Customer Reviews

Genocide (Dr. Who Series)

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

 

 

If you find Saving The Whales, The Rainforests and ecology a boring subject, don't bother with this book. But, if you care, even a little, read on!

An odd book that brings back Jo Grant and UNIT. It is interesting to see how the Doctor's companions have fared after falling back into their old lives. Seems the life of anyone the Doctor touches is changed by it somehow or other. If you travel in the Tardis, you're never the same.

Jo Grant is a typically unhappy member of the human race as a divorced single mother. When the chance to work with the Doctor comes up again after several decades she grasps at it like a life saver to a drowning victim.

The horse-like society that is wiped out is fascinating. You find yourself wishing there was some way of saving it and that the Doctor didn't have to be such a stickler for the Proper Flow of Time.

The only problem is with the way the narrative goes back and forth. The story starts near the end, which is a good way to start. You wonder how in the world the Doctor got into such a state! This will hook you into staying with the story; and you will need to be hooked because it sometimes becomes boring and predictable. Still, it is an original story creating a wonderful new race of beings. Good show!

This book will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page - I had no idea how the Doc would get out of this one! Finally, Doctor Who fans encounter an alien race that is not out to conquer the universe, but instead to simply preserve themselves and their culture! It has suspense, action, and a more thought provoking plot than I've seen in Doctor Who in quite some time! Highly recommended!

>All in all, I'm veryimpressed. It's the first Who book in a long time that I finished in less than a day (and that being a work day as well). The story was very gripping, but well thought out as well. The balance between action and thought provoking reading is balanced. It's not often that a book pulls this off. It also manages to really develop the charecter of the 8th Doctor, essential for an early book in the range. Great Stuff. END

This is really bad. Usually when an author has one character explain something to another (and therefore the reader), the second character does something with that information--which usually moves the story a step further. Not so in this book! One problem exists throughout the volume. It is explained and argued over and over; no one listens, no one learns, no one worries, nothing changes (until the very end, of course). This is very annoying to the reader, who gets it the first time. Also annoying is the fact the reader is the only one (besides the Doctor) who feels any suspense. Personally, if someone told me the universe had ceased to exist except for the tiny bit of space I occupied, I'd be a wee bit concerned, you know? And I'm not even going to comment on the pointless violence.

The characters in the novel Genocide are well developed. The Doctor in this novel is shown to be a cautious, intelligent, and a cryptic traveler. Sam Jones in this novel is shown to be very brave but very uncertain of herself. Jacob Hynes is fanatical and a militant environmentalist. Kitig is very childlike and has an unspoiled innocence about him but it comes to an end when he is forced to decide if personal wants come before universal needs. Mauvril is very detached and calculating. Mauvril also has little respect for other sentient life and will do whatever it takes to complete the task. Jo Grant is very confident but is haunted by how people and situations over the years have changed. The viewpoint in Genocide could have been more effective if Leonard had decided to drop the italicized introductions before each chapter. They can confuse the reader as to what is happening in the story. The structure in Genocide could use improvement. Genocide does have more than enough tension to keep the reader interested in it. The tension does not bury the characterization but rather brings it to the surface. The settings were effective for Genocide. The description of Paratractis was vivid and crisp as was the description of the Tractite city in Earth's prehistoric era. Each setting complimented the other so to keep the reader's interest. Genocide was an original plot but Leonard failed to streamline the continuity of the story which made for mediocre structure and a poor viewpoint. This causes the reader to be easily confused while reading Genocide. Genocide had too much description at times which can bore the reader. There was also too much narration which drowns out the dialogue between the characters in the novel. There was enough tension and action in Genocide but at times there was too much melodrama.

After a few lackluster entries in the BBC line, the quality starts to take another small step upwards. Although we're not at the best of the Virgin line yet or even as good as "Vampire Science" was, Leonard's novel is at least paying lip service to trying something different, offering a shot at complexity and a moral dilemma that isn't exactly easy to resolve. Roaming around, the Doctor and Sam come back to Earth, only to find out that the planet is now inhabited by an extremely peaceful race of odd aliens and that human beings were eliminated way back in histroy. Needless to say, someone is monkeying around with time. Unfortunately this new timeline is unstable and might bring the rest of the universe down with it, forcing the Doctor to take steps to fix it. Meanwhile, old companion Jo Grant and a couple of scientists get thrown back in time with a crazy man working for the aliens and have to stop him from taking the first steps to wiping out the human race. The story works best when its highlighting the extremely difficult decision the Doctor has to make, as the aliens are portrayed as fundamentally decent, and some of the individuals are the best characters in the story. Sam has to deal with the brunt of the moral argument, going back and forth between both sides because there is no easy solution (she seems very sure of herself until she realizes that her parents have been wiped out of existence, in what's a nicely written moment) and she is less annoying here than in other books, if still not real distinctive. Its nice to have Jo Grant back, even if she's aged enough by life that she isn't the same characters who hung out with the Third Doctor in the seventies. They do get a lot of mileage out of highlighting the differences between the Doctors, such as Jo not remembering her Doctor ever crying (though if memory serves, didn't he shed a tear after she left, although she didn't see it), but this book does go a way into fleshing out who exactly the Eighth Doctor is. Unfortunately the book just misses a "great" rating as while the ideas are there, the execution isn't exactly what it should be. There's a sense of complexity in the bouncing back and forth, but for some reason the scenes never come really alive. The aliens are often the most interesting beings on the page, and while the scenario is interesting it never becomes truly gripping. It feels like it should go further, for some reason. Also at some points it becomes hard to figure out what's going on, with the climax a tad confusing in parts as to who is doing exactly what. But its far from terrible and shows at least a modicrum of ambition to do a different type of story and not just replicate a television show on paper. I don't know if the BBC line had quite found its level yet (the next Dalek book I don't think is spectacular, but we'll see) but this a step in the right direction. I can't help but give Leonard points for trying.

