From: ph9991_manfr@rivers.acc.uwrf.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: Friday Night Review- "Warhead" !SPOILERS!
Date: 8 Jan 93 16:44:22 -0600
Organization: University of Wisconsin - River Falls



SPOILERS ahead for "Cat's Cradle: Warhead" by Andrew Cartmel





SPOILERS!




Two down, three to go.  I've ordered several of the New Adventures books
at last, and have downed the first two now.  Now I have to wait until next
Monday for the other three to come in. :(

Anyway, I loved this book a lot...
Let's split it up like I did before....


Good points: 1) Cartmel's narrative style.
		I felt like I was reading this with 3-D glasses on, because
		the narrative made every scene feel like it was real.  This
		is something every writer strives to achieve, and Andrew hit
		the nails squarely on the head, making the already good
		story that much more fun to actually *read*.
	     2) The story itself.
		The Doctor manipulated the events like the pro he is, and
		everything came together at the end in a beautifully tight
		knot, leaving me to wonder little and much at the same time.
		Little references early in the book long since forgotten
		popped up again at the end and made complete sense at that
		point, like a good episode of "Fawlty Towers" would do
		(Cleese once explained how that made his shows funnier, i.e.
		pretending to forget something for much of the episode and
		then remembering near the end)
	     3) Clever misleads in the narrative.  There was more than one
		occasion on which I thought one of the characters had died
		and Cartmel was being cryptic about it.  When it first
		happened, I thought, oh darn, it's not as clever as I thought.
		When it happened for the fifth time, I realized this was
		a planned trick on the reader.  (The fifth one being the
		best one too, Stephanie sitting apparantly lifeless outside
		on the porch looking at the bulldozers.)
	     4) Ace's professionalism when it comes to anything the Doctor
	        asks for her to do, particularly the chapters in Turkey
		with the Kurdish mercenaries going after Vincent's barrel.
		Actually, when the mission is complete, it doesn't seem
		then nearly as important and life-threatening as we had been
		led to believe, which I also think is intentional to remind
		us that no matter what a person is doing, if their life is
		in danger it's always serious.
	     5) The scenes where Stephanie is snooping around the BI computer
		systems with the Ferret.  Enough said.
	     6) Another narrative trick ,that of always using Bobby Prescott's
		full name.  
	     7)	The methods of Squeak and Shreela's death.  Unfortunately 
		prophetic.  The same can be said of the industrial pollution
		everywhere and the computer systems of the age.
	     8) Justine's tearing down of Ace's "reality," an important
		reminder to the reader and to Ace that she still has a little
		distance to go.
	     9)	Visiting the burned-out McDonald's.
	     10) The first visit to America by the series that I could
		really imagine happening, even though they didn't use the
		American spelling for Halloween.
	     11) When sexual themes or situations came up, they weren't 
		 dwelt on and were treated just exactly as they would be in
		real life, as was everything else in the book come to that.
		I say this to distinguish it from "Genesys" where that and
		the action sequences seemed to me to be forced and unreal,
		and sensationalistic when it came to the "blossoming breasts."
	     12) The ending.  We meet O'Hare, and even though he hasn't even
		 met the Doctor or known him by name, he has anticipated
		 the Doctor's coming, or at least someone like him.  He just
		 sat in his web the whole story long and smiled when the
		 Doctor showed up, ready for him.  Of course, the Doctor
		 was actually five steps ahead of him and everyone else
		 when he tells Vincent to run, making it look like that
		 once again, the Doctor has *completely* run rings around
		 everyone and that O'Hare never had a chance since the
		 introduction to the story!  I *LOVE* THAT!  It's one of
		the things I adore about the McCoy stories, i.e. how
		pathetic the enemies come out looking compared with the
		Doctor.  Biggest TV example is in "Remembrance of the Daleks"
		where the Daleks and their philosophy came out looking
		utterly useless against the Doctor and his ideals.  
		This is definitely a SEVENTH Doctor story, and perhaps the
		story that best defines his Doctor.

Bad points:  Not many.
	     1) The cop's sub-plot came straight out of "RoboCop."
	     2) It is unclear how the Doctor knows of the existence of this
		evil company in the first place, or how he knows many of the
		things he knows while assembling his "slingshot."  
		This is very annoying to many people, Drewcifer cheif among
		them, when it comes to the TV series, but at last I see
		why Cartmel often cut these backgrounds out of his stories.
		If the present stuff is drawn to full detail as it is here,
		you actually don't really care much about the background
		of how the Doctor gets involved in things.  The background
		of the many, many characters is more than enough to keep
		you  interested.  So, I'll actually make this a plus point. :)

Overall grade (scale of 1 to 10): 9.7

An excellent read that makes me want to read more cyberpunk stories.
Wicked.

Steven.K.Manfred