Review: "Doctor Who: The Drosten's Curse" by A.L. Kennedy

For anyone with even the slightest familiarity with the Doctor Who series, this book will be a comfortable, easy read.

Featuring the Fourth Doctor, this novel takes place in Arbroath where a large number of guests have been mysteriously disappearing from the golf spa hotel. Junior Day Receptionist Byrony finds it odd that so many people leave their luggage in their rooms, but don't return for it. When an odd man in a hat and scarf appears, Byrony's dream of seeing a real-life spaceship becomes a reality as she teams up with the Doctor and Putta, another alien drawn to the golf spa hotel to figure out why a sand trap is eating people. There is also a massive conscious field that all of them can feel -- sometimes through a splitting headache, sometimes through hearing each other's thoughts, and sometimes hearing the thoughts of the very creature they sought -- the legendary Bah-Sokhar.

It is a whirlwind adventure full of dangerous situations and a problem that reached well beyond the perimeter of the hotel. In true Doctor Who fashion, it is up to these three unlikely companions to band together to save the world. With a romance brewing between Byrony and Putta, an angsty teenager who wants to take over the world, two not-so-human children and their grandmother who has been owned the hotel for far longer than should be possible, there is plenty going on in this 360-page novel.

It is a quick, easy read, filled with mostly very short chapters (that are oddly unnumbered). It doesn't explain a whole lot for someone trying to interact with the Doctor Who series for the first time and most of the things that would make a Doctor Who fan smile would be completely missed by a first-timer. For that reason, I'd recommend it only for someone who has already been introduced, whether through the tv show or other books.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

"The Colour of Magic" as a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign

As I read The Colour of Magic, I found myself consistently being reminded of listening to a group role playing Dungeons & Dragons.  (I listen to RollPlay, which is a great starting point for anyone interested in D&D.) The Colour of Magic starts with our protagonist Twoflower being introduced as the first tourist of the Discworld.   The character's motivation for beginning a quest is very important, and the idea of being a tourist is a lovely and simple way to open doors to all sorts of adventures. Upon beginning a D&D campaign, I had to create a bio for my character, which I found constricting because I didn't really think about how each choice would affect my character's motivations during each encounter. In The Colour of Magic, Twoflower is open to all sorts of new experiences and really just trying to get acquainted with the new world.  That makes for a great introduction for the reader to this new world, but also would be a solid foundation for why a character might set out on a D&D quest.

Apart from introducing the world and character motivations at the same time, I had fun imagining other elements from the novel as D & D characters might respond to them. There are fantastically magical items introduced in the novel, such The Luggage, which is essentially a trunk with legs that behaves very much like a pet.  Even the way that wizards have to memorize spells for hours and hours in the Discworld is similar to the way that magic casters in D & D must announce that they are working on memorizing spells.

Though there were many great humorous lines in The Colour of Magic, I narrowed it down to one that really stood out to me. Even Pratchett's characters feel the frustration of pushing a language to it's limits when talking about travelling dimensions and time and how that thoroughly confuses verb tenses.

Notable Quotable: “It is at this point that normal language gives up and goes and has a drink.”

Since The Colour Magic is a British novel, I couldn’t help but make a Doctor Who connection when Pratchett describes a dryad as a tree that is a multi-dimensional universe being bigger on the inside.  In Doctor Who, many humans had the same reaction upon seeing the inside of the T.A.R.D.I.S., which looks like a Police Call Box on the outside but is very spacious in the inside, with lots of machinery and plenty of space for multiple people to move around.