Unnatural History [Mass Market Paperback]

 

 

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There are a lot of things going on in UNNATURAL HISTORY. The good news is that the great majority are wonderfully intriguing, appealing and well written. The bad news is that because there are so many, they come across at times as being superficial and not fully developed. This is indeed very frustrating although the overall effect isn't enough to take away from the book as a whole.

First of all, we finally get to meet the oft-hinted-at Dark Sam. While the regular (blonde) Sam Jones is a squeaky clean (and at times dead boring) defender of causes, the Dark Sam is an altered version who has had thoughts and experiences that the original would never have dreamed of. Unfortunately, not much of this seems to affect her, and the Dark Sam is soon blindly trusting the Doctor and being innocuous in exactly the same way that she would have normally. She smokes, drinks and has done drugs in the past, but her character isn't significantly different - she still speaks and acts in the same manner. I had to keep reminding myself that this was supposed to be a changed person.

Now I realize that one of the themes of the book is that the past is not as important to the present and the future as the present itself is. I get the impression that Dark Sam was deliberately made inoffensive to re-enforce this philosophy; Dark Sam can have a different and more dangerous, gritty past than Blonde Sam, yet she still is, at her core, the same person. This may indeed be an interesting train of argument (and it definitely works well in the confines of this story) but extending the theme into the Dark Sam subplot didn't seem to work as well. In fact, it took me almost the first hundred pages or so to figure out what they were doing with her. And coincidentally it was around the point at which I realized this that they started bringing some of the darker aspects into the foreground. Although this did begin to distinguish her from the Blonde Sam it didn't seem to quite do enough, though I realize that this was probably the point.

That said, I thought the rest of the story was quite enjoyable. There are some wonderfully written sequences that are a joy to read. The "Wild Hunt" effect when Sam's mind would react to her past being re-written was executed tremendous well. This section highlighted the things that I enjoy the most in Ormanblum books; it's slightly surreal, it's full of wonderful imagery and it's true to the character going through the experience. I thought that there was only a single piece of wasted potential and that was that we only saw the occurrence through Sam's eyes. Since it was a slightly hallucinogenic experience I would have been interested to see Fitz and the Doctor's reaction to going through the same phenomenon and how it compared to Sam's. But this is only a minor quibble and did not detract from my enjoyment of the sequences.

Unlike some of their previous books, there are not very many secondary characters in the story. Instead it focuses on the three regulars (well, two regulars and one altered) and gives more attention over to the plot. The only downside to this is that there seems to be too much going on to fully justify the inclusion of everything

Despite some imperfections this is a story worth reading and is the best book in the Doctor Who range since THE FACE-EATER.

I used to read the usenet group rec.arts.doctor-who, in which the authors were frequent posters. They came under attack quite often, unfairly, because of the stories they told about Doctor Who. You could always find tremendous arguments about what was "canon" and what "didn't count," what the Doctor would and wouldn't do, and Kate and Jon often came under fire for defending the books. Some people said that the references to the Doctor's history in the books couldn't be official, because he'd never mentioned them in the series, or similar arguments. Their detractors insisted that the Doctor can't have had all these alternate origins and histories, and that the books made up too much new stuff to be official. I stopped reading the newsgroup because there was more personal insult and side-taking than actual discussion going on.

In some of their past books, Kate and Jon have made references in subtle ways to the discussions and arguments that have taken place on the newsgroup. This has usually been in lively and harmless but entertaining ways- unintrusive if you don't catch it, but amusing if you do. But there is a character in this book who is an embodiment of the books' naysayers, and who comes across as a ridiculous caricature of the poeple who have said bad things about them. The metaphor aside, the character, Griffin by name, doesn't stand out as a very good villain for the story anyway. His motives are a little dull, really, and even if the reader doesn't recognize what he represents, it's hard to believe that a person who can reach into several dimensions at once can't wrap his head around the idea that the doctor had a tool up his sleeve, simply because "there's no evidence" that he had it. This, to me, was such an obvious parody of the people who said in the USEnet group that aspects of the Doctor's history mentioned in the books can't be true because "there's no evidence for it" in the TV series. When, in the book, it makes Griffin look stupid, it seems arrogant on the authors' part in their insult against the people who argued with them. As if saying they don't agree because they're not smart enough.

Up to now, I have always liked Kate's books, and her collaborations with Jon have always been good as well. But I didn't like this one, and I'm kind of surprised. But there was a subtext to this story that I found kind of irritating, and a bit haughty. And perhaps because this book is a continuation of a multi-book story arc, it relied much more heavily on the continuity of the series. This was fine. But mixed in with the things that a long-time reader would recognize as a reference to the TV Movie, or to a previous book in the 8th Doctor sereis, there were other things that I got the feeling we were supposed to recognize, but I had no recollection of. The character of Dr. Joyce, for example, I spent much of the book trying to figure out the identity of, but at the end of the book I still don't know who this character really is or what other names we've seen him use in the series's past.

For these reasons, I got the feeling that Kate and Jon were writing to a particular person, and it wasn't me. I'm hoping their next effort will be back on par with the quality I'm used to from them.

It's Haight-Ashbury all over, with a dark haired alternate Biodata version of Sam Jones who embraces the drug culture and degerates into the poster child for free love! Fitz, attempting as always to "fit in", dons Lennon granny glasses and a yin yang t-shirt. Underneath it all lies a twisted thread of anarchy with PRISONER-esque tones of downing the beaurocracy. The Doctor tells Sam about his trips dropping acid in 1968 and mentions him taking the snake poison in SNAKEDANCE to which she quips "ooh, riding the snake, very Jim Morrison". This one is a GREAT follow up for those who liked VAMPIRE SCIENCE. It'll have you racing to the Castro or searching for what lies in the water under the Golden Gate Bridge. It's Kate and Jon at their Kerouacky best. And Sam finally gets some...

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5.0 out of 5 stars Kate and Jon produce the definitive portrait of Doctor Eight
Kate Orman is the brilliance behind contemporary Doctor Who. She took characters from our childhood fancies and developed them into people we've laughed and grown with. Read more

Published on Oct 10 1999

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book. Some disappointments.
Let's be honest. This was a great book. I mean just a plain great book besides its few dissapointmets. Look at it this way. Read more

Published on Oct 2 1999 by Jason Rubin

1.0 out of 5 stars Garbage. The virgin books "modern" Dr. Who lives on
Ah yes the return of faction paradox. What you've never heard of them. Your not missing much.

Ah, the return of a character who's name changes. Read more

Published on July 26 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent writing and storyline
This story was filled with color, personality, and action. This adventure was made vividly real in your mind's eye with excellent writing, an interesting story, and attention to... Read more

Published on July 8 1999 by Emily A. Roesly

5.0 out of 5 stars Naughty but nice
Halfway through this book, I thought that I was going to give it three stars out of five, instead of the hundred percent the opening merited. Read more

Published on Jun 13 1999

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