Torchwood: Border Princes

[beccaelizabeth]

So, started reading 'Border Princes'
am up to page 42

... let me get this straight:

somebody wrote Marty Stu fanfic
for money
that got published?

And it's clumsy clunky writing so far. Too impressed with verbal ingenuity - all that Captain Analogy bollocks. No individual character voice, none that shows up within Team Torchwood anyway.

People who've actually read it: Is there in fact reason to read the whole thing?

Is it some cunning plan Superstar type setup where this 'James' bloke is meant to be a WTF?
Or is he just the guy we've never heard of who is suddenly the heart of the team?




As of now I'm giving up on it and reading the other one. Odds of it staying given up on are fairly low, since I can't even seem to give up on fanfic series I hate loathe and detest. But right now this is not looking like a book I'll be glad to have spent money on.

Comments

[damalan.livejournal.com]

My PC crashing ate my original reply to this, so here goes in truncated form:

Yes, it is meant to be a WTF?! sort of novel. It will be explained by the end, and you'll suspect long before. It's an idea that I think would work better as an episode of Torchwood, or as a novella, than as a whole novel.

Nevertheless I did persevere. And it does highlight that despite the Torchwood Institute's vaunted technological advancement, they are children playing with the grown-up's tools.


As an aside: none of the novels really captures the characters very well. I think that a lot of the problem is that the authors clearly only had early episodes to work from. And the characters in the series have moved on from the starting point.

Border Princes - WTF? Indeed.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad you folks were at sea with the "James" character, as I don't have access to the show (being in the US) and the novels are my first exposure outside of references in Dr. Who episodes. Dropping Captain Analogy on us full blown was cruel and unusual. When I finished Border Princes I decided that I'd read it out of sequence...so I checked the other two books but no James. Sadly, it could have been good, but it fell fairly flat long before the end.

Ernest Lilley
Sr. Editor, SFRevu.com