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Book Details

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50% complete
2002
2002
1 time
Book Cover
Has a genre Has a synopsis Has comments Has a year read Has a rating In my library In a series 
376
 Doctor Who - 8th Doctor*
#59 of 73
Doctor Who - 8th Doctor*   See series as if on a bookshelf
A series of books featuring the 8th Doctor from the once popular British television show Doctor Who.

1) The Eight Doctors
2) Vampire Science
3) The Bodysnatchers
4) Genocide
5) War of the Daleks
6) Alien Bodies
7) Kursaal
8) Option Lock
9) Longest Day
10) Legacy of the Daleks
11) Dreamstone Moon
12) Seeing I
13) Placebo Effect
14) Vanderdeken's Children
15) The Scarlet Empress
16) The Janus Conjunction
17) Beltempest
18) The Face-Eater
19) The Taint
20) Demontage
21) Revolution Man
22) Dominion
23) Unnatural History
24) Autumn Mist
25) Interference Book One: Shock Tactic
26) Interference Book Two: The Hour of the Geek
27) The Blue Angel
28) Taking of Planet 5
29) Frontier Worlds
30) Parallel 59
31) Shadows of Avalon
32) The Fall of Yquatine
33) Coldheart
34) The Space Age
35) The Banquo Legacy
36) The Ancestor Cell
37) The Burning
38) Casualties of War
39) The Turing Test
40) Endgame
41) Father Time
42) Escape Velocity
43) Earthworld
44) Vanishing Point
45) Eater of Wasps
46) The Year of Intelligent Tigers
47) The Slow Empire
48) Dark Progeny
49) City of the Dead
50) Grimm Reality
51) The Adventuress of Henrietta Street
52) Mad Dogs and Englishmen
53) Hope
54) Anachrophobia
55) Trading Futures
56) The Book of the Still
57) The Crooked World
58) History 101
59) Camera Obscura
60) Time Zero
61) The Infinity Race
62) The Domino Effect
63) Reckless Engineering
64) The Last Resort
65) Timeless
66) Emotional Chemistry
67) Sometime Never...
68) Halflife
69) The Tomorrow Windows
70) The Sleep of Reason
71) The Deadstone Memorial
72) To the Slaughter
73) The Gallifrey Chronicles
© Lloyd Rose 2002
None on file
None on file
Comments may contain spoilers
Lloyd Rose is able to keep you rivited to the book with his "what is coming next" chapter endings.  The book is enjoyable for that reason.  The whole idea that the Doctor is immortal with his other heart inside of Sabbath is laughable though.  It seems that this and the meeting with Death (even though she is not named as such) is another example of how Doctor Who has become more and more "mystic" and less and less "scientific" in nature.  A good read but a weak story.
Synopsis (may contain spoilers)
This is the 59th novel published by the BBC to feature the 8th Doctor.  His companions are Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor.

This story takes place in 19th century England and also features the antagonist Sabbath.  Sabbath was first introduced in the 8th Doctor adventure The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

The Doctor and his companions are in the 19th century because of some time distortions going on there.  The Doctor discovers one of the "symptoms" of this is a man named Octave.  A man that has been split into eight different people, all sharing the same mind.  He also discovers a woman named Constance Jane who seems able to either read minds or to actually see into the future.  During a discussion with Octave, Octave kills the Doctor. 

The Doctor, however is unable to die even though his ribs have been driven into his chest.  When he recovers, he realizes that this is because his other heart has been relocated inside of Sabbath.  The Doctor visits Sabbath and confronts him about this.  They also consult about the "time machine" that has fractured Octave.  Sabbath and the Doctor decide to work together to find and destroy the time machine.

The Doctor is killed once again by Sabbath's servant, Angel Maker.  Since he still cannot be killed because of the heart, he is able to meet with Death herself.  He makes a deal to ask a person that had been killed where the time machine might be.

The time machine is eventually found in the hands of another fractured person Dr Chiltern.  He has been fractured into two people, one virtuous and human the other the flip side of his "twin".  This one though has been merged with objects, plants and animals from the 1950's.  The Doctor enters the machine and it begins to destroy itself.  Sabbath takes the Doctor's heart out of his chests and throws it onto the floor, disgusted with the Doctor's methods.

