Review: FOREIGN DEVILS [no spoilers]
Andrew McCaffrey
by Andrew Cartmel
Publishing Date: November 2002
2nd Doctor, Jamie and Zoe
I'd never read any of William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki ghost stories, so
before I checked out the main story, I decided to skip to the extra
feature that this book contains -- an appendix featuring "The Whistling
Room", an original short story from 1910 starring the early
ghostbuster. I really enjoyed it. So much so that I definitely plan to
seek out some more from Hodgson.
In any event, after getting a brief introduction to this character and his
universe, I started reading the main story of the novella itself, a neat
crossover of sorts between the Doctor Who world and the Carnacki
world. Cartmel's story doesn't have the same creepy, oppressive
atmosphere of the Hodgson work, but I found it good on its own merits.
It's always interesting to see how an author attempts the notoriously
difficult task of rendering the Second Doctor in print. I've caught a few
broadcasts of the Troughton serials on MPT recently, so I had his Doctor
fresh in my mind. I think Cartmel did a decent, if not quite wonderful,
job of capturing him. He doesn't exactly leap off the page, but I think
if you have a good image of the character in your head, Cartmel's prose
will just manage to coax him to the forefront.
For Jamie, Cartmel amusingly just removes him from the story and focuses
his attention on Zoe. This was a really good idea. I don't know if his
Jamie could possibly have been as entertaining as his Zoe. Her stint as a
Victorian maid is quite amusing. It's a cliche to have the futuristic (or
modern) character(s) complaining about conditions for women and/or the
lower classes when in historical settings, but Zoe's grumblings and the
situation she gets herself into was too funny for words.
As for the story itself, it felt to me much more like a
supernatural-tinged detective tale than the chilling, disturbing ghost
story of "The Whistling Room" (however, I have no idea if "The Whistling
Room" is typical). But I appreciated its pace as the mystery was slowly
revealed. As a whole, it doesn't quite hold together completely at the
end. The individual set pieces are good, but the ending doesn't have the
full impact that it should.
Still, while FOREIGN DEVILS isn't a great book, it is a good one. It's
absorbing and well written. As a crossover, I'm not sure it's a complete
success. Carnacki doesn't seem to have the same impact on the story as,
say, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson do in Andy Lane's ALL-CONSUMING
FIRE. Still, he makes for a decent addition to the cast, and his
inclusion gives me a series of stories to track down. FOREIGN DEVILS
isn't as good as Cartmel's best work, but it is better than his worst.
--
I'm Andrew McCaffrey, and I approved this message. SPAMTA...@qis.net
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