Enter Wildthyme

While I have no interest in Paul Magrs work in general, I decided to check out his Iris Wildthyme novel... which I'm guessing is part of the reason he wrote it, to get people in from the Doctor Who side. (Still don't want to read his other books.) The book in general mixes in The Blue Angel, with Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and liberally sprinkles in The Scarlet Empress... which is really making me suspicious that this is a cash grab for Doctor Who fans as that reads as a Greatest Hits... but I would think that Paul Magrs would be better than that...

The plot of this is...not a hell of a lot, now that I think about it. Marvelle gets the damn Pinking Shears (because we needed to be reminded of those) and then it's a chase sequence as they head towards Hyspero. It's mainly about character interaction, which is quite good. Marvelle is suitably smug, Simon is just this side of wet, Barbra is just tolerable, although Panda could do with a rethink (but still classic Magrs). We get Jenny and ever and continual references to her getting runs when travelling through time (is that funny, Magrs, that we need it so constantly?). And Iris herself is in full Katy Manning form. [Fortunately, no harping on about how the Doctor is her love...]

But then there is the full on Magrs camp. We have the Pinking Shears and the Very Fabrix, the Objet D'Oom, the Dreadful Flap, I'm sure Dii h'anno Doors is a reference to something... [and there is tons of references to his previous works, it seems]. That really does not chime with me, and why I never like his books.

That said, I will probably read the next one, partly because of the tangential Doctor Who link, partly because it continues the story. But that's the only reasons...

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