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3-in-1 Torchwood Review
Nov. 9th, 2008 06:31 pmT3: lj user="neadods"> a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/754445.html">reviews Skypoint, Pack Animals, and Almost Perfect
So, three new Torchwood tie-in books have come out. I've read them and found them to be full of massively depressed people who can't put together obvious clues until things are going to hell and someone else has to help them out, who live in a world where nothing has basic, obvious safety features, and who prefer retcon to personal communication.
Well, I can't complain that the books aren't just like the show.
They come with a distinct internal timeline, with Pack Animals coming first, set just before Gwen and Rhys' wedding. Someone is selling a monster-based collectible card game in which weevils figure prominently. Only someone is actually calling the monsters through...
Points to Peter Anghelides (author of the rather better Another Life) for finding a new reason for Ianto to get naked. Points are however deducted by those of us who remember the 70s show those scenes were based on. Also, points in general are deducted for the completely unrealistic means by which the monsters are manifested, and the sloppy solution (although it is doubtless a comfort to Torchwood that someone out there is more screwed up than they are.)
Next up is Skypoint, which should be titled "Take Prozac Before Reading." There's a new condo skyscraper in Cardiff, and it comes with all the modern conveniences - hidden lighting, convection ovens, private parking, psychotic mob boss in the penthouse, and meat-eating alien coming out of the walls. (It's this building that is missing basic, mandatory safety features. You'll know what I'm talking about when you get to that scene.)
Although Gwen and Rhys have just been married, it's Tosh and Owen who get to play unHappy Families in the newest-rented apartment. And unhappy families they are, what with Owen so miserable about being undead and taking it out on Tosh so she won't get any ideas about fantasizing about finally getting him. No fears there, Owen, she's too busy endlessly meditating on her own fractured family and her stint in military prison.
It's not that it's an unreadable book, but I did want them to shut up and do their jobs a lot sooner than they did. Not that the outcome is really in doubt - hello, Torchwood book. Torchwood will win in the end, and (due to the period when it's set) it means that maximum mileage will be gotten from Jack being unkillable and Owen being already dead.
Almost Perfect is set after the end of the season, and frankly, getting rid of the two most morose characters does wonders for the tone of the Torchwood team. Everyone left is in a relationship, however dysfunctional, and thus the reader is spared endless Oh Woe Is Me, I Have No Life internal monologues.
Almost Perfect is not almost perfect, but it is a damnsight better than the others. James Goss is being highly ambitious and a little bit too clever - it's not a linear narrative, all the chapters have obscure, cutesy titles, and one of the chapters is only 1 sentence long.
But for all of that, it's a good read - mostly because it breaks all of the Torchwood cliches. It's almost entirely character-driven. There is a plot and a solid one, but the action is focused on each member of the team, and each character gets something significant to do. Jack is tracking down bits of his past. Gwen is investigating the skeleton sitting at a fancy restaurant. And Ianto... woke up a woman.
Hijinks ensue.
I read the others because I read all the Torchwood books, but I enjoyed Almost Perfect.
So, three new Torchwood tie-in books have come out. I've read them and found them to be full of massively depressed people who can't put together obvious clues until things are going to hell and someone else has to help them out, who live in a world where nothing has basic, obvious safety features, and who prefer retcon to personal communication.
Well, I can't complain that the books aren't just like the show.
They come with a distinct internal timeline, with Pack Animals coming first, set just before Gwen and Rhys' wedding. Someone is selling a monster-based collectible card game in which weevils figure prominently. Only someone is actually calling the monsters through...
Points to Peter Anghelides (author of the rather better Another Life) for finding a new reason for Ianto to get naked. Points are however deducted by those of us who remember the 70s show those scenes were based on. Also, points in general are deducted for the completely unrealistic means by which the monsters are manifested, and the sloppy solution (although it is doubtless a comfort to Torchwood that someone out there is more screwed up than they are.)
Next up is Skypoint, which should be titled "Take Prozac Before Reading." There's a new condo skyscraper in Cardiff, and it comes with all the modern conveniences - hidden lighting, convection ovens, private parking, psychotic mob boss in the penthouse, and meat-eating alien coming out of the walls. (It's this building that is missing basic, mandatory safety features. You'll know what I'm talking about when you get to that scene.)
Although Gwen and Rhys have just been married, it's Tosh and Owen who get to play unHappy Families in the newest-rented apartment. And unhappy families they are, what with Owen so miserable about being undead and taking it out on Tosh so she won't get any ideas about fantasizing about finally getting him. No fears there, Owen, she's too busy endlessly meditating on her own fractured family and her stint in military prison.
It's not that it's an unreadable book, but I did want them to shut up and do their jobs a lot sooner than they did. Not that the outcome is really in doubt - hello, Torchwood book. Torchwood will win in the end, and (due to the period when it's set) it means that maximum mileage will be gotten from Jack being unkillable and Owen being already dead.
Almost Perfect is set after the end of the season, and frankly, getting rid of the two most morose characters does wonders for the tone of the Torchwood team. Everyone left is in a relationship, however dysfunctional, and thus the reader is spared endless Oh Woe Is Me, I Have No Life internal monologues.
Almost Perfect is not almost perfect, but it is a damnsight better than the others. James Goss is being highly ambitious and a little bit too clever - it's not a linear narrative, all the chapters have obscure, cutesy titles, and one of the chapters is only 1 sentence long.
But for all of that, it's a good read - mostly because it breaks all of the Torchwood cliches. It's almost entirely character-driven. There is a plot and a solid one, but the action is focused on each member of the team, and each character gets something significant to do. Jack is tracking down bits of his past. Gwen is investigating the skeleton sitting at a fancy restaurant. And Ianto... woke up a woman.
Hijinks ensue.
I read the others because I read all the Torchwood books, but I enjoyed Almost Perfect.
