. And Compassion? Compassion is . . . somewhere else.I felt nervous as I began reading this novel. I hate trying to remember all the details about alien civilizations, and Nick Walters throws in so many names and descriptions of different races, I knew I'd get lost. Fortunately, it wasn't necessary to remember all that stuff to enjoy the story. Walters does a good enough job reminding the reader of the important stuff that I never felt lost or confused. He was also very good at keeping things clear, even though the story jumps constantly between settings and time frames. Walters does a particularly nice job with Fitz's sections of the story. The characters Fitz interacts with seem fleshed-out and real, and I felt genuine concern towards them. I knew what was destined to happen to the planet they were on, and hoped that they would find some way to escape the destruction. As with his previous novel, Dominion, Walters accurately captures the character of the Doctor. After a number of stories (Interference, Blue Angel, Shadows of Avalon) that have pushed the Doctor Who format envelope, Fall of Yquatine seems almost tame by comparison. While it definitely ties in to the ongoing series developments, it also tells a very traditional Doctor Who adventure. It's fast paced and fun, without being too taxing. It may not be an example of Doctor Who excercising its fullest potential, but it's still an enjoyable read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
What if your "Groundhog Day" was the invasion of Normandy?,
This review is from: The Fall of Yquatine (Doctor Who (BBC Paperback)) (Paperback)
Almost everyone has moments in their life where they wished they could go back in time and relive them, in order to get a chance to do it right, or differently. Unfortunately, that's not as desirable when you don't get to pick the moment and the moment that is chosen for you happens to be right before a planet is destroyed.
Such is the dilemma that Fitz finds himself thrown into this time around. And while he hasn't reached record levels of suffering yet, he certainly is giving it his best try. The new TARDIS crew (with Compassion as the new TARDIS) wind up landing on the planet of Yquatine. The Doctor is there to pick up something from an old friend, a device that winds up being a Randomizer (TV show fans will remember the Fourth Doctor using one after the whole "White/Black Guardian" season) and needless to say, Compassion doesn't take too well with one being installed inside her new form. Which would be fine for the crew to discuss, except just before this all goes down, the planet is attacked and all life promptly destroyed on it. Oh, and war is about to break out between all the previously peaceful races that live in the system. What a great time to throw yourself into a different time entirely and wait until someone else sorts it out! Except everyone gets separated, with a panicked Compassion dumping Fitz in the worst possible place outside of a brothel designed for Daleks . . . he winds up stuck on Yquatine about a month before the events he just witnessed are about to go down, meaning he has to find a way to get the heck out of Dodge before things get ugly. Compassion, meanwhile, is fighting with the Randomizer, which is working true to its name and sending her all over time and space. Nobody's day is going well, and this is all before breakfast. I gave Walters a tentative thumbs up when I last reviewed one of his novels ("Dominion") and he shows great progress here, instantly grasping the new status quo and running with it. He shows his strongest hand in the scenes with Compassion. Previously she was the hardest to grasp of any of the "Who" regulars, abrasive and a bit of a blank slate, but aware of the blankness of her slate at the same time. But her change from companion to living time traveling machine is by far the weirdest thing to have happened in the book for a while, replacing the familiar blue box with someone you can literally walk into and is still discovering what she can do. Walters runs with those scenes, giving us a sense of Compassion's alienness and the fact that she's still engaged in on-the-job training. She's confused and angry and upset (the Randomizer thing really doesn't go over well), almost killing Fitz in one scene, still processing all her new senses and abilities. It seems like her newfound TARDISness is going to unbalance the books and the authors are going to have to find reasons to sideline her to some extent to keep her from easily solving all their problems (once she gets going she's almost hideously effective), but considering that Walters basically gets her first (Cornell might have kickstarted the change but that was toward the end of "Shadows of Avalon" so he barely got a hold of her) he does a lot to setting the template for future writers. The structure of the book is also interesting. While the other novels in the series often come up with contrived ways to separate the crew (generally by having someone wander off and get captured), here it feels organic because while they haven't gone anywhere, there's a gap between all three of them that none can reach. Fitz once again has to blend in with an alien society and he still reveals himself to be a more interesting character than Sam ever was, seeming more and more vulnerable as the books go on (he gets very emo in this novel) but still managing to be capable. The situation is fairly dire, with a sentient organism trying to kill everyone in the system while the aliens are at each other's throats . . . it could have easily been a confusing mash of races but Walters manages to keep them all straight. Oddly enough, it's the Doctor who feels sidelined in this novel, running about and doing standard Doctor stuff but more often than not simply going through the motions. When the novel focuses on the plot things hum along in a more or less standard fashion, but it's when the story focuses more on the characters and their reactions to things it becomes better, especially with the TARDIS crew dealing with Compassion and each other. Those scenes form the heart of the book, as the dynamics of the main cast are shifting yet again. Walters handles this deftly, as events are run backwards and again, though things aren't as intricate as you might imagine. But for a show that deals with separation, this plays into that nicely, giving us a story where the cast is isolated both temporally and emotionally. It could have used more emotional punch, feeling flat in moments where it should be gut-wrenching (the closest it comes is a scene where a secondary character quietly dies) but he keeps the various plot gears moving often enough that the pages keep turning. It's not a great book but it has all the signs of someone who knows how to write a great book and given some more chances, it's possible that he might produce it some day.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Yqua - what?,
By Daniel Firli (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Fall of Yquatine (Doctor Who (BBC Paperback)) (Paperback)
A pivotal story involving the whole Compassion turning into a TARDIS arc. The Doctor has done something pretty drastic to Compassion to avoid detection from the Timelords. Compassion's reaction is to strand the Doctor on the planet Yquatine, take Fitz 3 months back into Yquatine's past and then leave. Meanwhile the Doctor has to deal with a mysterious killer black substance that is destroying Yquatine plus political tensions between alien races, and Fitz is in jail knowing of the disastrous events that will occur but can do nothing about it (plus his usual girl problems). Well written, very exciting, characterisation is spot on. RECOMMENDED to all.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
