Customer Reviews

Vanderdeken's Children (Doctor Who Series)

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

 

 

With VANDERDEKEN'S CHILDREN, the 14th Eighth Doctor and Sam adventure, I'll be going against the rest here in saying that, while it had an interesting plot (if not overly repeated - this story is a cross between two Third Doctor adventures, DEATH TO THE DALEKS and part of CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS where the Doctor is caught in a time loop on a passanger ship, plus a dash of SPHERE by Crichton thrown into the mix), much of the book is listless, dull and adrift - much like the ship the Doctor and Sam encounter in this adventure. Everyone has their part to play and they never stray from it, leaving much of the mystery and suspense to be generated by the ship itself - which it does, but only to a point. The Doctor (again) knows more than he saying, and his ability to operate the ship is annoying (and a cop out for the writer who can't seem to get around paradoxes, time warps and hyper space without the Doctor being utterly brilliant at every moment). Plus, the Doctor's foil, Rexton, also knows more than he's saying, leaving the reader caught between the knowing and suspicious glances between the two. While action packed, it's merely sound and fury to cover the holes in the plot and in that the book excels. Good for a first time reader, but slow for established fans.

VANDERDEKEN'S CHILDREN comes as a refreshing breath of air after the last few books that have been sacrificing plot for characterization (or just plain sacrificing both for nothing). Don't get me wrong now, I'd prefer to have both in a story, but if we're only going to get one at a time in this series, it is nice to mix them up every now and then.

This is the hardest Science-Fiction story that the Doctor Who series has had in a while. Derelict spacecrafts, time paradoxes, hyperspace tunnels, and echoes from the future all feature heavily. The Doctor and Sam get to play Sherlock Holmes and Watson while helping two different human factions uncover the mystery of an abandoned alien ship that's apparently home to some familiar ghosts. The plot is genuinely interesting and I was kept on the edge of my seat waiting to see how it would unfold.

The characterization is uniformly shallow with one or two sections where it descends into tedium. I couldn't see how the subplot concerning the husband, wife and the other woman made any difference to the story. I realize that they were also experiencing the same sort of future echoes that the rest of the passengers were and I thought it was a good idea to show some of the other effects of the time loop. But while it made for a diversion from the main action, it was not an interesting one, and in my opinion it should have either been strengthened or cut from the book entirely. Every time that section came up, I inwardly groaned at the clichéd dialogue and the stereotypical "tough wife and passive husband" relationship.

But as this was mainly a plot driven story, the characterization didn't distract from it all that much. There are a few places at the end where the explanation about the future time lines seemed to fall apart. I was especially annoyed at the eventual explanation for what the origin of the ship was. However, overall this was a very good book and I highly recommend it for fans of the book series or for people who are unfamiliar to the Doctor Who format. The book seems specially designed for beginners to the line and starts off with a short and unobtrusive introduction to the main characters, the TARDIS and the series particulars.

I don't know why it is that people on Dr Who fan sites bash certain Dr Who books, while the same books get great reviews on Amazon.com. This is one of them, and let me tell you (as a hardcore Eighth Doctor Fan) I loved this book! It was an erie, sci-fi horror feel to it. This book is complex and you may need to slow down the pace of reading this to grasp all the neat plot twists and temporal loops, but it's great. I was hooked from page 1 to the last. The action starts off right away, and I liked little things in this book (like the Doctor using his real name when creating a fake id on the ship, which really confuses people because it's practically unpronounceable by humans), and the characters are mostly well created. I would definitely recommend this book to any dr who fan!

This is a very clever book, which certainly gets the brain cells working. The Doctor and sam arrive in the TARDIS just as an alien spaceship is being discovered by a leisure cruiser from Emindar and a warship from Nimos. Posing as a Federation Moderator, the Doctor cannot but help get involved. Who built the Alien ship, and for what purpose? And just how far will it affect the future of Emindar and Nimos, two planets already itching to go to war? The Doctor is surprised at how easy it seems to unlock the alien ship's secrets, but unlocking the destiny of him and his companions is going to be far more difficult, especially when there are mad ghostlike creatures determined to stop them... This is the first novel by Christopher Bulis that I've read, but I've no doubt that I'll be hunting down his others. The Doctor and Sam were particularly drawn well.

If you get through the introduction, if you enjoy the goth-tinted, grimdark feel of Eighth Doctor Adventures, and if you crave time travel stories that actually use time travel (instead of smacking the characters on the wrist for trying it), Vanderdeken's Children is absolutely gripping.

This book is chaotic and dangerous, with a titanic sense of scale, supported by gravitas and sheer wonder. It would be a mystery story, but the exposition comes just-in-the-nick, with few opportunities to guess ahead. Despite the reader's frustrated desire to answer one question raised on every page - "WTF?!" - the ride is a thrill, the package is solid, and the revelations will make your head snap and your hands applaud.

Because the story (eventually) becomes deeply steeped in time travel and its side effects, the POV, and other aspects of delivery, get chaotic. The beginning feels pedestrian in parts, but I think this is unavoidable, in retrospect - the pacing eventually skyrockets, so the slower beginning was required to establish characters, to give the reader reasons to care.

