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 | Reviews for Falls the Shadow |
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There are 2 reviews so far. To add a review of your own for this item, visit the voting page.
| By: | Little Klingon, Lincolnshire, England |
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| Date: | Thursday 30 May 2002 |
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| Rating: |  10 |
This novel is possibly one of the first new adventures which truly breaks the mould. Very descriptive in an almost poetic way, the story creeps and jumps at regular intervals ,yet tries to create a mythology all its own. More please. Wierd , long , powerfull yet magnificent.
| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 9 October 2024 |
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| Rating: |  4 |
I read Daniel O'Mahony' s The Man in the Velvet Mask, which I quite liked, before reading this one. So, perhaps my review is skewed because I was expecting so much more out of Falls the Shadow than what I got. I have seen some other reviews, and those that favor this book try to make some justification for such a decision, with multiple qualifications. This, to me, is a sure sign that something is seriously wrong with the book. Let me start with the good things before I get to the many, many problems. O'Mahony is the most stylish writer of the New Adventures novels up to this point (late 1994). His control of language and tone is very good. Plus, if this weren't a Doctor Who novel, it might be better. That is, O'Mahony has written a modern horror novel in the manner of Clive Barker, and then shoehorned in the Doctor Who elements. This structure makes the Doctor Who elements - the characters, TARDIS, Time Lords, and other DW paraphernalia - always feel out of place. It might, therefore, have been a pretty good horror novel if left with the elements that O'Mahony created. As it is, it is a Doctor Who novel, though, and thus does not work. Here are my reasons for saying so.
1. This novel is a distinctly unpleasant read. It is 300+ pages of viciousness and cruelty without break. Thus, if it were a piece of music, it would be a one-note piece of music, a sustained dirge in chaotic harmonies.
2. There is not one character to root for or have sympathy with, let alone identify with. The inhabitants of Shadowfell, the setting for most of the novel, are all psychotic, self-obsessed, and devoid of reality. The outsiders are otherworldly beings with either dubious moral sensibilities, or no moral sensibilities. Each of these - the Gray Man, Tanith, Gabriel, the Mandelbrot set - are, like the book, all one-note. The TARDIS crew are utterly useless. Ace is reduced to angry outbursts, and the attitude of "I don't like it - shoot it," Benny goes from a whining wreck to nothing but lame, smartass quips, and The Doctor spends half the novel in a state of self-pity, and the other half spinning his wheels on plans that have no effect.
3. The plot makes no sense. Perhaps it made sense to O'Mahony, but he fails to deliver necessary connections. He does provide something like an explanation late in the novel, but it really fails to answer all the "why" questions that a reader might have. Basically, O'Mahony has created a fantasy world, but not told the reader what the rules of operation are. Without rules, things just happen. Just as a for instance, he has the character of Jason Cranleigh become a hybrid creature of all his possible selves in the multiverse, or something like that (it is never clearly explained), without any description of how it happened, or an explanation of why it happened. It is just one of the several crazy things going on in the house.
4. The villains, Tanith and Gabriel, lack motivation for their actions, and the other characters have weak and clichéd motivations. Characters just act on whatever whim O'Mahony wants to give them in the moment.
5. Pretentious chapter titles. The chapter titles are names of songs by Kate Bush, Steve Hackett, and others, or novels by J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and Michael Moorcock, or movie titles, and so on. It is as if O'Mahony wants to show off his intellectual credentials. The relationship of the allusions in the titles to the contents of the chapters is, at best, loose.
I could say more, but really this is more than enough to display what is a huge disappointment. Perhaps O'Mahony had great ambitions for his first novel, but just not enough time to see them through.
