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A review by truestorydesu
Doctor Who: Dead of Winter by James Goss
3.0
Read this in honor of the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, because Doctor Who is the best. This book seemingly combined some of my favorite all-time things - tuberculosis, The Doctor - but, as these books go, it basically reads like a rejected concept for a Who episode. The writing is not that stellar, though I did like the structure at first, it stopped making sense as the story went on - why would a little girl pause during a fog zombie alien invasion to write an extremely detailed letter to her mother? Why would a doctor's journal include dialogue? But my biggest pet peeve was how the author thought tuberculosis worked. Ok. Deep breath -
TUBERCULOSIS DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.
And exhale.
TB does not immediately cause you to cough up massive amounts of blood. At first the most you'd get is a little bit of bloody sputum, which you can get with other illnesses, like pneumonia and shit. It wouldn't be until you really started getting bad as your lung tissue starts to collapse in on itself that you'll see hemorrhaging. Also - the odds that Rory, a young, healthy person, would actually develop TB if infected with it are extremely small. Roughly 10% of people who catch the disease actually get it - most everyone else just have it latent in their systems. I get you can do a "oh, aliens infected him!" handwave, but seriously, man. Seriously? Grr, arg. It's like I did all that weird, obsessive research for nothing.
Anyway, this book was OK - not stellar literature, I know (leave me alone, I'll read what I like!), but still fun.
If you ignore the lack of TB research.
TUBERCULOSIS DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.
And exhale.
TB does not immediately cause you to cough up massive amounts of blood. At first the most you'd get is a little bit of bloody sputum, which you can get with other illnesses, like pneumonia and shit. It wouldn't be until you really started getting bad as your lung tissue starts to collapse in on itself that you'll see hemorrhaging. Also - the odds that Rory, a young, healthy person, would actually develop TB if infected with it are extremely small. Roughly 10% of people who catch the disease actually get it - most everyone else just have it latent in their systems. I get you can do a "oh, aliens infected him!" handwave, but seriously, man. Seriously? Grr, arg. It's like I did all that weird, obsessive research for nothing.
Anyway, this book was OK - not stellar literature, I know (leave me alone, I'll read what I like!), but still fun.
If you ignore the lack of TB research.