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annathepiperWatching Fourth Doctor episodes with Leela for the first time since I started paying active attention to Doctor Who put me quite in the mood to pick up my housemate's copy of Psi-ence Fiction, by Chris Boucher, a Fourth Doctor and Leela adventure. I am not, however, entirely sure of what I got for my reading effort.
The dialogue and interaction between most of the characters, I have to admit--threw me. This includes the interactions between the Doctor and Leela, too. There is an overall sense of disconnectedness to it, for reasons which are actually pertinent to the plot; yet, something about Mr. Boucher's writing style didn't quite make it work for me. At least, during the first half of the book. I'll grant that towards the end, it started coming together better and feeling more like a Doctor Who story.
I was further hampered by not liking most of the cast members du jour very much. Most of the characters are students who clearly don't like each other very much, and who, as a consequence, are always sniping at one another. As a reader, then, I had very little opportunity to find anything to like about any of them. Hands down, the strongest character in the plot is Leela--and then mostly in the contrast between her primitive view of the universe and the modern-day university setting she and the Doctor visit. There's something delightfully surreal about primitive Leela trying to interact with a parapsychology professor and his students, and there are moments in an otherwise erratically paced plot where that works quite well.
The last issue I had with the story is the biggest, though: I felt it was a cop-out, since the Doctor doesn't actually get to be the one to resolve the problem at all. To have that just when the book was finally coming together for me threw it off the rails at the last minute. So ultimately, I'm giving this one two stars.
The dialogue and interaction between most of the characters, I have to admit--threw me. This includes the interactions between the Doctor and Leela, too. There is an overall sense of disconnectedness to it, for reasons which are actually pertinent to the plot; yet, something about Mr. Boucher's writing style didn't quite make it work for me. At least, during the first half of the book. I'll grant that towards the end, it started coming together better and feeling more like a Doctor Who story.
I was further hampered by not liking most of the cast members du jour very much. Most of the characters are students who clearly don't like each other very much, and who, as a consequence, are always sniping at one another. As a reader, then, I had very little opportunity to find anything to like about any of them. Hands down, the strongest character in the plot is Leela--and then mostly in the contrast between her primitive view of the universe and the modern-day university setting she and the Doctor visit. There's something delightfully surreal about primitive Leela trying to interact with a parapsychology professor and his students, and there are moments in an otherwise erratically paced plot where that works quite well.
The last issue I had with the story is the biggest, though: I felt it was a cop-out, since the Doctor doesn't actually get to be the one to resolve the problem at all. To have that just when the book was finally coming together for me threw it off the rails at the last minute. So ultimately, I'm giving this one two stars.