World Enough and Time

Amazon finally sent me, mailed from France, a copy of Torchwood: The House That Jack Built by Guy Adams.

I don't think I've heard of Guy Adams before, but I really did enjoy his style.

The plot? There's a house in Cardiff, called Jackson Leaves, where Jack once lived. It was built in 1906. It's the site of mysterious and grotesque deaths, pseudo-ghosts, madness, murders, suicides. Jack is the house's only surviving occupant. But why?

( I had some trouble putting this book down - cliché but true. )

For my own interest: the Torhcwood novels coming out.

Of course I want to read them. I'd be more excited if it looked as if there were any hope of getting them in Canada any time soon. Haven't even managed to get the last batch here yet.

When Torchwood: Almost Perfect by James Goss came out, I noticed people talking about it on LJ, but I didn't read the posts because I didn't want spoilers. Now I wish I had an easy way of finding them. The tags on torch_wood, perhaps?

In any case.... Bottom line: I liked it a lot. The characterization was charming but shallow, the action fast-paced, interesting, amusing, and sometimes skipped over information. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but I read it with joy and delight, finding myself reluctant to put it down. A page-tuner. It reminded me of a comic book in its pacing, its vivid imagery, and themes. This is a good thing. I could just picture it as drawn by some of my favourite comic book artists, including Paul Grist, who draws the Torchwood comic in Torchwood Magazine.

And there was one thing about the book I loved with a passion, which had me chortling in my heart of hearts, that made me want to give James Goss a big hug of thanks.

It's not a book I can talk about without spoilers, so ( here we go, over the deep end... )

One thing I particularly love in fiction, is heroes who drive recklessly. They don't drive badly - these fictional heroes (they're usually heroes) never get into an accident or cause them. They are usually high-action guys like James Bond.

It doesn't count if they are race or stunt drivers or if they only drive wildly in chase scenes - I don't usually like car-chase scenes. It does count if they are habitually in a hurry, or just like to show off.

I'm thinking of heroes who drive wildly just for the joy of it - Bodie springs to mind, the prime example, squealing around corners and stopping on a dime, once doing so an inch from Doyle's front bumper. Perfect.

Then there's Aral Vorkosigan, flying drunk in his light-flyer through the chasms of Barrayar.¹ If I recall correctly, he was drunk enough to fall limply and therefore survive when he crashed. Admittedly, he was somewhat suicidal at the time. This doesn't lessen the appeal.

There's Johnson Johson, driving blind at night in the mountains of Yugoslavia.²

And how happy I am to add Captain Jack Harkness to the list. I was tickled to learn in Torchwood Another Life that Captain Jack doesn't have a driver's license. Of course he doesn't! He's not on record anywhere. Why hadn't I even thought of that? Now I'm reading Torchwood Slow Decay by Andy Lane, and it has some delicious passages about Jack's driving, like this from the beginning of chapter two:

Jack was driving. That was always a bad thing as far as Toshiko was concerned. Especially when she was navigating. He seemed to assume that when she said 'right' or 'left' then that abrogated any responsibility he had to check for other traffic, pedestrians, building, or, in one instance a few minutes ago, the existence of a roundabout which he then went the wrong way around.

A man accustomed to driving a spaceship has probably cultivated the wrong attitude for driving on simple two-dimensional roads. And ( as for parking... )

¹ Lois McMaster Bujold. I think this is in Shards of Honour, when Aral thinks he has lost Cordelia and is drinking heavily to dull the pain. Does anyone remember for sure?

² A reference to Dorothy Dunnett's novel Dolly and the Nanny Bird, or Split Code.