"Winner Takes All" and "The Monsters Inside"
As if my obsessive watching of Doctor Who wasn't bad enough, I succumbed and bought two of the new books. For The Monsters Inside, at least I had an excuse - I was refunding something in HMV, so I had the money, and it was reduced. For Winner Takes All, all I can say is I was having a bad day, and needed to get out of college. So I bought the book, and sat in Starbucks for a few hours reading it with a mocha. I sense my next bad day will lead to me buying The Clockwork Man....
Thoughts on the book are below, but there are some spoilers, so don't read if you don't want to see them.
The Monsters Inside
This book takes place almost entirely off-earth, which is a nice change. I understand why the show, for this season at least, has focussed on earth, but variety's good too. Very quick plot-outline is: Rose and the Doctor land on a planet which, as it turns out, is part of an entire system of planets earth colonies use to deal with prisoners. They get caught, naturally, and end up separated. Rose goes to what appears to be a young offenders institution, and the Doctor is sent to the alien one, where the forced labour is exploiting these more advanced minds to solve some of humanity's technological problems.
I enjoyed the book, at least partially because I'm an angst fiend.The Doctor and Rose being separated, not knowing if the other is okay, but trying to get back to each other, is obviously great for this. Most of the shippy moments come from this peril, either the angst, or its relieval. When Rose is asked if she's got someone, she thinks instantly of the doctor, and says: "There's someone I need to get back to."
The Doctor and Rose are both written well. Rose in particlar gets to have her own, distinct story, which is interesting to see. The Doctor copes a bit better, especially when the woman in charge (not evil, though not great either) finds out that he may be the answer to her pet project. The weakness of the story is that there are so many secondary characters, especially given that Rose and the Doctor are apart, that their characterisations can be rather thin. Also, if I wanted to bring back characters, I wouldn't use the Slitheen. They're better than in AoL/WW3 but I would have tried a different way of creating the 'anyone could be one of them' dynamic.
That said, I enjoyed Rose's relationships with the other people in the prison. One of her defining characteristics is her compassion, and she shows this in the book. The Doctor has some nice moments as well, his interactions with Flowers (the head of research) are funny, and he has a few touching moments with another prisoner - Nesshalop.
Winner Takes All
This one I loved. The plot is, shall we say, a little less believeable, but I've never required hard science in my sci-fi. Basically, an alien race called Quevvils want to destroy another race on their planet - the Mantodeans. They can't manage this, because their physiology seems to have evolved in a way which prevents them from hurting each other. (The Doctor has a good laugh at this stopping them...) So, as you do, they start a promotion on earth with scratch cards giving away holidays and games concoles. Except the holidays are to their planet, to be used as soldiers controlled by, you guessed it, the free games consoles. Using humans as both the carriers and controllers. This is a useful plot device as it means that once the Doctor and Rose have figured out what's happening we have Mickey on earth (much less annoying than in Rose) trying to stop people playing and inadvertently killing real people, the Doctor as a controller, because of course he's much better at the game than the humans, and Rose as a carrier, the means of making the Doctor cooperate.
And this is the best part of the book. Rose being controlled by the Doctor gets to be a metaphor for how both of them have concerns about their relationship, as well as being a great source of the aforementioned angst. The Doctor (who sounds like Christopher Eccleston even when I'm reading) is furious at what he has to do, whereas Rose is scared, and made worse by the fact she's helpless.
This isn't to say the book is all angst. It made me laugh out loud as well. The Doctor and Mickey playing the game at the beginning is great, and the interaction between the two throughout is just as snarky jealous as in the show. The scene where Rose rescues the Doctor and Mickey with the alien bondage websites line...
This one is more shippy than TMI, not only because of the Rose as carrier section, but Rose freeing Mickey first to avoid acknowledging that she would have freed the Doctor first for a reason. The conversation she has with another character about feeling like Lois Lane while the doctor plays superhero, and the other person pointing out that the Doctor sees it entirely differently. (The other characters are more fleshed out here, because there's fewer, and one in particular with a large role). The hugs. The fight which is immediately forgotten when he thinks she's in danger. Jackie's: "if you share a bedroom I don't want to know about it"
I'm kinda tempted to include more quotes, but would spoil reading the books. There's some very sweet shippy lines in both books, and I'm going to icon more of them, but I'll leave it at that right now. Sorry for being so rambly mswyrr...
