Saturday 14 August 2010

DW: The Glamour Chase

Yay! A Gary Russell book! And with that author, I was expecting The Glamour Chase to be better than the previous two.

The story is aliens chased on Earth, and other aliens are coming for them. Yep, not exactly original. And the plot is taken up with the main crew talking to Oliver Marks over and over and over again. "Action", as such, only takes place in the end of the book.

But with Gary Russell, you get a focus on characters, and there are a fair few characters. Oliver, in particular, is well developed, and actually gives Rory to show off his nurse training (which has otherwise never really come up, even in the TV series). But, aside from names, I can't really say that the others are as well fleshed out. And I don't know what exactly it is, but the number-named Weave come off as less than notable, aside from two, 128 and 3, and that's mainly because they have short names! I get that Gary was trying to develop a totally alien race, which is cool, but unfortunately it comes up against cultural expectations and that don't quite link. Still, good to try different things.

As mentioned, Rory is given some room to grow, but the Doctor and Amy are fairly one-note. Would have though Gary could have done them better.

The best book in this set, and a nice read, although still not something I would overly recommend.

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