The book loses one star for the beginning, which nearly made me put the book down for its pacing and its hop-skip-jump approach to settings; and for being so chaotic later that I literally felt dizzy, trying to fully absorb events and implications before turning the page. But these aren't really complaints - they're more like symptoms. My advice is to force yourself through the beginning until Stuff Officially Happens, and then take the rest of the book in manageable nibbles, lest it leave your brain with bruises.

Not for easily-intimidated readers, and not for anyone who dislikes confusion or rough rides, but highly recommended for everyone else.

I don't tend to notice the writers on the Who novels unless they're either really good or really bad, so at least I have some idea of what I'm walking into in the future. Bulis isn't really good or bad but his name seems to come up an awful lot when reading the novels so I've wound up over time paying attention to which ones he writes. And thus far I've found that he's a bit of a journeyman, getting the job done without being too exciting, including an interesting enough premise to show that he has some kind of imagination but a lot of times unable to back that up with any kind of emotionally compelling elements. Stuff happens and more stuff happens and occasionally you go "Wow!" or "Oh, that's neat" and then the story is over.

This one really isn't any exception. The Doctor, noticing an anomaly, decides to drop anchor at a spot where two ships from warring empires have just come upon an alien spacecraft of unknown origin. Before long both sides are jockeying for control of it, which would be fine except that mysterious events are beginnning to occur and the ultimate origin of the ship isn't what anyone expects.

It's fairly creepy, especially when nobody knows what's going on, and Bulis is good at building atmosphere, with ghosts and ghostly voices and so on. But it's just hard to care about anyone here, they all feel like stock character types, everyone has one personality trait and drives it right into the ground, or they follow predictable arcs (the seemingly brave fellow who is actually a coward is able to overcome his fear in a moment of glory right before he's ruthlessly cut down . . . raise your hand if you were surprised) . . . everyone hates everyone else. Even the subplots aren't that exciting, with a henpecked husband beset by a shrew of a wife finally learning to stand up to her in the midst of all the chaos. I didn't see the stabbing coming, though, so I'll give him that.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is being inscrutable but not in that "I'm manipulating everything but you don't know it" fashion of the Seventh Doctor . . . he seems to have some idea of what's going on but either refuses to say or never gets a chance to, which means that everyone flounders about until he finally gets around to explaining it. The crux of the matter depends on a paradox that is actually pretty well thought out, even if I do imagine a map of it taking up an entire wall of the author's house. I'm sure it falls apart under really close scrutiny but if you're examinig the temporal paradoxes of "Doctor Who" closely, we need to have a talk.

But the dangers, creepy at first, eventually become kind of tedious, all the paradoxing threatens to hurt the mind and our heroes don't do anything really memorable except the Doctor juryrigs a magic device to make everything all better. I'm not even sure why Sam was here. Mildly entertaining while you're reading it, if you need a fix it'll get the job done but otherwise it's kind of empty calories.

If a film company had to chose one of the new line of Dr. Who books to make into a movie, this would be the one I would chose. There's suspence, a gripping story line and a massive alien structure which has to be could, hadn't it? The only problem I have with this book is the end, I didn't quite get why everyone was turning into ghosts, and a time paradox turns up, which couldn't possibly happen in the real world. Appart from that, this book is a real winner.

Too many of the Doctor Who novels have either been overly dependent upon past continuity, or have been set on 20th century Earth, thereby missing the numerous opportunities availible to the authors writing Doctor Who novels. Fortunately, Christopher Bullis doesn't fall into these traps. He has written an exciting adventure set in space, one that could never have been produced when Doctor Who was a television show with a limited budget. Bullis takes full advantage of the printed medium, offering up a gigantic alien spaceship, an army of mysterious phantoms, and a complex mystery. It's definitely an exciting, original read. The resolution is superbly thought out, and also rather chilling. Definitely one of the best novels to feature the Eighth Doctor. Highly recommended!

This was my first 8th Doctor/Sam novel, and the first Doctor Who novel I've read that precedes the ones from the current series. At least the first in a long time--I read a few of the Target novelizations back in the day, and I can say that this is head and shoulders above those.

In this story, the Doctor and Sam are forced out of the time/space continuum into a standoff between two rival empires, those of Nimos and Emindar. An Emindarian luxury liner has been dragooned into standing watch over a bizarre ship/structure/derelict that appears to possess mysterious power and technology; the Nimosians have arrived in a military ship to press their salvage claim. As both groups attempt to land on and explore the craft, bizarre and frightening attacks on them commence from ghostly figures--attacks which soon spread to the two ships.

The book kept me reading well enough, and the plot setup is suitably creepy. Characterizations are quite thin and there are plenty of extraneous characters who didn't seem to have much to do except, eventually, go mad and die. It was hard to feel any sympathy for anyone. The most intriguing part of the plot turned out to be the most incomprehensible as well, as the source of all the attacks appears to be a vertible gordian knot of time paradoxes within paradoxes, all of which made my head hurt by the end and which I never really sorted out. Overall the novel was an interesting but not entirely satisfying experience, but would do as a stop gap between new episodes of the ongoing series. I would give another of the 8th Doctor novels a try.