As history plunges onward inexorably, the Doctor's companions realize that history books can lie. But the Doctor can see the threads that hold all time together -- can he and his companions escape the depravities of this decadent Russia without unraveling the history of Earth?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Pages of Sin,
By
This review is from: The Wages of Sin (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
At a bantamweight 250 pages, David A. McIntee has finally churned out the svelte book we've been waiting for since his 1993 knockout debut effort White Darkness. This hard-hitting look at the death of Rasputin pulls no punches, and we're left with a winning historical novel.That's right, a pure historical. Oh, it doesn't seem that way at first -- this book opens in Tunguska in 1908, a scene familiar to those who've read the right DW novels and seen the right X-Files episodes (interestingly, McIntee was also the first DW writer to reference X-Files in his fiction). But happily, the novel stays focussed in and around palace intrigue in 1916 St. Petersburg. There is romance, religion gone awry, and, as this is nominally a 3rd Doctor novel, a Bondian subplot. Since it's short and has large print and wide margins, Wages of Sin is almost entirely about G. E. Rasputin and his effect on the ladies of the TARDIS. He and the Doctor share just one brief, mute exchange, through a sheet of ice (and it's a marvelous visual). The Mad Monk also flirts with Jo and verbally fences with Liz. The choice of companions is unique -- Elizabeth Shaw returns from Cambridge after Season 10, but shares little if any page time with the Doctor. Or perhaps this is not peculiar; Caroline John and Jon Pertwee had a similar lack of chemistry during their lone year together. Liz, and Jo, are well-portrayed and used here. Jo falls for Rasputin, but isn't made out as a dimwit; McIntee appears to have sympathy for her point of view and even the Doctor condones it. And Liz's scientific ruminations mirror the dry, lecture-prone writing, but that's preferable to Liz's other first-ever journey through time (Eye of the Giant), in which all she wants to do is wash her hair. The lone fault of the DW historical is that we already know what happens, and the Doctor usually isn't there when it does. This time, he has to run halfway to Finland just to miss out on most of Rasputin's exquisite 30-page death sequence. Jo and Liz are the actors here. Thankfully Pertwee is very faithfully rendered while he's on the page. The attention to detail is fine. There's a dandy explanation as to how no poison surfaced in Rasputin's corpse, in spite of the copious amounts Yusopov (or Youssopov, &c. -- McIntee has a smorgasboard of transliterations to choose from with all the factual characters) fed him. There's no postscript, unfortunately -- a longer novel may have taken us to the real-life Yusupov's final days, which include a high-profile American lawsuit against a Rasputin TV movie. Or could have used the fickle memory of the blind old man as a framing tale. But in Wages of Sin, we get just the assassination plotnothing but fact, avoiding the fanciful or silly, and it's a nice change of pace from the norm.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ra-Ra-Rasputin,
This review is from: The Wages of Sin (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
At the end of 'The Three Doctors', the Time Lords had returned the secrets of operating the TARDIS to the Doctor in thanks for his role is saving the universe. At the end of that story, he talks about repairing and testing the TARDIS before haring off around time and space. The next televised story, 'Carnival of Monsters', appears to take place after this maintenance.David McIntee's novel takes place in the period between the two stories. The Doctor has repaired the TARDIS and decides to take a safe test flight into Earth's past. He invites Professor Elizabeth Shaw, who was his assistant at the start of his exile on Earth to Join he and Jo on the flight and they head for a point in history of Liz's choosing - the impact on Earth by a extraterrestrial body at Tunguska in 1908. However, things never go as they were planned, and the Doctor, Liz and Jo end up in Russia in 1916, up to their eyeballs in the intrigue of the court of Tsar Nicholas and the strange influence of Rasputin... An interesting historical, far more successful than Mr. McIntee's own inclusion of the Marquis de Sade in 'The Man in the Velvet Mask'. The general details around Rasputin's life and death are probably known to many, so it is interesting to see this represented in the Doctor Who format. The best part of the book occurs at the very end of the book, reaffirming the view that "you can't rewrite history; not one line!" in a very dramatic fashion. If you don't like Doctor Who historicals, avoid this one. But if you are happy with such stories, this one is interesting.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Doctor Who and the Romanov's,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Wages of Sin (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
Jon Pertwee is probably my favourite Doctor of all time and this story is worthy of his incarnation. Set in Russia during the reign of the the Romanov's, it is a compelling story that doesn't need Bug eyed monsters and mad men trying to take over the world to make it exciting. And how Liz Shaw takes to the Doctor's current companion Jo Grant is very good. And for those who have seen or at least heard about the film Nicholas and Alexandria, you will really enjoy the appearance of the Mad Monk Rasputin and the author's take on his personality. I've been very pleased with Mr. McIntee's past novels and I feel that The Wages of Sin is probably the best novel he's done to date. Writing a book based on Historic Facts (although for the most part this is purely fictional) is a very difficult thing to do and I feel that he's done a very fine job with it in this book. Pick it up when you have the chance.
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