The partnership that wrote two very enjoyable Seventh Doctor and
Ace novels takes a dip in form with this all guns blazing Aliens v Predator
type. The Black Horse series that this book tries to emulate
had the vivid images, sounds and tensions evoked by the films to colour
the readers imaginations both in comic form and and the novelisations.
Storm Harvest has none of that to fall back on and despite Mike Tucker's
model of the Krill it's very hard to touch readers fear nerves without
actually being able to visualize these monsters. Fear and the sense of
threat was and still is the staple ingredient of any Black Horse
offering. Storm Harvest doesn't have it.
The opening
few chapters remind me a little of Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth
series and indeed the authors drop in a throw-away line mentioning the
word Cachalot which was a book from that series set on an ocean
world. It's much lighter than the other two books from Tucker and Perry
with quite a few amusing lulls in the action. A cigar chomping dolphin
just has to make you smile.
Strange how the book tries to
put a few years onto Ace whilst attempting the world record for the number
of times she says "Wicked!" in one novel.
It's a book that is better than
quite a bit of the competition but doesn't match up to the standard the
two authors had previously set. |
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