Paul Leonard's GENOCIDE is an extremely frustrating read. The first half of the book is excellent; we have an interesting plot, engaging prose and the discussion of some of the more interesting ethical aspects of time travel. At about the two-thirds point the book starts to waver. The plot starts to drag and repeat, characters begin to act irrationally and the tone becomes less coherent. By the end of the book, we're left with several fractured pieces of what could have been a really great story, if only the author had continued all the way through.

GENOCIDE features the return of Jo Grant and (not having read any of the Past Doctor books featuring her) I was curious as to how this character would work A) in book-form and B) being about twenty years older than last seen. I think the attempt to bring her back was ultimately a failure, as the role that she played in the story was not quite the character that we had come to know during the Pertwee years. I understand that Jo had done a lot of growing up since leaving the Doctor (we get a quick summary when her character is introduced: she's now divorced and raising a child on her own) but most of the character development just didn't seem to work. I suspect that this is what comes of trying to add depth to a character that has always been portrayed as a one-dimensional flake. With other companions these developments could have made for quite a fascinating character study, but for Jo they just seem wildly out of place. One suspects that perhaps this would have worked better with a Sarah or Tegan type of character, for whom character development wasn't a totally alien concept.

On the other hand, the plot is engaging for the most part and the book is a very entertaining read. In the story, a parallel universe has sprung into being and is affecting the well-being of the original. Only one time-stream can survive, though we know from the very beginning which one is going to continue. I quite enjoyed the dynamics between the characters from different universes, particularly the interaction between Sam and Kitig and between Sam and Jo. Sam's inability to choose which time-stream is the one worthy of existence comes across quite well as someone who is genuinely trying to consider all things when faced with such a huge decision. This is perhaps where the ending of the book is hurt. The confusion that Sam faces is dealt with far too dismissively at the end and the reader is left unsure what the full consequences are of the final actions. Leonard was quite clever in having each time-stream represented by a single character (Jo for the original and Kitig for the alternative) and having them each arguing for their respective universes; Jo wants to get back to her child, while Kitig represents an entire race of peace-loving intellectuals. Sam really does face a dilemma and having her bounced back and forth between the two representatives really helps to drive home the seriousness and the difficulty of her decision.

Despite the book's flaws, I recommend this for anyone looking for a good, quick read near the beginning of the BBC Books line. The imperfections are more apparent here than in others because this book should have been a lot better. All the right ingredients are there, and during the beginning and middle they really work well together. But when the ending falls apart as this one did, it's hard not to have a slightly bad taste in one's mouth afterwards.

The fourth book in the Eighth Doctor series - this is a troubled mess that never can quite overcome the mud it finds itself in story wise. Heavy handed, disjointed, a bit over the top and underwhelming at the same time - we find out hero's in peril once again from an exhusted plot, tired characters, poor cameo appearances (this time Jo Grant is in the spot light - and we learn very little about her life after the Doctor - just the standard "got married, had a kid, got divorced" shuffle - and that she still has a yearning for the old days of high adventure and dangers - she for some reason has telepathic contact with the Doctor and it's never explained why, out of all his companions, the Doctor would contact her to help save the world... perhaps because she was free at the time?). The book closes with a rushed and confusing ending (I was totally lost as to what the Doctor had accomplished at the end) with a hint at what's the come in the next book... Daleks. If you're a Doctor Who fan, this will cause more than few yawns - but with these early books becoming harder and harder to find - it's good to collect, but not to read.

the new doctor who, though is now being brought to americas via int. access and bookstores, is a wonderful realm of adventure.what the new adventures established, the bbc adventures evolve and hold dear (though some problems in relating books together at times). Genocide is a beautifully designed book that shows how painful it is to be the new doctor, so much uncertainty and so much remembered . . . he stands tall as a hero and someone who wishes to do his best to help the universe, but knows (unlike the 7th doctor) that he can't keep a cold heart (not that the seventh was totally cold hearted, more detatched really).in the earlier adventures, he had never gone up against such delimas on his morality and judgement . . . which will, as the ending shows, bring tears to your eyes when you see what he does . . . and how he reacts. he is possibly the most human and the most enigmatic of the doctors rolled into one . . .