Michael's Reviews > Doctor Who: Alien Bodies

If I could give a book zero stars, this one wouldn't even get one. {Actually, having read comments by the author, I'd love to give this book *negative* stars. Arrogant douche. But I'll try to confine this review to the book itself.}

Okay, so this book introduces giant new plot twists to the Eighth Doctor Adventures, in the form of a Time War set somewhere in Gallifrey's future from the Doctor's perspective. This is an incredibly ambitious idea, and in the hands of a good author, I am sure the story would be highly entertaining. Lawrence Miles is not that author. The actual result was a preposterous train wreck. I truly never thought I would read a worse story than The Icewind Dale trilogy [something I regret even admitting to have read, even if I was sixteen or seventeen at the time], but this one takes the cake. I truly have never read a worse novel than this, and I hope never to read one worse still.

First of all, forget the story. The *format* of the book was awful. I have to imagine that this idiot is a fan of the Silmarillion, the way he keeps skipping to idiotic character backstories *literally every other chapter*. He does this to create false cliffhangers and as a time travel gimmick -- each subsequent backstory is a piece of the Relic's story, only told in reverse. The problem is, they're stories about characters that we just don't goddamn care about. He literally spends an entire chapter in the current story telling us who worthless and laughable the Krotons are -- and seriously, of all the monsters-of-the-week he could resurrect from the original series, he picked KROTONS?! -- just before launching into the Kroton backstory chapter, wherein he goes into significant depth about the biology and society of the Kroton race. I nearly threw the book across the room at this point. So freaking terrible. I can't begin to comprehend this. {Incidentally, this is what I referred to in my review of War of the Daleks. People complained about the interludes in that book, but there were *three times* as many interludes in this book. At least that book only threw one in in-between major sections of the book, serving to split the story up in a fashion not-unlike the original series' serials. This book's interludes being every other chapter just served to jumble the story more, weakening an already weak tale. But I digress.}

As for the story... again, in better hands, such a concept could have been intriguing. The Doctor shows up at an auction for "the Relic", a weapon desired by several opposing factions in the aforementioned future Time War. The mystery is kind of silly, since it becomes quickly apparent what that Relic is, long before Miles' intended reveal. The mystery of the various factions is only slightly more interesting, but quickly becomes absurd: Miles decided to delete the Celestial Intervention Agency from reality, and rename them "Celestis" in their outside-of-reality-but-not-really new home. I'm sorry, if you shorten "Celestial" to "Celestis", then that i still has the sound of a long E in my head... which makes their name utterly ridiculous sounding.

Also, how far are we supposed to swallow the splintering of Gallifreyan culture. There's the original Gallifrey, the Celestis, Faction Paradox [which is both silly and also originally Gallifreyan] and now "the Enemy", an unnamed future antagonist in this future War of Miles'. We meet a member of the Enemy in the Celestis' home at the end of the story... and he's described as wearing Gallifreyan garb. So basically every faction making serious bids on the Relic [not counting, you know, the Krotons and the still-not-time-aware humans] are all Gallifreyan, and every last one of them at odds with each other. The fact that the Celestis want to pretend to neutrality and the fact that Faction Paradox adopts members of all races does nothing to change that fact.

In short, Lawrence Miles set out to write the most ambitious book in the history of Doctor Who... and failed miserably. {And then wondered why no other authors wanted to use his plot elements. *sighs* The sole light in this darkness is that somebody eventually did, and in doing so wiped this future War nonsense out of existence. Causing Lawrence Miles to pout, take his toys and go home. Sadly I have to suffer through more Miles before I get to that glorious point, but I will revel when I get to that story.}