The highest selling PDA of 1999 - but is it really that good?
So just what is my problem with this book? Let's start at the beginning...
The TARDIS has landed on the Space Station Little Boy II, which orbits the planet Dymok whose people are very anti- social. To explain the back story to Dymok's situation, Russell attempts humour, which with his style of writing fails greatly. The crew of Little Boy II are faceless and forgettable, despite the amount of work Russell has put into describing them, many times I had to flick back through the novel to remind myself of which crew member is which, a very tiring process. Also, early on, the Doctor replies to Nyssa's question about humanity and empires, and contradicts The Keeper of Traken. This leads me to another major gripe of mine with this novel: continuity.
In most Doctor Who novels, continuity is used subtly, but in Divided Loyalties, the reader is merciless hammered by references, in fact, there are more continuity references than pages in this novel, and not all the references fit in with the facts, in fact, many contradict events seen on screen, or featured in other novels.
The Doctor has been having dreams, dreams which have summoned him to Dymok, and so the TARDIS crew and the LBII's faceless crew head to Dymok, whose people are in an endless sleep. While all this is going on, The Celestial Toymaker is putting together a team of players, and taunting the Doctor's companions, leading to another gripe: the depiction of the Doctor and his companions.
The characterisation of the Doctor, Tegan, Adric and Nyssa veers from bland to parody, and everything in between. Tegan is bitchy, Nyssa is quiet, and Adric is whiny. The Fifth Doctor becomes bland and dull, and at one stage, a bizzare amalgamation of all his incarnations. Not a good start.
After the Doctor suffer another dream, we enter the next 'round' of the book, and in one page, Gary Russell manages to confuse me completely about Time Lords. We are introduced to the Deca, apparently Gallifrey's best and brightest students, who include the Master, the Rani, the War Chief, Drax, the Monk, the Doctor and some new characters of Russell's, and once again I nearly hurl the book out the window: from a few facts on screen about the Doctor's Academy days, Russell creates the Deca - an extremely fanwanky creation, which doesn't fit in with facts seen on screen. The Doctor Rallon and Millenia steal a TARDIS and encounter the Toymaker for the first time, and bog standard story which leads to an obvious conclusion of Rallon and Millenia being captured by the Toymaker. The Doctor is punished for his actions, which still doesn't fit in with events on screen, or in any other novels. Once again Russell ties things together in binding that does not fit, totally jarring with already established events.
At last we reach the last third of the novel. The Toymaker plays his games, ones which have been stolen from other stories where they have been written and played out much, much better. Rallon is dying, and thus the Toymaker is loosing form due to his origins - another example of the excessive fanwank which riddles the entire novel. A "surprise" fact about Dymok is revealed as Rallon dies, the Toymaker reveals the origins of the robot - something not needed! Two of the faceless Little Boy II crew die, or sacrifice themselves as the Toymaker's realm once more disintegrates, leading to a standard conclusion back on the space station and the Toymaker heads off to Blackpool - a piece of continuity that is one of the few references that didn't jar for me. Russell ends the book with "Where are they now?" piece on the Deca, and once more stuff things up, drawing the book to its long overdue conclusion.
To sum up, my problems with this book were: poor characterisation, poor continuity, excessive fanwank, and general failings all throughout the novel, despite extra time being granted to the writing time that should have ironed out many of these problems. I just hope that whoever makes use of any of the new "facts" introduced in this novel explains them better. Finally, I wish that Gary Russell's next novel improves on the standard of his previous novels, as this was an utter failure.
0/10
Next time: The Fourth Doctor and the survivers of The Sandminer once more battle the Robots of Death...