Review: The Resurrection Casket (Public)
This one gets a bit ranty under the spoiler-cut. You have been warned.
Doctor Who: The Resurrection Casket by Justin Richards. HC, 246 pages, BBC Books, 2006.
Doctor (10) and Rose manage to land the TARDIS smack dab in the middle of the zeg, a zone where electric circuitry won't work. Alas, this causes some problems for the TARDIS and they need to find an alternative method of transportation. Luckily they run into young Jimm and Silver Sally at the Broken Spyglass. Unluckily, there's this thing called the Black Shadow people keep getting cursed with, after which they are apologized to and then killed. Everyone's looking for Hamlek Glint's treasure and the Resurrection Casket, but there's more to everything than what meets the eye.
*Warning: SPOILERS* Oh, Justin Richards. I wanted to like this book, I really did. I mean, there's pirates in space, and robots and steampunk, and the Doctor locks himself out of the TARDIS. There could really be something to that. So why did it leave me unsatisfied? Because I had figured out all of the major plot points before the book was even half-way through. I'm not generally the sort to do this. Give me a murder mystery with the thinnest of smoke screens and I'll undoubitably follow the wrong set of leads. After reading The Clockwise Man, I'd hoped that poor Justin would improve, but I liked this one even less. Granted, there was nothing terribly wrong with it. The development of Jimm was interesting enough, and some of the ideas behind it were quite intriguing. I liked the reference to radiation pills in the beginning, and the descriptions of the steampunk spaceships.
In the end despite the bits I liked and the one or two minor reveals that I hadn't already figured out, this book was regrettably boring. Perhaps someone younger would have been interested if they couldn't work out what was going to happen by the flashing neon lights telling you everything that would happen. The one real attempt at misdirection didn't work for long, and I'm beginning to feel that I need not bother finishing Justin's books since after a hundred pages the rest of the plot can be easily extrapolated. A real time-saver, even if it does mean missing some of the characterization.
Well, that was a bit of a rant there, but overall I must say I was disappointed mainly for the same reason I was disappointed in The Price of Paradise, because this book seemed to have a lot of promise that follow through very well. If you like steampunk or space pirates you'll probably want to give this a try. Otherwise, I would recommend it mainly for the sake of completeness, if you can only afford to get one of the New Who books, pick another one. Still better than The Stone Rose through!
Doctor Who: The Resurrection Casket by Justin Richards. HC, 246 pages, BBC Books, 2006.
Doctor (10) and Rose manage to land the TARDIS smack dab in the middle of the zeg, a zone where electric circuitry won't work. Alas, this causes some problems for the TARDIS and they need to find an alternative method of transportation. Luckily they run into young Jimm and Silver Sally at the Broken Spyglass. Unluckily, there's this thing called the Black Shadow people keep getting cursed with, after which they are apologized to and then killed. Everyone's looking for Hamlek Glint's treasure and the Resurrection Casket, but there's more to everything than what meets the eye.
*Warning: SPOILERS* Oh, Justin Richards. I wanted to like this book, I really did. I mean, there's pirates in space, and robots and steampunk, and the Doctor locks himself out of the TARDIS. There could really be something to that. So why did it leave me unsatisfied? Because I had figured out all of the major plot points before the book was even half-way through. I'm not generally the sort to do this. Give me a murder mystery with the thinnest of smoke screens and I'll undoubitably follow the wrong set of leads. After reading The Clockwise Man, I'd hoped that poor Justin would improve, but I liked this one even less. Granted, there was nothing terribly wrong with it. The development of Jimm was interesting enough, and some of the ideas behind it were quite intriguing. I liked the reference to radiation pills in the beginning, and the descriptions of the steampunk spaceships.
In the end despite the bits I liked and the one or two minor reveals that I hadn't already figured out, this book was regrettably boring. Perhaps someone younger would have been interested if they couldn't work out what was going to happen by the flashing neon lights telling you everything that would happen. The one real attempt at misdirection didn't work for long, and I'm beginning to feel that I need not bother finishing Justin's books since after a hundred pages the rest of the plot can be easily extrapolated. A real time-saver, even if it does mean missing some of the characterization.
Well, that was a bit of a rant there, but overall I must say I was disappointed mainly for the same reason I was disappointed in The Price of Paradise, because this book seemed to have a lot of promise that follow through very well. If you like steampunk or space pirates you'll probably want to give this a try. Otherwise, I would recommend it mainly for the sake of completeness, if you can only afford to get one of the New Who books, pick another one. Still better than The Stone Rose through!