YATN; Slow Decay
Nov. 8th, 2009 01:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grassangelYeah, I got this one and Border Princes out at the same time. I went to go and pick up one about Ianto have to join a men’s choir a few weeks after. (Why yes, some of the summaries of these are so loltastic I HAVE to reserve them.)
Anyway, this is possibly one of my favourite novelisations. Everyone is decently characterised and Rhys gets involved. Not as much as say… Meat or Almost Perfect, although Almost Perfect does reference this particular novelisation in a kind of parallel/in joke kind of way, but Rhys does come startlingly close to Torchwood. And this book is set pre-Cyberwoman so it’s all the more fun and ‘yay!’ because FIRST SEASON INTERACTION.
It also seems to fit into canon fairly consistently as well.
Well, nothing contradicts it, it doesn’t contradict anything else and doesn’t have too close a resemblance to any episodes. I have noticed that the novels tend to like having people being affected by aliens and that sometimes this means they take chunks out of other humans but… not too similar to any episodes. ;)
Since I have so many book marks in this though, I won’t bother with telling you exactly why I like this novel so much because it’ll be evident in my commentary. (Which is completely out of order.)
There’s a quote from Jack right at the beginning that I have seen mentioned in a couple of fics: of how everyone is like a kid in a walled garden and how he’s just a slightly older kid. The use of it gets a bit tired, but I do love the actual quote. Which is vaguely related to the whole ‘goggle boy’ thing. That and Jungian imagery.
A bit later and he acts fatherly by looking out over where Tosh and Owen are working and reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses. He does the same for Gwen, but she sneaks up behind him. Actually, a lot of reflection on what their jobs within Torchwood are goes on throughout the book.
Owen emos briefly about having no one to talk to about chlorine-based enzyme chemistry and anomalies in osmotic transfer rates before going on to ponder on how pretty Gwen is. Shortly after that, Owen is reunited with his stomach ten seconds after Jack stops the SUV. Even later on, there’s some pondering on alien evolution. Which I of course went squee over as that’s something I like doing in my spare time when I can’t get to sleep.
Later, he also tries to figure out the life cycle of a parasitic alien. Fun times.
RANDOM OWEN BACKSTORY. About how he grew up in the East End of London in a generally down and out neighbourhood and how all his friends ended up as mechanics and real estate agents and would’ve ended up doing the same until his dad died of aortic aneurysm. Which he then took up doctoring to prevent the same happening from him.
Yeah… he has issues. And can use his medical knowledge to really hurt someone. Ouch.
Book!Jack also has a brand of snark kind of similar to Ianto’s. It’s AWESOME. Twice the non-cynical snark, hooray!
I mention this because Jack comments on a comment of Owen’s which is rather insulting to Owen, but it’s in a very ‘No, the phone lines are down’ way. Also, the last part of “Beware of ascribing human feelings to aliens. It’s a classic mistake. They don’t think like us, they don’t feel like us, they don’t react like us. It’s hard enough working out what a cat is thinking, let alone something from another planet. Anthropomorphise at your peril.” is AWESOME and Owen jokes that it should be their motto and he’ll get some t-shirts made up with it on.
Jack spends quite a bit of time on roofs in this book. Almost as much as in the first few episodes of season one.
There is stuff about guns. A Walther P99, a Glock 17 and a Sig Sauer P226. Which kind of makes me want to read up about them, because the only thing I know from the names is they’re different brands/lines of guns. Oh, and they’re pistols, which is probably denoted by the ‘P’ on the Walther and Sig Sauer, as I know Sig Sauer also do big machine guns and Glock are kind of famous for their handguns. I… do not know why I know some of this stuff.
And then there’s an Owen joke about maybe all the Weevil’s are trained pharmacists but they just don’t know it.
There is Cyberwoman foreshadowing in here. Ianto scares the hell out of Tosh when she’s trying to find something in the archives. He LOOMS and is vaguely creepy, especially when he mentions a ‘Project Goldenrod’ which apparently involved people merging into a mass of flesh and sex. Which kind of gets repeated again in Almost Perfect. Except alien tech that reconfigures itself doesn’t feature in that.
Also, Tosh finds clues that Jack is older than he looks. (I love her, seriously. She gets cookies for being so smart.)
Who doesn’t know what the word ‘swag’ means? Seriously? Jack should not need to institute a Torchwood guideline to use one new word in every conversation. Although I would be interested in the etymology of ‘shufti’. Which is apparently military slang.
