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arthurbdd's review
3.0
In principle, a Doctor Who take on the cyberpunk genre written in the style of John Brunner's seminal classic Stand On Zanzibar should have appealed to me, but in practice this didn't quite scratch the itch. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/2024/03/05/the-virgin-new-adventures-nightshade-to-deceit/
scheu's review against another edition
4.0
Better than I remember. Another early 90s SF novel that happens to have the Doctor in it.
eddyfate's review against another edition
3.0
Did not finish. I feel like I *want* to like this -- it's Doctor Who cyberpunk space opera, after all -- but I'm bouncing off of it for some reason. I'm going to put it back on the shelf for a while and pick it up another time.
gingerreader99's review
3.0
Maybe it was the stress of the outside world that kept me from falling in love with this one, I am not sure. It was good when I had time to sit down and enjoy it in long chunks but it just didn't pull me in and force me to read it. The world building was certainly interesting and different though and I appreciated that.
isayhourwrong's review
fast-paced
1.75
Kadiatu good, everything else bad. Pythia was right to stop the timelords, evil bastqrd
fullfledgedegg's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Sexual content, Alcohol, Body horror, and Gun violence
Minor: Drug abuse, War, Police brutality, and Addiction
nwhyte's review
2.0
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1444240.html
There was one pedantic point that really annoyed me about this book: Arcturus is spelt incorrectly throughout, missing the first 'r'. A good defemce lawyer would plead that we are not talking about α Boötis but about some other celestial body with the similar name of 'Acturus', but I'm unconvinced.
Apart from that point, I actually rather enjoyed this book, which is a fairly huge admission for me as I am very definitely not a fan of Aaronovitch's two broadcast stories (Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield). I found it reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which was pubished two months earlier - so can hardly have been a direct influence; must have both absorbed the Zeitgeist. The Doctor and friends are caught up in a peculiar problem involving AIs and an interplanetary mass transmat system, but also involving grizzled war veterans and various other factions. There is a cracking pace to it.
Besides the mangling of Arcturus, I have one other minor gripe about the book. The previous volume in the series, Love and War, invested much time in introducing new companion Benny Summerfield; but here she (and to an extent the Doctor) blend into background scenery, with much more action going to the Brigadier's genetically engineered warrior descendent, Kadiatu Lethbridge Stewart. She turns out to be a super character in her own right, but it does give the book a mild air of being Kadiatu's adventure in which the Doctor appears trying to rescue Benny, which is not what one expects from a Who book.
Still, very enjoyable
There was one pedantic point that really annoyed me about this book: Arcturus is spelt incorrectly throughout, missing the first 'r'. A good defemce lawyer would plead that we are not talking about α Boötis but about some other celestial body with the similar name of 'Acturus', but I'm unconvinced.
Apart from that point, I actually rather enjoyed this book, which is a fairly huge admission for me as I am very definitely not a fan of Aaronovitch's two broadcast stories (Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield). I found it reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which was pubished two months earlier - so can hardly have been a direct influence; must have both absorbed the Zeitgeist. The Doctor and friends are caught up in a peculiar problem involving AIs and an interplanetary mass transmat system, but also involving grizzled war veterans and various other factions. There is a cracking pace to it.
Besides the mangling of Arcturus, I have one other minor gripe about the book. The previous volume in the series, Love and War, invested much time in introducing new companion Benny Summerfield; but here she (and to an extent the Doctor) blend into background scenery, with much more action going to the Brigadier's genetically engineered warrior descendent, Kadiatu Lethbridge Stewart. She turns out to be a super character in her own right, but it does give the book a mild air of being Kadiatu's adventure in which the Doctor appears trying to rescue Benny, which is not what one expects from a Who book.
Still, very enjoyable
ianbanks's review
3.0
Not brilliant but it does fit the brief of a story that is "too broad and too deep" for the television show which really annoyed all the hardcore fans who say that Doctor Who can tell every story in the world... except for the ones that they don't like.
(A digression: my biggest problem with the NA range is that the stories that fandom actively disliked were stories that weren't necessarily badly-written but didn't feel like Doctor Who to them. They wanted stories that pushed the boundaries of the show but in a way that didn't make them feel uncomfortable or that weren't actually too far from what the show had done, previously. Hence, when a novel came along that used swear words, sex scenes and genuinely tried to place Doctor Who into "adult" situations or into stories that didn't feel dated because they were trying to fit into a style of story style that was already ancient, it garnered a lot of unnecessary hostility.)
It is a few years too late to feel really fresh as a cyberpunk story, a genre that had already lost most of its momentum by the time that this novel was published. It does tell an interesting story, but one that's more concerned with ambience than with real depth. It's also a very clever-clever story that spends a lot of time generating quotable quotes than real dialogue (although some of it is genuinely brilliant, like the exchange between Kadiatu and the Doctor about Edith Piaf) and some of the wit feels more like the sort of thing that's designed to show off how clever the author is rather than his characters. Although that was a problem with so many of the New Adventures that it feels churlish to single out Mr Aaronovitch.
Not a bad novel but one that takes too long to find its feet and has a several characters who feel too similar to one another, which is a neophyte novelists fault, rather than a specific one to this novel. The setting tries a little too hard to be edgy but creates a world with a lot of history and depth. I'd probably have liked a little more backstory to our villain and a less metaphorical/ psychedelic climax but that's just me and my issues with cyberpunk rather than an actual fault.
(A digression: my biggest problem with the NA range is that the stories that fandom actively disliked were stories that weren't necessarily badly-written but didn't feel like Doctor Who to them. They wanted stories that pushed the boundaries of the show but in a way that didn't make them feel uncomfortable or that weren't actually too far from what the show had done, previously. Hence, when a novel came along that used swear words, sex scenes and genuinely tried to place Doctor Who into "adult" situations or into stories that didn't feel dated because they were trying to fit into a style of story style that was already ancient, it garnered a lot of unnecessary hostility.)
It is a few years too late to feel really fresh as a cyberpunk story, a genre that had already lost most of its momentum by the time that this novel was published. It does tell an interesting story, but one that's more concerned with ambience than with real depth. It's also a very clever-clever story that spends a lot of time generating quotable quotes than real dialogue (although some of it is genuinely brilliant, like the exchange between Kadiatu and the Doctor about Edith Piaf) and some of the wit feels more like the sort of thing that's designed to show off how clever the author is rather than his characters. Although that was a problem with so many of the New Adventures that it feels churlish to single out Mr Aaronovitch.
Not a bad novel but one that takes too long to find its feet and has a several characters who feel too similar to one another, which is a neophyte novelists fault, rather than a specific one to this novel. The setting tries a little too hard to be edgy but creates a world with a lot of history and depth. I'd probably have liked a little more backstory to our villain and a less metaphorical/ psychedelic climax but that's just me and my issues with cyberpunk rather than an actual fault.