Ok so here are my thoughts. I liked the book but don’t know why so many people think it’s near perfect?
I especially didn’t like how the book completely ignored Ace’s ending in the last book, then redid the “Ace falling in love and wanting to stay” trope the last book did, the Doctor was just being weird the whole time, the solution to the problem wasn’t clever it was just “make the ship go boom”, and leaving Ace on an alien world was a bit strange.
The Doctor with his mentioning Susan and Dodo, playing chess when he should be helping, being mysterious, was just annoying to me. If I were Ace I’d leave him too.
And don’t get me started on Christopher, none of that made sense to me.
The only good bit to me were Benny’s lines but she didn’t have enough of a presence for me to really get her character yet.
I listened to the audio, and will share more thoughts in my Benny thread, but suffice it to say it was lovely hearing them all but the same issues exist in the audio, in fact Ace’s romance seems even more rushed and out of place!
Just finished this! It’s my first Bernice Summerfield story[1], so I was very excited to read it.
My Highlights
An archaeologist called Paul Magrs!? I had to do a double-take when I read this but respect to Cornell for namedropping a future author! He gets a door named after him on p49, criticises the literary style of the Heavenite’s writings on p127 and seems to go into some sort of existential crisis later. The whole thing feels very meta but it made me chuckle!
p58 - “We pirated a little space, and made it into Fairyland” is lovely (and the next bit, “It’s always summer here”, reminded me of “Because we know that summer can’t last forever” (Ashildr, Hell Bent). I guess you could say it’s a nod to the way people find community online?
p137 - Benny asks the Doctor if he has a girlfriend, boyfriend or a model train set. I’m wondering if this might be the inspiration for Model Train Set… either way, she has him sussed pretty much immediately. AND him saying that “I’m what monsters have nightmares about!”
p168 - The Heavenite scientist’s letter mentions that a mountain was taken away in baskets… Strangely reminiscent of a story about a mountain of pure diamond and a little bird >:)
The Travellers want to die with their eyes open, which reminded me of the scene in Hell Bent where Rassilon tries to get the Doctor executed. I always thought it was strange that the Doctor chooses to close his eyes and my brain couldn’t help but see the (anti)parallel here…
And I’m surprised that nobody pointed this out before but there seem to be a few parallels with Beltempest. Namely, planets being destroyed, suicide cults and companions being completely abandoned by the Doctor. But this was, overall, much better than Beltempest.
