Monthly Archives: Januar 2015

Stephen Baxter: Doctor Who – The Wheel of Ice

Part two of this Book-Week is a book that our local library added when I asked them about it, back when I „hid“ my papers for the Back Wolf Day 2013. It’s one of many Doctor Who novels out there and the first I read so far.

What is it about?

3 of 5 stars


The TARDIS catches a signal that is not supposed to come from the rings of Saturn. Stubborn as she is, she leaves The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe no choice but to investigate.
Strange sightings of Blue Dolls and sabotages meanwhile busy the inhabitants of the make-shift houses within the Wheel of Ice.
Unwelcome at first the time travellers have to team up with the locals to end this predicament.

The reading experience

As I said before was reading this book quite uncomfortable.
To quote myself:

What bugs me most about reading this book is, however, its layout. It’s a Hardcover version and therefore quite large as it is. Still, the pages have a lot of space around what is written in a rather large font, thus creating rather short pages.
So you have this giant book, with little content to actually read on one page.
This feels especially weird when you’re sitting in the bus and to everyone else it looks like you’re reading a children’s book…

It also had a quite interesting chapter outline.
Between the main chapters there were Intermezzo that told stories that had only been mentioned in the main story line. I’m not sure if I encountered something like this before, but it was quite interesting.

The characters

With each more adventure I share with this TARDIS trio I like them more.
The Second Doctor is more of a father/mentor figure towards them and the other characters. He leads them to make the discoveries on their own and follows new leads with a childlike enthusiasm, but is still serious if need be.
Zoe’s tendency to arrogance showed quite a bit in this story, but it is the understandable kind, someone of great intelligence has towards people who just don’t get them. It is toned down a bit when she opens herself to care for her friends and the people of the ring.
In contrast to her is Jamie quite, well, dumb. His knowledge and wisdom is nowhere near hers or The Doctors. Yet, he proves time and again that his compassion is the key to getting the people on their side. And even a simple mind can come to the right conclusions. 😉
The other characters were less defined. We barely know anything about the council members and their reasons for participating – other than this-and-this organisation send me. The most we know and learn about are the the Laws with the siblings Phee and Sam being quite essential to the plot.
In a way they are portrayed as normal teenager, yet, different. The reasoning why the children do what they do is still understandable. At some points I thought the language of the children to be too colloquial, then again, I read the German version and the original could have been different.
The main antagonist Florian Hart was something entirely different. I liked the nod they made to the serial The Seeds of Death with claiming that the company that built the T-Mats used, belonged to her father and the Doctors interference resulted in her life choices. On the other hand have I never before encountered a woman named Florian, so this had me highly confused every time I read it. She was all in all not a very likeable character and a bit over the top, but to some extent still believable.
Also interesting was the way Baxter described the semi-sentient/robot-like beings MMAC, Arkive and the Blue Doll First and their thinkings and actions in the Intermezzo.

General Opinion

Like most Doctor Who stories didn’t this get into too much details either and many things about the background’s and going ons are left untold. As someone used to read about the different worlds in Fantasy novels, was this one of the down points. I understand the lack of information in the TV series, but in a book there is a bit more time to spent on background information (Like how they came up with the ranks and so forth).
Still, it was a nice adventure with what might become one of my favourite TARDIS teams.

Stuff I’d like to add

I’m not sure if I’ll manage to get my hands on another Doctor Who novel, but I wouldn’t mind reading another one.
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover belongs to its rightful owner

Terry Pratchett: Reaper Man

We meet again for another Book-Week and I have a slight feeling that it won’t be the last this year.
The first book I’ve chosen to review is Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett. I have read this book some years ago during my last school years and as I said before:

When Fairy posted her review on Reaper Man for her Alphabet-Challenge I couldn’t help myself but to follow DEATH on his journey to understand mortality again, either.

What is it about?