Extract not on file
Dramatis Personae
Character
Affiliation
Doctor 8
Doctor
Fitz Kreiner
Companion
Anji Kapoor
Companion
Sabbath
Unaffiliated

 

Added: 17-Jan-2003
Last Updated: 29-Apr-2020

Publications

 05-Aug-2002
BBC Books
In my libraryI read this editionOrder from amazon.comHas a cover imageBook Edition Cover
Date Issued:
05-Aug-2002
Pages*:
279
Read:
Once
Cover Link(s):
Internal ID:
234
Publisher:
ISBN:
0-563-53857-0
ISBN-13:
978-0-563-53857-8
Printing:
1
Country:
United Kingdom
Language:
English
Credits:
Black Sheep  - Cover Artist
The Doctor sat alone and listened to the beat of his remaining heart. He had never got used to it. He never would. The single sound where a double should be. What was this new code hammering through his body? What did it mean? Mortal. No, he'd always known he could die. Not mortal. Damaged. Crippled. Through his shirt, his fingers sought out the thick ridge of his scar.
Human...


The Doctor's second heart was taken from his body - for his own good, he was told. Removed by his sometime ally, sometime rival, the mysterious time-traveller, Sabbath. Now, as a new danger menaces reality, the Doctor unwillingly finds himself working with Sabbath again. From a seance in Victorian London to a wild pursuit on Dartmoor, the Doctor and his companions work frantically to unravel the mystery of this latest threat to Time...
Before Time itself unravels
Cover:
Book Cover
Notes and Comments:

Related

Author(s)

Lloyd Rose  
Notes:
From an interview posted at Outpost Gallifrey (used by permission). 
Click here for the full text.

There are authors you love who have no influence on your style at all--mostly because (I'm thinking of Nabokov here) they're geniuses and you're not.  In terms of simple prose style, it always looks to me as if the biggest influences on me are the Sherlock Holmes stories and J.D. Salinger.  In both cases, you have a very cinematic, observed presentation of the action, with a lot of importance given to the dialogue. I can't say who influenced my "subjective" passages, though, or my descriptions, or any of the interior dialogue.  I suspect Raymond Chandler had something to do with the structure.  While I was writing the book, I read "Little Dorrit," which was a big help, though I couldn't say in exactly what way.  Slowed me down, I think.  I kept wanting to get to the point. The book would have been six pages long.

If I had to pin down the most direct influence, I'd say it was comic books: specifically Chris Claremont and John Byrne's "X-Men" of the late 70's and early 80's, and Barry Windsor-Smith's later "Weapon X."   In terms of Who, I'm a Holmes and Hinchcliffe partisan.  Like most Americans, I was introduced to the show in the early 80's via the Tom Baker episodes.

I've seen the complete 7th Doctor series, but only glimpses of the other 5.  Until Christmas of 1998, I didn't even know there were such things as "Doctor Who" novels, other than the old Target TV-adaptations.  I submitted my proposal In September 1999 after spending the summer working it up.  So in the few months between those two periods, I found (thank you, eBay) and read (out of order) all of the NA's plus all the EDA's that were in print and available here (which was up to and including "Unnatural History").  A real crash course.  The NA's were what brought me back to "Doctor Who," what made me want to write a novel, particularly the books of Kate Orman and Paul Cornell, so you're going to see that influence there very strongly.  That said, I'm not sure I could pinpoint exactly what that influence is--again, because I'm in the middle.  The NA's just seemed to me like what Doctor Who books "were" and I wrote accordingly.

Awards

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*
  • I try to maintain page numbers for audiobooks even though obviously there aren't any. I do this to keep track of pages read and I try to use the Kindle version page numbers for this.
  • Synopses marked with an asterisk (*) were generated by an AI. There aren't a lot since this is an iffy way to do it - AI seems to make stuff up.
  • When specific publication dates are unknown (ie prefixed with a "Cir"), I try to get the publication date that is closest to the specific printing that I can.
  • When listing chapters, I only list chapters relevant to the story. I will usually leave off Author Notes, Indices, Acknowledgements, etc unless they are relevant to the story or the book is non-fiction.
  • Page numbers on this site are for the end of the main story. I normally do not include appendices, extra material, and other miscellaneous stuff at the end of the book in the page count.






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Presented: 29-Mar-2024 07:22:33

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