A review by kateofmind
Festival of Death by Jonathan Morris
4.0
The plot of this Fourth Doctor/Romana II/K-9 romp is worthy of admiration and applause, as the TARDIS crew arrives on the scene of a disaster only to find that everyone who survived it is overwhelmed with gratitude towards our heroes for saving them, which telegraphs that timey-wimeyness is in the offing. And boy is there! I do love time travel stories that are actually about time travel and don't just treat the past or future as simply a weird kind of location.
BUT...
The author, Jonathan Morris, almost disappeared too far up Douglas Adams' fundament for this one. I was constantly distracted from the quite enjoyable plot and setting (oh, the setting: a 100+ spaceship pile-up in a collapsing hyperspace tunnel, which has been turned into a seriously far-out tourist attraction) by all of the rib-digging allusions to Adams (there's even a character named Hoopy. Oh please), to the point where, while ordinarily I'd be tempted to go back and re-read to admire the plot construction (which involves a lot of back-tracking along the TARDIS crew's personal timelines, Bill and Ted style), I don't wanna, because rolling my eyes is not fun.
Maybe someday.
But this could have been a five-star read. It should have been.
BUT...
The author, Jonathan Morris, almost disappeared too far up Douglas Adams' fundament for this one. I was constantly distracted from the quite enjoyable plot and setting (oh, the setting: a 100+ spaceship pile-up in a collapsing hyperspace tunnel, which has been turned into a seriously far-out tourist attraction) by all of the rib-digging allusions to Adams (there's even a character named Hoopy. Oh please), to the point where, while ordinarily I'd be tempted to go back and re-read to admire the plot construction (which involves a lot of back-tracking along the TARDIS crew's personal timelines, Bill and Ted style), I don't wanna, because rolling my eyes is not fun.
Maybe someday.
But this could have been a five-star read. It should have been.