4 of 5 stars


In the Discworld everyone and everything gets an hourglass that symbolizes their lives‘ time and that tells DEATH when it is time to pick them up. Some sand grains run faster, others slower and some don’t run at all. Until they do. When DEATH is confronted with his own mortality he decides to live the life he now gained by leaving his realm and offering his help on a farm as Bill Door.
With DEATH out of duty the dead people of the Discworld – amongst them former wizard Windle Poons – now have the slight problem of being un-dead or unable to pass on. While every other species creates their own version of DEATH quite fast, humans take longer and the life force that accumulates in the meantime causes quite a lot of trouble for the people of Ankh-Morpork, Windle, his fellow un-dead friends and the other wizards of the Unseen University.

The reading experience

I remember that when I first read it, I was quite captivated by it and didn’t want to stop. When I now read it again it wasn’t like that. I still enjoyed it greatly, but with some knowledge of what was going to happen still in mind and a different look on writing itself, some passages felt different to what I remember. I do believe I also laughed less at some of the jokes, but I’m not entirely sure whom to blame for that.
Pratchett has obviously his own way of writing – especially his Discworld novels – but some sentences bugged me quite a bit, though this might as well have been due to some translation mishaps.
The ideas, however, were quite interesting:

  • DEATH leaves and everything that is dying leaves behind its life force that creates new things that shouldn’t actually be there.
  • Unusual un-dead unite to fight for their rights.
  • Trolleys hatching from Snow Globes gathering to become a Shopping Mall.
  • Different versions of DEATH around the Discworld.

But so far I haven’t come across a Discworld book that wasn’t interesting to read.

The characters

DEATH is one of my favourite characters, both in the Discworld and across literature. His way of (mis)understanding the human nature and exploring it is just brilliant and at times quite hilarious. Seeing him face the weirdness of a mortal life as Bill Door (or Bill Tür as he is called in German) is also quite interesting, because he sees so many things quite different.
The Wizards are always a source for laughter and rolling of eyes, their just so quirky and weird. Their whole attitude stands quite in contrast to the second protagonist Windle Poons, who is rather reasonable for a(n un-dead) wizard. He brought a nice contrast into the chaos caused by the life force.
Though they get little screen time are all the side characters still interesting in their own way, with their own quirky stories. The shy Bogeyman Schleppel was quite great, just as the opposite werewolves Ludmilla and Lupine and the (fake) vampire couple the Winkings. As were the semi-self-conscious Troleys, who toyed with the wizards.
Pratchett just has a great way of creating rather unique characters that are quite likable soon.

General Opinion

Even though I roughly remembered what was going to happen, I still enjoyed this re-read.
With DEATH as main character, I cannot not like this story.
Besides that was it just interesting to read how all of them coped with their different situation (being mortal, being un-dead, being surrounded by Snow Globes, being chased by Trolleys,…).
The only down point I could see, is that at some points the story tried too much to be original, like with the crude writing on the Globes.
It also didn’t become entirely clear to me what the endgame of the Mall was and why the life force was turned into it in the first place (I know it had to go somewhere, but still…).
But it was still a fun read and I’ll probably read it again one day. 🙂

Stuff I’d like to add

If I ever get around to actually do it, I’d like to have a look at this book, Supernatural’s Death takes a Holiday and Torchwood: Miracle Day to look at how differently they handle the concept of Death’s absence.
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover belongs to its rightful owner

The Weekend Guess #44

Yesterday I had my quarter century anniversary, today was the first entry of Your Picture – A Story and tomorrow my  Book-Week starts, but I still present to you the forty fourth instalment of the Weekend Guess.

Eine Gedankenblase mit dem Schriftzug "The Weekend Guess" auf blauem Grund und in einem braunen Rahmen

What is the Weekend Guess?

Up to three riddles formulated by me that are puns and wordplays on the answer itself I put on here for my readers to answer.

Why am I doing this?

For no apparent reason, just because I consider the idea to be funny.

What are the questions about?

Everything I can think of I guess, so far it has been song titles and bands that you have to figure out, but now I’ve changed it to movies.

What is your part in this?