Tosh doing an experiment. It’s kind of creepy how morbid she sounds while setting it up, referencing the fact that there are several recordings of past experiments and that one ends with the most blood-curdling scream Ianto ever heard.
But then it goes light hearted, because she then goes on to think that if her experiment did fail, she’d be remembered for the longest, loudest, most unexpected string of expletives ever recorded by Torchwood.
Then Ianto shows up *~mysteriously~* and gets to watch the experiment with the mice! I am surprised that the author felt the need to have him unaware that mice REALLY LIKE peanut butter, not cheese.
We find out that the Hub (I feel so odd calling it that, as the Hub is obviously only the main part of the complex, the part that is immediately based under the water tower. The tunnels and passageways that are part of Torchwood but are spread out much farther don’t seem very Hub-ish to me…) has a deep sea aquarium, which always makes Jack want to order sushi. And that Owen consistently forgets that wasabi is not green mustard. He also greets Gwen with a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Titania one.
They also really like the Bekaran deep tissue scanner. REALLY.
And the team goes out for a breakfast date. They have black pudding as part of their breakfast. Tosh shows off her Japanese with a quote about bees. They talk about people eating themselves. Jack asks what black pudding is made out of and then what white pudding is made out of. Ianto and Owen are the only ones who finish their breakfasts, black pudding and all. The entire situation is amusing.
Hyper vodka always reminds me of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
I did mention that Rhys gets very close to Torchwood, right? Although, I’m not sure if after he’s attacked that he’s heard of Torchwood and their crazy driving or if it’s the ‘codename’ of the unit Gwen supposedly works for.
But it is amusing when he speculates that she works with guys who are more handsome and slimmer than he is. He also can’t get to sleep without Gwen there. One, two, three, awwww.
There is… also a line, which Gwen thinks after Rhys is attacked, about how ‘threesomes like that’ really didn’t interest her. The books aren’t canon characterisation, but the phrasing and the fact the that is some crazy woman attacking her isn’t her cup of tea makes me wonder if other types do interest her. *blushes*
Sadly, there’s also decent doses of GwenJack, especially at the end, where he gives her his coat because she’s shivering.
And despite all that fun stuff, there’s creepy as well. A person nibbles their fingers down to the bone. An alien becomes so entrenched in a person’s system their phyllae looks like the persons hair…
And... that's it. Late I know but I'll post up the choir boy YATN installment next.
Anyway, this is possibly one of my favourite novelisations. Everyone is decently characterised and Rhys gets involved. Not as much as say… Meat or Almost Perfect, although Almost Perfect does reference this particular novelisation in a kind of parallel/in joke kind of way, but Rhys does come startlingly close to Torchwood. And this book is set pre-Cyberwoman so it’s all the more fun and ‘yay!’ because FIRST SEASON INTERACTION.
It also seems to fit into canon fairly consistently as well.
Well, nothing contradicts it, it doesn’t contradict anything else and doesn’t have too close a resemblance to any episodes. I have noticed that the novels tend to like having people being affected by aliens and that sometimes this means they take chunks out of other humans but… not too similar to any episodes. ;)
Since I have so many book marks in this though, I won’t bother with telling you exactly why I like this novel so much because it’ll be evident in my commentary. (Which is completely out of order.)
There’s a quote from Jack right at the beginning that I have seen mentioned in a couple of fics: of how everyone is like a kid in a walled garden and how he’s just a slightly older kid. The use of it gets a bit tired, but I do love the actual quote. Which is vaguely related to the whole ‘goggle boy’ thing. That and Jungian imagery.
A bit later and he acts fatherly by looking out over where Tosh and Owen are working and reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses. He does the same for Gwen, but she sneaks up behind him. Actually, a lot of reflection on what their jobs within Torchwood are goes on throughout the book.
Owen emos briefly about having no one to talk to about chlorine-based enzyme chemistry and anomalies in osmotic transfer rates before going on to ponder on how pretty Gwen is. Shortly after that, Owen is reunited with his stomach ten seconds after Jack stops the SUV. Even later on, there’s some pondering on alien evolution. Which I of course went squee over as that’s something I like doing in my spare time when I can’t get to sleep.
Later, he also tries to figure out the life cycle of a parasitic alien. Fun times.
RANDOM OWEN BACKSTORY. About how he grew up in the East End of London in a generally down and out neighbourhood and how all his friends ended up as mechanics and real estate agents and would’ve ended up doing the same until his dad died of aortic aneurysm. Which he then took up doctoring to prevent the same happening from him.
