Rec-ing Ball: Torchwood "Slow Decay" Novel

I've had a fair amount of fandoms over the years, starting with Forever Knight and those long summers in Florida where I discovered mailing lists and fansites. It's funny when you didn't think there was anything out there like that; people who wanted to exchange thirty emails about why someone in some show did something. Mailing lists are kind of dying out for fandom, replaced by forums and livejournal comms, so far as I can tell; I still remember when I'd check my old Juno account and have the box full with altered song lyrics and sub requests for fanzines. Hell, I still remember the cost of fanzines.

Torchwood and Doctor Who novels aren't quite as expensive as fanzines, but they're up there, and the ones I keep reading are good, which puts them in the category of Kinder Chocolate. Guilty pleasures, and addictive ones. Thank god for Borders sending me coupons every week.

I'm still in deep fandom love with the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Jack, so the first Doctor Who novel I picked up had all three of them in it. Jack's a hoot in it, and so is the caveman, and while it's not classic literature it's one of the better tie-in novels I've ever read. In fact, all the tie-in novels I've read/perused for Doctor Who and Torchwood have been pretty awesome. You can read the whole thing in one sitting, which I guess makes it less like the aforementioned German chocolate and more like a carton of chocolate ice cream. You get to the end and you're wondering where the whole book went. I read all of Only Human on the flight back from Vegas, with all the other passengers around me asleep, so I spent some time trying not to giggle too loudly.

Read Monsters Inside all in one sitting too, and then when I was watching the "Boom Town" episode of season one of Doctor Who I was amused to hear it mentioned in passing. It's less giddy than "Only Human", but still good. Maybe not carton of ice cream good, or maybe not chocolate flavor. And no Jack, despite where I'm guessing it goes in continuity.

There's a gap between "The Doctor Dances" and "Boom Town". At the end of the first one they've just rescued Jack and the Doctor doesn't trust him, and by the time the next episode starts Jack is one of the team. He's allowed to tinker with the TARDIS, left on his own in there with no fear of him hieing off with the time machine, and the Doctor and Rose are amused enough with his flirting that he flirts with both of them, without any censure, but in the previous episode the Doctor didn't appear to trust him any farther than he could throw him. It made me wonder how many adventures were in between one episode and the next... Unless it's a reality tv show, I don't really think any show has a lot of one episode ending and the next starting immediately, except maybe in the case of 24. I figure the episode ratio is something like, that one really exciting day of the week for the characters, or that one day a month where it all really just goes to hell. What shows on the tv is the highlights, and leaves out all the other stuff. In any case, "Boom Town" references the adventure Rose and the Doctor go on in the "Monsters Inside" novel, sans Jack. Made me wonder where he was at during the novel.

Anyway, back to Torchwood and "Slow Decay". Even if you don't like Torchwood, or know anything about it, you might like it. You might just like the writing. Which is really, really good. It's so good, against all the tie-ins I've ever read, it almost needs to not be a tie-in novel. And I wish the author would just write something else fictional, because he's got skills. God given skills. Raining fire skills. Jack's dialog is just inane enough to make you question why the whole show isn't just him talking about things, the whole forty-five minutes of the show. And the aliens in the book are just icky enough for you to really understand why there really needs to be a Torchwood. It's all fun and games when it's Weevils and alien empathy machines, until something comes along that's the proverbial poking the eyeball out.

Andy Lane, if you can hear me, write something else. I don't care if it's Torchwood, though that'd be nice, or if it's something with the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Jack in it from that convenient gap in the episodes. Hell. Re-write the phone book. I'll read it.

This is just a part where Jack and Gwen were having a chat on the roof top at the beginning of the book:

"Where can I get a coat like that?" She asked.
"You have to earn it." Captain Jack Harkness said without turning around. "It's a badge of office. Like bowler hats in the Civil Service."
"They don't still wear bowler hats in the Civil Service." She replied scornfully. "That went out back in the 1950s along with tea trolleys and waistcoats. And I speak as someone who worked alongside loads of Civil Servants when I was in the police force." She caught herself. "I mean, when I was *really* in the police force, not just *telling* people I'm in the police force to avoid having to tell them that I hunt down alien technology for a living."
"I bet they still wear them." Jack said. The wind ruffled his hair like a playful hand. "I bet when all the Civil Servants arrive in their offices in the morning they lock the doors, unlock their desks and take out their ceremonial bowler hats to wear where nobody else can see them. Like a kind of administrative Klu Klux Klan."
"Have you got some kind of downer on the Civil Service?"
He still didn't turn around. "In an infinite universe," He said. "there are undoubtedly planets out there where the entire population has grey skin, wears grey clothes and thinks grey thoughts. I guess the universe needs planets like that, but I sure as hell don't want to have to visit them. I prefer the thought that there's a planet of Civil Servants then there's also a planet where everyone has an organic TV set built into their back, and you can just follow people down the street watching daytime tv to your heart's content."

And that's just from the first two pages! And he uses "whilst" several times in the book too. Of course, Jack wears a waistcoat in one of the later episodes, so that shows what Gwen knows about awesome men's clothing going out of style.

Read it. Read. It.