Reviews

Doctor Who: Kursaal by Peter Anghelides

evan1395's review

adventurous fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

wynnifer's review

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

scottishvix's review

3.0

An interesting little romp for the first 3/4s but the last chunk was less interesting, fun and unnecessary. It seemed like it was only added to bring the book up to length and the story could have lived without it. Sam is getting more annoying too.

khayes0525's review

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

What an extraordinarily boring book. It starts out pretty well, with a fairly interesting dive into an underground werewolf cathedral, but then it sashays off into boring nonsense. The twists aren't twisty, the characters aren't interesting, and the one fun thing that does happen,

Spoiler

Sam being possessed by the Jax virus and turning into a flirty evil werewolf pack leader

lasts only a little while and gets hardly the attention and development it deserved. After how fun and unbelievably brilliant Alien Bodies was, Kursaal was a major disappointment.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Death, Gore, and Blood

As with many of the EDAs, this book is a great deal more violent than the show, so if that's something that's going to be unsafe for you, I say skip this one.

nwhyte's review

2.0

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1425053.html

The Eighth Doctor Adventures, having tried vampires a bit earlier, now switch to werewolves - though werewolves on a distant planet which is being exploited by ruthless industrialists trying to turn it into a tourist resort. The werewolf bits are memorably nasty and scary; there is a somewhat clichéd but basically endearing tough cop who has to work out the mystery and also what the Doctor and Sam are doing; I wasn't totally convinced by the political set-up, or by the handling of the climaxes of either half of the book. But if you like Doctor Who and you like werewolf stories you'll probably like this one.

julis's review

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Some highlights from my commentary to the skype chat:

• Disney is a drug running front and also on top of a parasitic werewolf civilization
• the ideas are fun but it’s got some bad pacing problems?
• like absolutely nothing happened and then everything is happening at once
• also eight is dressed up as pluto the dog so that’s a thing
• (to be clear, this isn’t actual disney)
• (it’s just…transparently a front for the author to work out all of his emotions about disneyworld and the spotted owls)
• (this did need to be specified)
• eight tries to help in the sabotage of the building of disney, fails, goes to the future and dislikes the rides, also sam gets bitten by a werewolf and starts murdering people
• Meanwhile in the EDAs: eight is trapped underground in a theme park ride with a) animatronic werewolves b) cast members dressed as werewolves c) actual wolves d) actual werewolves e) sam, currently a werewolf and f) no lights
• 3/5 for werewolves, -2 for bad writing and sidelining Sam

nukirisame's review

mysterious medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5