Vanderdeken's Children

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.

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.

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 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.