You can try to figure out my riddles and see if you can manage to get behind them and understand what I am describing.

What is in it for you?

So far: Nothing, but the knowledge that you managed to unlock one of my silly riddles.

Let’s start with the forty fourth set of questions

I am looking for the title of this movie (Hint: Think book and turtle):

A con-man implementing a new way of delivering letters across a rather unusual planet.

Leave your guesses in the comments below and I can see if my questions are too easy or to hard to figure out. I will give the correct answer with the next instalment.
Have fun figuring it out! 🙂

Solution for last weeks Weekend Guess:

Dinner for One

fruehstuecksflock again guessed it correctly. So congratulations!

PoiSonPaiNter

Reading Together #8

And here you have the first instalment of Weltenwanderers and Schlunzenbüchers „Gemeinsam Lesen“ (Reading Together) for this year.

Each Tuesday one of them asks four questions, with the first three always being the same about the book one is currently reading and the fourth a new one by either of them. All questions below are obviously translated from today’s German post.

1. Which Book are you currently reading and which page are you on?

I actually started reading two books yesterday, but I will focus on a book by my favourite author that I haven’t read yet for BiblioSmiles’s Summer Book Challenge: The Dark Tower: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King. Which is the fifth part of the Dark Tower-saga.
I’m currently on page 57, which doesn’t even count as a proper start.

2. What is the first sentence on your current page?

Contrary to last weeks sentence is this one far too long (4 1/4 lines)…

Eddies Vorsatz, nicht von den Muffinkugeln zu essen, hielt nicht lange vor; sie rochen einfach zu verdammt gut, als sie in dem Klumpen Hirschfett schmorten, den Roland (diese sparsame, mörderische Seele) in seiner abgewetzten alten Umhängetasche aufbewahrt hatte.

or in English:

Eddies resolution to not eat the muffin-balls, didn’t hold long; they simply smelled too damn good as they fried in the lump of dear fat, that Roland (this canny, sanguinary soul) had kept in his worn shoulder bag.

3. What do you desperately need to tell about your current book? (Thoughts, Feelings, a Quote, whatever you want!)

I first started this book back when there were still two zeros in the year I think and I was about half way through, but at some point I just stopped. After taking the book along for many times it now looks battered, even though I barely read anything in it. I tried several times to get back into it and with the challenge I now finally have. But like I said back when I chose it, did I have the same problem I had with Kinder des Judas that I barely remembered a thing that happened.

Having started with the first few pages and the short summary of the previous books it slowly comes back to me. I think I remember that my reason for stopping was that it dragged on a bit too much in the middle part and I never got over it. So I’m trying anew and maybe I’ll feel motivated enough to read the other books as well to finally know what happens at the Dark Tower. Though I am slightly contemplating to re-read the first four books to remember the whole picture and I’m fairly certain that I some point I will, but maybe not this year.

Aside from that is this series interesting in its different aspects of normal life. The variations of the universes and the differences in speech and customs, to what we would consider normal. I have no idea what most of the stuff in this series is called in the original, but I do believe it is at least as creative as the German version.

I’m also slowly remembering more and more about the characters and which I preferred to which. It is also quite helpful that the characters themselves reflect on what has happened. Though I guess this would be annoying if I had (re-)read the other books beforehand.

4. We have now arrived in 2015 and hope you got well into it 🙂 Looking back at 2014 once again, which book or book series was your highlight and why?

I do believe my highlight of 2014 – both as book and series I suppose – was A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. It was just incredible and captivating and I’ll get into more details in my upcoming Book-Week.

The second place goes to The Hobbit (by J.R.R. Tolkien obviously) that I spontaneously borrowed from Anice and nearly finished that same weekend. I really enjoyed the writing style and the atmosphere (Here again: next week there will be a review).

An interesting third place is Ray Bradbury’s A Graveyard for Lunactics that I probably wouldn’t have picked up if it weren’t for BiblioSmiles challenge.

