EDA #14 Vanderdeken's Children

Vanderdeken's Children by Christopher Bulis

In Brief: The Doctor and Sam get caught up in escalating tensions between two warring planets both laying claim to a mysterious derelict ship floating in space. Ghosts are involved.

The author of what I ranked as one of the worst of the New Adventures (Shadowmind) now contributing to the so far sub-par Eighth Doctor Adventures range. Need less to say I approached Vanderdeken'd Children with some trepidation. However much to my surprise I found that the novel managed to reach and maintain a level of "not bad (with caveats)".

One of the caveats is that the characterisation is somewhat light, these aren't the most memorable group of characters in the history of Who. But then that's nothing new to the series, we don't need in-depth character drama all of the time. The other issue is that things don't really wrap up well at the end, with a horrible timey-wimey time-loop explanation and is completely unsatisfying.

But, up until the end the book manages to keep a good sense of mystery going as The Doctor and Sam (impersonating government moderators) help to investigate the abandoned ship. Although it's essentially a spooky old house in space there are a few decent surprises along the way. I didn't have a feeling of tedium while working through this entry in the range as I have some others. Well except for anything not set on the ship, there's a bit of MILITARY EXPOSITION! going on throughout.

But other than declaring Vanderdeken's Children to be a decent book that unfortunately doesn't *quite* hang together there's really not much more to say.

Um, it's free of references to the past, which is nice after the continuity-fest of Placebo Effect. The Doctor is also decently proactive and involved in the story for once, there's been a bit of a tendency to keep him out of events a bit too much in these books. I realise it's most likely to raise the tension a bit it does make the character come across as somewhat ineffectual.

And Sam...is there. Despite the good work of some authors (most notably Kate Orman) to try to make her character work in the series the "right-on girl of the late-90s" remains an obvious struggle for many of them. Here she's just acting as Generic Companion who is a bit perky and gets into trouble every so often but otherwise has no notable personality (*cough* Amy Pond *cough*). While disappointing by this point I've just had to accept her presence and get on with it.

So, to sum up, book is ok. That's about it.