Thoughts on the book are below, but there are some spoilers, so don't read if you don't want to see them.
The Monsters Inside
This book takes place almost entirely off-earth, which is a nice change. I understand why the show, for this season at least, has focussed on earth, but variety's good too. Very quick plot-outline is: Rose and the Doctor land on a planet which, as it turns out, is part of an entire system of planets earth colonies use to deal with prisoners. They get caught, naturally, and end up separated. Rose goes to what appears to be a young offenders institution, and the Doctor is sent to the alien one, where the forced labour is exploiting these more advanced minds to solve some of humanity's technological problems.
I enjoyed the book, at least partially because I'm an angst fiend.The Doctor and Rose being separated, not knowing if the other is okay, but trying to get back to each other, is obviously great for this. Most of the shippy moments come from this peril, either the angst, or its relieval. When Rose is asked if she's got someone, she thinks instantly of the doctor, and says: "There's someone I need to get back to."
The Doctor and Rose are both written well. Rose in particlar gets to have her own, distinct story, which is interesting to see. The Doctor copes a bit better, especially when the woman in charge (not evil, though not great either) finds out that he may be the answer to her pet project. The weakness of the story is that there are so many secondary characters, especially given that Rose and the Doctor are apart, that their characterisations can be rather thin. Also, if I wanted to bring back characters, I wouldn't use the Slitheen. They're better than in AoL/WW3 but I would have tried a different way of creating the 'anyone could be one of them' dynamic.
That said, I enjoyed Rose's relationships with the other people in the prison. One of her defining characteristics is her compassion, and she shows this in the book. The Doctor has some nice moments as well, his interactions with Flowers (the head of research) are funny, and he has a few touching moments with another prisoner - Nesshalop.
Winner Takes All
This one I loved. The plot is, shall we say, a little less believeable, but I've never required hard science in my sci-fi. Basically, an alien race called Quevvils want to destroy another race on their planet - the Mantodeans. They can't manage this, because their physiology seems to have evolved in a way which prevents them from hurting each other. (The Doctor has a good laugh at this stopping them...) So, as you do, they start a promotion on earth with scratch cards giving away holidays and games concoles. Except the holidays are to their planet, to be used as soldiers controlled by, you guessed it, the free games consoles. Using humans as both the carriers and controllers. This is a useful plot device as it means that once the Doctor and Rose have figured out what's happening we have Mickey on earth (much less annoying than in Rose) trying to stop people playing and inadvertently killing real people, the Doctor as a controller, because of course he's much better at the game than the humans, and Rose as a carrier, the means of making the Doctor cooperate.
And this is the best part of the book. Rose being controlled by the Doctor gets to be a metaphor for how both of them have concerns about their relationship, as well as being a great source of the aforementioned angst. The Doctor (who sounds like Christopher Eccleston even when I'm reading) is furious at what he has to do, whereas Rose is scared, and made worse by the fact she's helpless.
This isn't to say the book is all angst. It made me laugh out loud as well. The Doctor and Mickey playing the game at the beginning is great, and the interaction between the two throughout is just as snarky jealous as in the show. The scene where Rose rescues the Doctor and Mickey with the alien bondage websites line...
This one is more shippy than TMI, not only because of the Rose as carrier section, but Rose freeing Mickey first to avoid acknowledging that she would have freed the Doctor first for a reason. The conversation she has with another character about feeling like Lois Lane while the doctor plays superhero, and the other person pointing out that the Doctor sees it entirely differently. (The other characters are more fleshed out here, because there's fewer, and one in particular with a large role). The hugs. The fight which is immediately forgotten when he thinks she's in danger. Jackie's: "if you share a bedroom I don't want to know about it"
I'm kinda tempted to include more quotes, but would spoil reading the books. There's some very sweet shippy lines in both books, and I'm going to icon more of them, but I'll leave it at that right now. Sorry for being so rambly mswyrr...