Book thread

[Deleted]

Finished Resurrection. All in all, a mixed bag. I enjoyed reading it although not as much as Saward's older novels. Even though I prefer Resurrection to Attack, I must say the Attack novel is by far the better of the two. I still like this one enough despite the second half of it feeling rushed. It starts off like a proper Saward novel and descends into a basic novel by Terrance Dicks. The ending is also bizarre. Why does Tegan suddenly have super powers? It's all a bit strange. There's even a talking cat in there too. With all that said, it was nice to waste the hours away reading something from one of my favourite authors. Not cracking stuff but worth a read.

[Spark Doll King]

Dracula’s Demeter

The Captains log of the events aboard the Demeter is, in my opinion, one of the best parts of the original novel. It never fails to have the hair on the back of my knock stand up. Given how extensively Dracula has Ben examined, adapted and continued, it’s little wonder this section of the book would gain its own adaptions into full fledged tales. Along with this book, there is also a comic adaption of the Demeter’s voyage and there is also film adaption called “ The Last Voyage if the Demeter” in production.

Now dose this book capture the full spirit of that chapter of Dracula, no, but is it a fun read, yes I think so.

The reason I feel it dose not falls short on the full horror of the original is because Dracula is very much a character in this book. He’s is not a ghostly threat that haunts the ship, but another character from who we see their perspective and motives. Now while this dose undercut the events original style horror, I do feel that what we get out of it is a worthy, if not wholly equal replacement.

What works right off the bat is that the author has clearly researched the period of the book. The port around the Demeter feels authentic, the ships crew feel like real sailors and a lot of fun little historical facts get mentioned throughout.

Now natural the book has to work around the limitations set by the original, the Demeter was running a very small crew of five sailors, two mates and the Captain. A bit light for a ship the Demeter’s size. Yet it also two extra characters not mentioned in the novel. It gets around this in very interesting way. Firstly Dracula’s presence and the actions of his servants give a lot of the Demeter’s potential crew a bad feeling and many refuse to sail with her. Secondly the two added characters are a young Englishman running from trouble and a girl disguised as a boy acting as crew. In both cases their absence from the record is to avoid legal difficulties. The Englishmen is aboard a ship not licensed to carry passengers, who could have pretty heavy reputations, but he is paying well, while the girl is omitted because they feel that “he” is potentially to young to have been hired.

Now while the book dose a good job of explaining their omission from the Demeter’s log, when I learned that these two characters new each other my eyes rolled. I fully expected them to survive these events by some contrived method that would ruin the story… and much to my surprise they didn’t. I won’t spoil the exact way things play out, but let’s simple say none gets off this boat alive, or undead, save our titular vampire king.

That said the pair do serve a somewhat stereotypical function similar to that to Jonathan and Lucy in the original novel, both so we can have an audience surrogate of sorts and a victim for Dracula to prey upon in his more traditional manner. Yet both characters are fleshed out enough to be their own, with the girl also playing an important function to the plot.

Back to Dracula, if you like him portrayed as a diabolical monster, with none of the whimsical trapping many modern interpretations insist on attaching to the character, then is book is for you. He’s a total bastard on multiple levels throughout.

Over all a fun book that was better then I expected.

[rushy]

I reread Lucifer: Revelation (the 2nd novel in Paul Darrow's B7 sequel trilogy). I have mixed feelings on the first and negative feelings on the third, but this is peak Darrow, it's so much fun.

The book is split into four "episodes", in which Avon and Orac dash around the universe, a constant thorn in the sides of an eclectic mix of political players, each trying to outwit the others to become the ruler of the galaxy. I especially enjoy whenever Darrow writes heist sequences (there are at least three or four). They're short and sweet, and always hit so well. My favourite being a scene in which Avon knowingly enters a trap set by assassins at the Arctic. It's so cinematic and full of dark wit.

Orac is written very differently from the show, he's much more cynical and fed up, but it works very well against Avon's brooding attitude and is clearly intentional. There's a running theme in the book about Orac becoming increasingly human in Avon's company, whilst the latter loses his humanity (still suffering the loss of Blake).

Note: You shouldn't take this book too seriously, because Darrow absolutely did not. It's brimming with action movie and theatre cliches, and is irreverent in its approach to science (2D space warfare, asteroids with breathable atmospheres etc). It's clearly a book written with pure entertainment in mind, but has its touching moments too.