Book: Doctor Who: The Romance of Crime By Gareth Roberts (1995)

"The Rock of Judgement. Court, prison and place of execution for the Uva Beta Uva system, hewn into the skin of a rocket-powered asteroid. Not a good place to be. Particularly not for two Time Lords and their dog. Upon arrival on the Rock, the Doctor, Romana and K9 find themselves embroiled in the plans of a maverick law-man, but that is just the beginning of their troubles. A highly-strung artist's gallery holds a deadly secret... and soon everyone's lives will be in danger.They struggle to know who's good and who's bad, a terrible scheme is being unleashed. With enemies old and new attacking both sides, can they possible escape alive?"

For the most part, this original novel works for me. It’s set during the latter run of Tom Baker’s era as the Doctor (sometime after The Key to Time season) and its clear writer Gareth Roberts loves this period (he would write a few other books set in this era). This was well after the Gothic stage of showrunner Phillip Hinchcliffe’s time when the show achieved higher ratings, but was criticized for its violence and horror. Under showrunner Grahame Williams, the show shifted tone, into lighter, sometime more humorous mode. This period also marked the arrival of fellow Time Lord (or Time Lady), Romana. While Baker had chemistry with Mary Tamm’s Romana for season sixteen, it was with Lalla Ward (who took over the role for rest of Baker’s run) that series really shined.

The tale –as with most of season seventeen of the series- is a bit over-the-top, and it’s easy for any long-time fan of the show to image both Baker and Ward performing their roles. The book does move swiftly, with the narrative fairly well split between the established characters and ones created for this book (which is nice, as some writers of these original novels sometimes let the Doctor and companions become “guest-stars” in their own show), but it is also fairly predictable. The plot is your basic revenge theme, but it does add Kray Brothers like crime syndicate into it, which was interesting, if not a bit confusing at times. The arrival of the Ogrons (introduced during the Third Doctor run) is no huge surprise (they’re on the cover) but they really add nothing to the story, except to prove they’re still dumb as a box of hair.

It’s a light book, in the end. But it’s also a fun waste of time.

Books: Doctor Who: Fear of the Dark by Trevor Baxendale (2003)

Fear of the Dark is actually a very good original Doctor Who novel. It offers chills and thrills aplenty, along with some well paced scares.

Originally published in 2003 as part of the of the Past Doctor Adventures range at the BBC, it features the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa,  a short time after the events of TV adventure Arc of Infinity. It was re-published for the fiftieth anniversary in 2013 as part of boxed set of Doctor Who titles, featuring reprints of earlier novels, one from each of the first eleven Doctor’s.

“In the year 2382 archaeologists land on Akoshemon's only moon, searching for evidence of the planet's infamous past. But when the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa are drawn into the lunar caverns they find more than a team of academics -and help uncover much more than ancient history. Something is lying in wait, deep inside the labyrinth of caves: something that remembers the spiral of war, pestilence and deprivation that ruined Akoshemon. Something that rejoiced in every kind of horror and destruction. An age-old terror is about to be reborn. But what is the hideous secret of the Bloodhunter? And why does Nyssa feel that her thoughts are no longer her own? Forced to confront his own worst fears, even the Doctor will be pushed to breaking point -- and beyond.”

Again, this is a creepy, well paced horror tale that would’ve made a wonderful serial (if they were still doing the show that way). I could even see this made today, but too much would need to be re-written to accommodate the current story lines. Part of the reason is in this book, the Doctor sort of deals with the death of Adric, something the television version never attempted. Adric’s death was a shocking revelation when Earthshock aired in 1982 (and while the series had occasionally killed off a companion, it had not done so since the mid 1960s) and I’ve always wanted the original series to confront that. But it was never meant to be, I guess.

While a lot of the set of this tale is something Doctor Who has done before (the base under siege, being hunted by an unknown monster, Nyssa –instead of Tegan- being hounded by nightmares), writer Trevor Baxendale does give us a rarity that only books can do: by creating really believable secondary characters, such as Stoker, Bunny, and even Captain Lawrence, a by-the-book-captain of the Consortium Survey Vessel Adamantium. There is even more sides than to the human “villain” of Silas Cadwell than you would normally see on TV. So while they do somewhat conform to the tropes we’ve seen before, Baxendale still uses them effectively.

The other effective part is the use of fear. The Dark is as mysterious as it is malevolent and is portrayed as utterly inhuman and evil. It’s totally alien and latches onto some of us humans basic nightmares: from the darkness just around the corner, to what lies beyond (if anything) our fragile and short existence and trepidation that there could be a nothingness. This is all handled effectively here.

Book: Lovecraft Country By Matt Ruff (2016)

"Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned Atticus’s great grandmother—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours. At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction."

Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country pays homage to many genres here, but mostly to the Dark Fantasy of H.P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury. The historical aspect, the Jim Crow years, adds additional terror to the themes being explored here. To those who might question why (almost) every white character presented here is horribly racist, you have to understand that while our country has moved forward in race relationships, it’s well known that racism was much more rampant and obvious back then. But like all history, only the ones who lived through the era can really confirm what is written here. It is clear, though, that Ruff wanted to make a statement with this book, by not only having the main characters be African Americans, but pointing out the blatant hatred of blacks by the whites, even in the supposedly more tolerant northern city of Chicago (and having grown up there, the City by the Lake remains racially divided). Lovecraft Country will anger those Social Justice Warriors then, but this horrifying specter of racism that haunts this book is brilliantly handled, even when juxtaposed with the fact that Lovecraft the writer, was very racist.

While authors like Stephen King have declared Lovecraft to be the “greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale” in the 20th century along with Joyce Carol Oates saying his influence on writers of all genres that followed is “an incalculable” one cannot also think about his racist past once you learn about it. He may’ve been an underappreciated writer when he was alive, and many readers and lovers of the horror genre today still enjoy his work, but as Lovecraft’s biographer, the novelist Michel Houellebecq, once said “Lovecraft's character is fascinating in part because his values were so entirely opposite to ours. He was fundamentally racist, openly reactionary, he glorified puritanical inhibitions.”

Of course, for many of his supporters, it’s about separating the man from his work, or acknowledging that while he was a racist, the time he lived (the Jim Crow and late/early 20^th Century years) was still very openly hostile to blacks. In the end, one has to choose where their distaste for racism and love of a fairly brilliantly horror writer lies. For some, it may be easy, but for others –as pointed out by Oates- his influence on the genre cannot be ignored.

But here, within this book, the marriage of horror, fantasy, science fiction, and racism, Matt Ruff brings a heady mixture of visceral terror along with doses of the realistic nightmare that racism continues to bring to our world.

Books: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Stories by Stephen King (2015)

A lot of the short stories in Stephen King's The Bazaar of Bad Dreams are not full-on horror yarns, some are mean tales (Premium Harmony), though less harsh than in his 2010 Full Dark, No Stars. There are a few parables; also some the resemble Twilight Zone tales (Mile 81 and UR) where you wait for the surprise ending, but all are fairly interesting and, I guess, King-ish in nature -in other words, a bunch of themes that are not especially new, but since it is King, this Constant Reader will give it a pass. I know that UR, which was a tale he wrote for Amazon’s Kindle back in 2009, was heavily re-written here for this 2015 collection, but it was one of my favorites. Perhaps it was (mostly?) because he returned the time when generally a lot of his output was connected to the Dark Tower series, as the Tower itself, the Low Men in Yellow Coats, and the notions of a multiverse make cameo appearances here.  I also enjoyed the novella Blockade Billy as well, something he wrote and published in limited (and expensive) editions back in 2010. There was Bad Little Kid, which was published in 2014 as an e-book in French and German languages only as a gift to King's European fans. This was the first time presented in English. There were also three previously unavailable stories, Mister Yummy, Obits, and Cookie Jar, which was added for the paperback edition.

There is something for everyone here, and as noted, these tales are more thriller than chiller. But that's okay. King's prolific work in a particular genre does not need to be seen every day.

Books: The Gowing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend (1984)

“At sixteen, Adrian Mole's life continues to be nothing but a set of tragic circumstances: His tempestuous relationship with an alluring schoolmate tortures him, while his intellectualism continues to be ignored by the British press. Despite it all he remains as agonizingly funny as ever.”

The 2nd book in the Adrian Mole series, following directly on from the first book, focuses on the worries and regrets of a teenage aspiring intellectual. This volume takes us through the rest of 1982 through to mid-1983 and include notable events such the breakup and later reconciliation of Adrian and Pandora, Adrian's attempt to run away from home and subsequent breakdown, the birth of his sister Rosie Mole, and Adrian's general worry about his O levels and nuclear war. 

He continues his self-esteem issues as well, as he goes on about his height, his pimples, his lack of muscular development and the size of his penis. This leads to a fairly funny part where he tries running away, but only gets a few towns over before realizing his mistake. 

Much like the first book, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole are laugh-out funny (and I kind of thought this one better than the first). And once again, Townsend continues her brilliant look into mind of teenage boy, pulling out some wonderful, sometimes uncomfortable aspects, that seem to run though their minds. 

Note: Townsend would continue to write about Adrian, but it would be five years before she released The True Confessions of Adrian Mole. Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years, would follow in 1993. In 1997 she would return with Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years; Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction would be released in 2004, and Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years would be released in 2009. All of the books would follow Adrian as he aged, with the last book set around 2008. Townsend, who spend the last decade and half with health issues (including blindness) died in 2014 at the age of 68.

I'm unsure whether I'll continue, but we'll see how the dark the world gets.