EDA review: The Domino Effect
Thursday, 23 April 2009 13:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
I haven't been reading so many EDAs recently, since I'm beginning to run out, but yesterday I finished The Domino Effect and was not very impressed, I'm afraid. The writing was very flat, the plot didn't make much sense, and the characterisation felt off - Fitz and Anji were both disappointingly generic. I nearly ditched the book at one point, when the Doctor and Anji had an argument which didn't seem true to their characters and brought up the events of Hope - I was trying to forget that one, thank you! It would have been more in character for the Doctor just to tell Anji that he trusts her to rescue Fitz on her own whilst he goes off to do plot things, rather than try and build unnecessary dramatic tension. Speaking of Fitz, how many times can one character get beaten up in less than three hundred pages? It was turning into that slightly ridiculous trope where the bad guys go down after one punch but the hero is still quipping and making speeches after being beaten up about seventeen times. I also didn't like seeing Anji being subjected to so much racism - although (sadly) it may have made sense that people in that situation would hold those views, it didn't make for enjoyable reading.
Unfortunately, the OCs weren't much better - pretty flat and uninteresting. I guessed that Hannah was going to be a traitor quite a while before it happened, but didn't care that much, because neither she nor the others ever became full characters for me. And the bad guys might as well have been wearing black hats and going MWAHAHAHA every few pages for all the development they got. The closest any of the Pentarch got to characterisation was that bit where one of them - Briggs, I think - was taking great pleasure in watching the protesters get massacred, while the author went on about him being overweight. FAIL.
I was also a bit uncomfortable with Alan Turing's appearances - I started skimming them after a while, I must admit. Mostly this is just my feeling that if you're going to write published fiction which uses real people who a) don't appear that much in fiction and b) were alive within living memory, it has to be well written, which The Turing Test was and this, well, wasn't. If it had just been a cameo or a mention of him, that would have been fine: Eight realising that putting the timeline back on track would mean condemning his friend to an early death was good, though I was annoyed that he didn't actually have to choose whether to do that or not. And the fact that the Oracle collapsed the timeline by shooting him skeeved me - it wasn't narratively justified, since it didn't make any kind of sense. Not impressed. (I did like the 'Shroud of Turing' pun, though. Sorry.)
GAH. I hope Reckless Engineering is better, three rubbish ones in a row would be a bit much. And it would break my heart to hate a book with skellington!Brunel on the cover.
Unfortunately, the OCs weren't much better - pretty flat and uninteresting. I guessed that Hannah was going to be a traitor quite a while before it happened, but didn't care that much, because neither she nor the others ever became full characters for me. And the bad guys might as well have been wearing black hats and going MWAHAHAHA every few pages for all the development they got. The closest any of the Pentarch got to characterisation was that bit where one of them - Briggs, I think - was taking great pleasure in watching the protesters get massacred, while the author went on about him being overweight. FAIL.
I was also a bit uncomfortable with Alan Turing's appearances - I started skimming them after a while, I must admit. Mostly this is just my feeling that if you're going to write published fiction which uses real people who a) don't appear that much in fiction and b) were alive within living memory, it has to be well written, which The Turing Test was and this, well, wasn't. If it had just been a cameo or a mention of him, that would have been fine: Eight realising that putting the timeline back on track would mean condemning his friend to an early death was good, though I was annoyed that he didn't actually have to choose whether to do that or not. And the fact that the Oracle collapsed the timeline by shooting him skeeved me - it wasn't narratively justified, since it didn't make any kind of sense. Not impressed. (I did like the 'Shroud of Turing' pun, though. Sorry.)
GAH. I hope Reckless Engineering is better, three rubbish ones in a row would be a bit much. And it would break my heart to hate a book with skellington!Brunel on the cover.