Wetworld

[louisedennis]

Just as I'd pretty much decided to cut my losses and give up the new series books along comes Wetworld by Mark Michalowski challenging me to revise my assumptions. It's about as old school (as in Virgin-Books-a-like) as its possible to be within the confines of the new series, throwing around mentions of adjudicators and world-building the details

Comments

[ladyofastolat]

Do you think the current lot of hardback Doctor Who novels have anything in them that renders them unsuitable for children? I initially put them in the teenage section - Adult also buy them, so they're in the adult section, too - but children are forever clamouring for them.

There really is a need for more Doctor Who fiction aimed at younger children. There's a series of choose your own adventure books, which are going down a storm, but we need so much more.

[louisedennis]

I don't think so, though I've not been reading with that in mind. I've certainly given copies to my niece (age 10) and nephew (age 8) without any qualms, though I chose ones I thought they'd like, and I'm told that the authors are told to aim for the level of the first two Harry Potter novels in terms of angst and scares - I'm fairly certain that there is nothing on the horror level that a child couldn't cope with if they could already cope with the TV series and some of the viewpoint characters, especially in Justin Richards' ones, are at the young end of teen, if not pre-teen. I guess if a child liked the show but needed to watch with parents to reassure them then I might have doubts about handing over some of these books (I could give you a list of the ones that would concern me on this level, but whether the things I find horrific equate to what a child might find horrific I couldn't say

[ladyofastolat]

Good! I've actually already bought extra copies for the children's sections, so I'm quite relieved. One member of staff - a Doctor Who fan - felt that they were fine for children, but another, also a fan, thought they weren't. (Perhaps they were basing their judgement on different titles.) I think the only thing liable to prompt complaints from irate parents would be sexual references or swearing, since these can easily jump out at them during a brief scan. A book with sustained "challenging" subject matter, dealing with issues likely to go over the heads of most children, is hardly likely to raise an eyebrow, even though such a book might actually be less suitable for children.

I also suspect that many parents are likely to think that Doctor Who = Children's, so it wouldn't even cross their minds that anything in there might not be suitable. Which, I suppose, means that I have a ready-made defence if anyone complains...

[iriswildthyme]

Good to see I wasn't the only person pleased with 'Wetworld'. I read it on the plane back from the States when caught in the middle of a terribly enthusiastic group of Walmart retirees heading for a break in St Andrews, and it provided great solace and a place of refuge in the face of their unremitting jollity.

Hopefully, it may mark a watershed in the books - Paul Magrs' Sick Building from the same group of releases was also excellent and I enjoyed Mark Morris' book too. And with future releases from Simon Guerrier and Paul Dale Smith, two of current crop of Who authors who can really write, maybe things are finally looking up...

[louisedennis]

I'm reading Sick Building at the moment (well until my shiny new copy the Queen of Attolia arrived anyway I was) and so far I've been less impressed than I was by Wetworld, but I'll see how it goes on.

... now all we have to do is entice Steve Kitson, Henry Potts and Jonathan Evans on here and I can enjoy watching my flist argue about Arcs and the comparative popularity of Dr Who and the X-files :-)

[iriswildthyme]

Goodness, no - I came here to get away from that (or rather to stop myself going on endlessly and irritatingly, while we were all still talking to one another :-)