NA #16 Shadowmind

Shadowmind by Christopher Bulis

In Brief: A sentient asteroid forces a collective of psychic squirrels to create human duplicates in order to take over the galaxy via a giant carbon-blob.

All I can say is that I have looked into the madness, and it has looked into me.

And also F*ck this book.

I would not let Shadowmind win. I would not. I could not.

Stopping would have meant that it had won.

I was tempted oh-so-many-times to just give up and move on, but that would defeat the purpose of working through the run of The New Adventures. I still consider the series to be extremely worthwhile and have some of the greatest triumphs in the entire almost 50-year history of Doctor Who. It's just that along the way there is the occasional stumble.

The same as how when I first saw "Daleks in Manhattan" and wondered if I'd ever love anything again. Thankfully "Human Nature" came a mere 4 weeks later.

But ranking this...this...thing as a stumble would be too kind. Many times while reading I could feel my eyes refusing to lock on to the text and I had to often take a break before forging on. I now feel that the few poorer novels in the range so far (Genesys, Witch Mark, Deceit, etc.) were just softening me up for the barrage of tedium and stupidity that is Shadowmind. The sheer crapitude on display even begins at the terrible front-cover (BTW painted by the author as "proudly" advertised on the back).

The funny thing is that I didn't recall this book as being terrible, just unmemorable. Perhaps the 17 years since publication had erased the horror from my mind.

But what is it that made this book so awful? It's difficult to even know where to begin. At first things actually seem to be going ok. The Doctor has brought Ace and Bernice to the planet Tairngaire in the 27th-century for a holiday and to celebrate Ace's birthday. However soon they're thrust into the middle of things through an amazing plot-contrivance as they're the only spectators to the murder of a man who actually turns out to be a human duplicate (controlled by the Space Squirrels). Through some deduction I can't even now remember the Doctor helps the authorities to determine that the source of the duplicates has to do with the nearby planet of Arden.

So the first quarter or third of the book, while not being great (or even good) literature by any stretch is at least somewhat diverting. However that actually makes me hate Shadowmind just that little bit more due to the faint glimmer of promise. It's like a taunt.

The true awful of the book sets in as the Tardis is stolen and the three regulars board the starship Broadsword to help defeat the power behind the duplicates and also retrieve the ship. The biggest problem I had was that at this point the book becomes just-plain-wrong as the Doctor defers constantly to the military and basically stops being any sort of active presence in the novel. It was as if the book were being written by the author of the worst ever episode of Star Trek: Voyager (how do you choose just one?) who only knows of Doctor Who through watching a single episode of Resurrection of the Daleks.

The Doctor (and really the show in general) has always had an anarchic streak at the core of its appeal. Having the character here acting as a deferential consultant is just irks. He even wears combat fatigues and a helmet for much of the book, a sight I couldn't imagine ever happening in the show proper.

I hated hated hated it.

As well, Ace basically stops being recognisable as anything based on Sophie Aldred's performance from 1987-1989 in this book and instead turns into Starbuck from the new BSG, albeit 10-years early (and with less depth of character, which amazingly *is* possible). Or it's maybe more that she's now almost cartoon-like in her blood-lust (or rather just lust in general, bouncy-bouncy). Thankfully Benny is still around to be the fully-rounded regular character, although unfortunately here she's very much sidelined. As for the non-regular characters it's almost really impossible to really differentiate them since author Bulis is extremely poor at characterisation (as well as everything else). Plus they're really really boring.

Think Enterprise boring.

Almost a third of the book is spent as the Broadsword travels to Arden and we get many tests and minor battles on the way, each more tedious that the last. Unfortunately once everyone in landed the novel actually gets worse since the sheer idiocy of the "plot" is revealed. Main-villain Umbra, the afore-mentioned sentient asteroid, has a motivation of "just because" which just tops off so much else which is terrible in Shadowmind.

It's only been a few hours since I (with great effort) finished the book and already I'm getting a bit fuzzy on the details. It's almost as if my brain is rejecting the experience as one would a nasty assault. Unfortunately I willingly submitted myself so can't complain too badly, but really I should get over this completest nature and accept when continuing a pursuit will only cause more pain (yeah, right).

So to end this entry I'll just say that I found Shadowmind to be a literary Gom Jabbar, although far more sadistic and cruel.