The Book Report #111
Episode #110
Doctor Who – The Many Hands By Dale Smith
The Book
First published in 2008 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing. Ebury Publishing is a division of Random House Group Ltd.
My copy is a second-print hardback book with 256 pages, with an acknowledgement and advertising for other books in the series.
What Did I Think?
We are already into the adventure with the Doctor trying to stop a runaway coach flying down the roads of 18th-century Edinburgh. Martha isn’t too far behind as she tries to get ahead of the coach, hoping to find a way to slow it down and stop it.
It turns out later, when they get their bearings, that someone has found a way to bring the dead back to life.
These are not your typical brain-eating zombies. These seem to be just the dead reanimated by a hand that has attached itself to the chest of the dead person.
Even though I think the author was trying to make the story scary, he fails to achieve this by moving the scene too fast and not allowing the tension to build. But the character building in the story, although small, is just enough to get the gist of each character and their intentions.
I don’t know how accurate the geography of Edinburgh is, but the detail in this book would make a tourist want to find out and visit the “underground city”. If it still stands.
The Plot
The main plot of this book, as with most of these stories, is that an alien lifeform was created. It crashed down on Earth, fell apart and needed to find and put itself back together, but something went wrong. The doctor finds out and tries to make things better. But not everything goes the right way.
The doctor, for some reason, keeps trying to make things better by sacrificing himself. Does the doctor have so much pain inside him that he wants to die, and is the only way he can do that to make it look like a good deed?
This seems to be an ongoing thing with the tenth doctor. The only problem in the series is that he works out he doesn’t want to die when he has to.
In the end, the story is written well and has just enough intrigue to dive into and disappear for a few hours.
Would I Recommend?
This is for any Doctor Who fan who likes a story with a bit of history thrown in. And even if you don’t care about Doctor Who and need something to kill a little time, this might distract you just enough to please you.
Please give this a go.
Would you like to purchase your very own copy?
You could try these online stores: Amazon UK/USA and Waterstones. AbeBooks UK/USA, Barnes & Noble, or eBay UK/USA.
Alternatively, you could try your local bookshop or even your local library.
