Tag Archives: writer: george mann

The Gods of Winter, The House of Winter, The Sins of Winter and The Memory of Winter, by James Goss and George Mann

Posted on by
Reply

I am enjoying working my way through the BBC Doctor Who audiobooks starting from a decade ago. This is a series of four loosely linked stories, two by one of my favourite Who writers (James Goss) and two by one of my least favourite (George Mann). The linking theme is a family called Winter who possess a card that summons the Doctor and the TARDIS, and is passed through the centuries. I may have missed something, but I didn’t think that the overarching theme was actually resolved, which subtracts from the narrative oomph. Also unfortunately the sequence is not related to Goss’ excellent Eleventh Doctor novel The Dead of Winter.

The Gods of Winter by James Goss, read by Claire Higgins (Ohila of Karn), starts with a little girl who has lost her cat and summons the Doctor to find it. We then gradually discover that there is more going on in the human space colony in conflict with the mysterious Golhearn. I don’t think it is a big spoiler to say that the second half of the story takes us several decades forward to a moment when the little girl is now one of her community’s leaders, in dire straits, and the Doctor exerts diplomatic skills to sort it all out. You can get The Gods of Winter here.

The House of Winter, by George Mann, read by David Schofield (Odin) surprised me in that I actually enjoyed it. Th premise is that the Doctor and Clara are stuck in a house with its creepy owner and two creepy servants, and a bunch of vampire moths. There is one classically awful Mann-ish bit of description: “His expression was serene, save for his eyes which were open and staring, peering up at her as if pleading for help” – so, not actually very serene at all. But apart from that it hung together very well. You can get The House of Winter here.

The Sins of Winter, by James Goss, read by Robin Soans (Luvic in The Keeper of Traken and the Chronolock guy in Face the Raven), is the best of these (and the fact that the linking between the four is weak means that you can get this without having to worry about the other three). Shadrak Winter, the High Cardinal of the Cult of the Prime Self, summons the TARDIS to his space cathedral which is infested by the sluglike Sinful, who love feasting on people’s past sins. The Doctor has plenty of these to go on, leaving Clara to save the day. It’s a theme that has been used before and since i Doctor Who, but executed very well here. I see that fan opinion is divided on this one, but I’m on the positive side. You can get The Sins of Winter here.

The Memory of Winter, by George Mann, read by Jemma Redgrave (who is the best reader of all of these) takes the Doctor and Clara to fifteenth-century France for an adventure with Joan of Arc. There is Time Lord knowledge turning up in the wrong place and giving poor Joan the impression of hearing voices. I thought the story was well enough done, but it doesn’t really tie into the historical events around Joan at all and doesn’t resolve the linking mystery of the series. You can get The Memory of Winter here.

Ghost Stories, by George Mann et al

Posted on by

Second frame of third issue:

Next of my run of Titan Doctor Who comics acquired in 2022 (and I’m actually getting near the end, I expect that I will finish them this year). Ghost Stories is, unusually for this content stream, a direct sequel to a broadcast Doctor Who episode, The Return of Doctor Mysterio, visiting the new family of Grant the ex-superhero, Lucy the journalist and Lucy’s daughter Jennifer several years after the Christmas 2016 episode. This had a promising beginning with the dynamic between superhero and Doctor nicely portrayed, but petered out into a standard quest story with guest characters in the second half; also the art notably fails to make the Doctor look much like Peter Capaldi, never mind the other established characters. For completists. You can get Ghost Stories here.

The Revenant Express, by George Mann

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

All those years hearing talk of hellfire and brimstone on a Sunday morning, the vicar preaching that a life of sin and misdemeanour would lead to condemnation and torment in the next life—at no point had the young Clarence imagined the waking Hell he might first be forced to endure as a working adult. None of it had prepared him for this.

I wasn’t expecting to like this much, and I didn’t. Steampunk and zombies, neither of which are my favourite things, along with Mann’s usual leaden prose and historical inaccuracies. Did not finish. You can get The Revenant Express here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2020, and the sf book that had lain longest unread on my bookshelves. Next on those piles are Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume I, ed. Marie Hodgkinson, and Tides of the Titans, by Thoraiya Dyer.

A Matter of Life and Death, by George Mann, Emma Vieceli and Hi Fi

Posted on by

Second frame of third part:

Continuing my journey through my substantial backlog of Doctor Who comics, I’m now at this Eighth Doctor collection from 2016. I have generally rated George Mann poorly as a writer, and so I am glad to say that I really enjoyed these five linked stories, in which the Eighth Doctor finds a young artist squatting in his country house and takes her on a series of adventures. The third, in which sinister entities emerge from mirrors, is particularly good.

My one complaint is that artist Emma Vieceli’s depiction of the Eighth Doctor doesn’t look a lot like Paul McGann. (The cover is by someone else, I think.)

But otherwise this came as a pleasant surprise and I will give George Mann’s work at least a second glance in future. You can get it here.

Next up: the Ninth Doctor in Weapons of Past Destruction.