Some of the other books I read weren’t really satisfying (The Haunted Glass, Tiger, Tiger), others were better than expected (Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice, Torchwood: Another Life), so all an all an interesting year in reading.

Additional thoughts

You can obviously participate in these questions by either using my translated or the original German version.

This post is a bit later than usual as I just got back from the cinema watching the Paddington Bear movie, that I can highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good laugh. 😀

PoiSonPaiNter

© For the cover, the quote and the banner belong to their rightful owners.

The Weekend Guess #43

I present to you the forty third instalment of the Weekend Guess, which is also the first for this year.

Eine Gedankenblase mit dem Schriftzug "The Weekend Guess" auf blauem Grund und in einem braunen Rahmen

What is the Weekend Guess?

Up to three riddles formulated by me that are puns and wordplays on the answer itself I put on here for my readers to answer.

Why am I doing this?

For no apparent reason, just because I consider the idea to be funny.

What are the questions about?

Everything I can think of I guess, so far it has been song titles and bands that you have to figure out, but now I’ve changed it to movies.

What is your part in this?

You can try to figure out my riddles and see if you can manage to get behind them and understand what I am describing.

What is in it for you?

So far: Nothing, but the knowledge that you managed to unlock one of my silly riddles.

Let’s start with the forty third set of questions

I am looking for the title of this movie (Hint: Think of the New Years Eve):

A special evening meal for a lonesome mistress.

Leave your guesses in the comments below and I can see if my questions are too easy or to hard to figure out. I will give the correct answer with the next instalment.
Have fun figuring it out! 🙂

Solution for last weeks Weekend Guess:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I thought this one would have been easy, but no one tried guessing here.
Nazgul managed to guess it unofficially, so congratulations.

PoiSonPaiNter

Happy New Year

Here we are again.
A new day and even more so a new year.
So, let me repeat and add to my title:

Happy New Year! May all your plans and wishes come true to your liking!

Now that that’s said:

What has this new year in store?

Many things that I don’t know yet, but a few I can influence.
As I told you before am I planning to do another Book-Week in January, namely in the week from the 12th to the 18th, because on the 17th Unmei and I will be visiting the Harry Potter Exhibition in Cologne.
On the 19th I’ll be at another concert of the Knight Shoe (Sabaton), this time with Anice and Danger from the Black Pack and Babsi and Jenni from the Out&Loud.
I’m looking forward to either of those. 😀
In May I’ll be at a Blind Guardian concert, though I’m not entirely sure, who else will be there…
It is also highly likely that Anice and I will return to the Rockharz in July and won’t travel to Sweden – at least not this year.
But I hope Janzy and I will finally manage to make our trip to London, after she got her Master’s degree. 🙂
The rest is pretty open yet, but there are a few things I want to accomplish writing-wise.
Well, most of all I need to finally catch up with the remaining Festival/Concert reviews, I’m far behind on those ones and I’ll try to get them done before June (and some of those other media reviews I still wanted to write throughout the year).
I also want to finally finish Crossing Over – I managed to post the full amount of two chapters last year. Then there is The Return of Magic that doesn’t have a proper ending yet, but I want to at least get it actually started.
And the one I’m most anxious about is probably the re-write of the Elevator tale. I now have some more ideas to go on and I think I can improve it.
But I’m not planning on only writing Fanfiction, I also want to continue my original work. The tales of the Dwarves demand to be continued and one story only needs to be typed, the other finished and then there are many more notes that could lead to more stories.
Then there is Your Picture – A Story, DarkFairy and mine new project over at DF.PP Entertainment that will see me write new stories for photographs. (Feel free to send us your work, to be included in it. 😉 )
And I’ll try to get the concept and idea for this years Advent Calendar, I’m fairly certain it will be a 24 chapter long story.
With all this writing I still want to continue reading though. In the last hours of 2014 I managed to finish my 20th book that year and I would like to read at least the same amount this year as well. The reading challenges will help me pick the books.
Well, that’s all I can think of right now.
Guess we’ll see what this new year has in store after all. 🙂
PoiSonPaiNter