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Reviews for Independence Day

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My thoughts, i guess...

By:Tegan, England
Date:Sunday 22 February 2004
Rating:   9

My favourite character from the TV series was Ace, so i was happy with the content she recieved in the book. The characters were all very well written, and the plot was fairly easy to follow. I really loved it, and could hardly put it down!



No! not the whitehouse!

By:Hatman, Washington
Date:Friday 11 August 2006
Rating:   6

Average. Has a good ending. You can trust Hatman. You don't have a choice. Well, actually you do. But trust him anyway! The book? I've already finished with the thing! Oh I forgot to mention that Bullet time has Russians in it. I really should get repaired soon. For the motherland! Go away now!



A good story, horribly written

By:Brian Smith, University Place, WA
Date:Monday 8 January 2007
Rating:   6

I suppose one excellent use of this book would be as a solo drinking game. If you took a drink every time one of the male characters felt tears streaming down your face, you'd be dead of alcohol poisoning in no time flat. The story itself is interesting. The writing is atrocious.



End of the day

By:Trevor Smith, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Date:Wednesday 31 August 2011
Rating:   6

An okay sort of book. What happens to Ace interested me more than what happened to the Doctor.



Rescue the Princess

By:David Layton, Los Angeles, United States
Date:Sunday 3 October 2021
Rating:   7

Peter Darvill-Evans' "Independence Day" is a bit of a mishmash of multiple elements that do not quite come together. The plot is basically rescue the princess from the tower, done twice. The setting is the twin planet system of Mendeb Two and Mendeb Three. The novel has a little vignette opening with Doctor Two and Jamie in which Jamie takes a communicator component from a ruin as a kind of souvenir, and The Doctor does not really recognize its significance. When the main plot starts, it is now The Doctor several regenerations later with Ace, who discovers the old communication device and sets it up as a kind of objet d'art in her room. The Doctor recognizes the object, this time realizes its significance, and heads off to Mendeb Two to return said object. However, this becomes the excuse for yet another blame The Doctor. The situation is not quite what The Doctor has expected. The two planets, both with Earth colonists from centuries before, have devolved into lower level societies. On Mendeb Two, you get fisher folk and farmers at a medieval level who have no clue that there is another civilized planet nearby. On Mendeb Three, you get a mixed up society of medieval political structures, 18th-century military styles, and 20th to 21st century technology being reintroduced. This is all thanks to two aristocrat scientists, the impossibly perfect in every way pair of Kedin Asher and Tevana Roslod. These two have sold their technological rediscoveries of the former Earth colonists to a local warlord, Vethran, who uses it to make himself king of the planet. To ensure Kedin's cooperation, and because he has the hots for her, he takes Tevana captive. Using the new technology, he has his armies invade Mendeb Two to steal the population, give them a drug to make them docile, and then turn them into slaves. Along come Ace and The Doctor. Ace apparently cannot control her sex drive and falls instantly for Kedin, who apparently looks quite a bit like Richard E. Grant. Kedin extracts information from her, uses a modified form of the slavery drug on her, and sells her into slavery. But that's ok. He's good looking and impossibly perfect in every way, and so late in the novel when she comes to her senses she forgives him and wants to become his new consort. Go figure. Kedin has been secretly plotting to overthrow the evil Vethran, not so much because Vethran is evil, but because he wants to get back Tevana. But they are both impossibly perfect in every way, and so that is ok. The plot splits The Doctor and Ace for almost the whole book. So, while Ace is enslaved to advance Kedin's plans of rescuing his princess, The Doctor unwittingly becomes a kind of Spartacus to the enslaved people of Mendeb Two so that he can rescue Ace, his princess so to speak. The novel has quite a bit of political scheming, and seems to be a means of getting medieval politics joined with high technology. It reads more like a historical than a science fiction story on alien worlds. Darvill-Evans keeps the plot going apace. There is plenty of action and subterfuge. It's entertaining enough, even if the various different kinds of story do not fully gel.



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