Yeah… he has issues. And can use his medical knowledge to really hurt someone. Ouch.
Book!Jack also has a brand of snark kind of similar to Ianto’s. It’s AWESOME. Twice the non-cynical snark, hooray!
I mention this because Jack comments on a comment of Owen’s which is rather insulting to Owen, but it’s in a very ‘No, the phone lines are down’ way. Also, the last part of “Beware of ascribing human feelings to aliens. It’s a classic mistake. They don’t think like us, they don’t feel like us, they don’t react like us. It’s hard enough working out what a cat is thinking, let alone something from another planet. Anthropomorphise at your peril.” is AWESOME and Owen jokes that it should be their motto and he’ll get some t-shirts made up with it on.
Jack spends quite a bit of time on roofs in this book. Almost as much as in the first few episodes of season one.
There is stuff about guns. A Walther P99, a Glock 17 and a Sig Sauer P226. Which kind of makes me want to read up about them, because the only thing I know from the names is they’re different brands/lines of guns. Oh, and they’re pistols, which is probably denoted by the ‘P’ on the Walther and Sig Sauer, as I know Sig Sauer also do big machine guns and Glock are kind of famous for their handguns. I… do not know why I know some of this stuff.
And then there’s an Owen joke about maybe all the Weevil’s are trained pharmacists but they just don’t know it.
There is Cyberwoman foreshadowing in here. Ianto scares the hell out of Tosh when she’s trying to find something in the archives. He LOOMS and is vaguely creepy, especially when he mentions a ‘Project Goldenrod’ which apparently involved people merging into a mass of flesh and sex. Which kind of gets repeated again in Almost Perfect. Except alien tech that reconfigures itself doesn’t feature in that.
Also, Tosh finds clues that Jack is older than he looks. (I love her, seriously. She gets cookies for being so smart.)
Who doesn’t know what the word ‘swag’ means? Seriously? Jack should not need to institute a Torchwood guideline to use one new word in every conversation. Although I would be interested in the etymology of ‘shufti’. Which is apparently military slang.
Tosh doing an experiment. It’s kind of creepy how morbid she sounds while setting it up, referencing the fact that there are several recordings of past experiments and that one ends with the most blood-curdling scream Ianto ever heard.
But then it goes light hearted, because she then goes on to think that if her experiment did fail, she’d be remembered for the longest, loudest, most unexpected string of expletives ever recorded by Torchwood.
Then Ianto shows up *~mysteriously~* and gets to watch the experiment with the mice! I am surprised that the author felt the need to have him unaware that mice REALLY LIKE peanut butter, not cheese.
We find out that the Hub (I feel so odd calling it that, as the Hub is obviously only the main part of the complex, the part that is immediately based under the water tower. The tunnels and passageways that are part of Torchwood but are spread out much farther don’t seem very Hub-ish to me…) has a deep sea aquarium, which always makes Jack want to order sushi. And that Owen consistently forgets that wasabi is not green mustard. He also greets Gwen with a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Titania one.
They also really like the Bekaran deep tissue scanner. REALLY.
And the team goes out for a breakfast date. They have black pudding as part of their breakfast. Tosh shows off her Japanese with a quote about bees. They talk about people eating themselves. Jack asks what black pudding is made out of and then what white pudding is made out of. Ianto and Owen are the only ones who finish their breakfasts, black pudding and all. The entire situation is amusing.
Hyper vodka always reminds me of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
I did mention that Rhys gets very close to Torchwood, right? Although, I’m not sure if after he’s attacked that he’s heard of Torchwood and their crazy driving or if it’s the ‘codename’ of the unit Gwen supposedly works for.
But it is amusing when he speculates that she works with guys who are more handsome and slimmer than he is. He also can’t get to sleep without Gwen there. One, two, three, awwww.
There is… also a line, which Gwen thinks after Rhys is attacked, about how ‘threesomes like that’ really didn’t interest her. The books aren’t canon characterisation, but the phrasing and the fact the that is some crazy woman attacking her isn’t her cup of tea makes me wonder if other types do interest her. *blushes*
Sadly, there’s also decent doses of GwenJack, especially at the end, where he gives her his coat because she’s shivering.
And despite all that fun stuff, there’s creepy as well. A person nibbles their fingers down to the bone. An alien becomes so entrenched in a person’s system their phyllae looks like the persons hair…
And... that's it. Late I know but I'll post up the choir boy YATN installment next.
