Product Description

An adventure featuring the fifth Doctor Who, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric, and delving into the past of the first Doctor. The story explores the relationship between the universe and one of the Doctor's oldest protagonists, the Celestial Toymaker.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #722035 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Divided Loyalties, from the series of Doctor Who books to feature the adventures of past Doctors and their companions, showcases the strength of this range perfectly. Were it not for its huge scope and broad canvas, Divided Loyalties would sit quite happily alongside the television stories between which it is meant to nestle. The book features the fifth Doctor (played on television by Peter Davison) and his earliest team of companions--Tegan, Nyssa and Adric, and Russell manages to perfectly capture the interplay between these characters that made this era of the show so distinctive.

This neophyte team of adventurers (they'd barely been together for a couple of months, as the book begins) are thrown into conflict with one of the Doctor's oldest foes, the Celestial Toymaker, who is busily setting up an audacious trap for his nemesis. While each of the TARDIS team has their part to play in his plan, the devilish Toymaker also drags the crew of a remote space station, a handful of innocent victims from Earth and the entire population of the planet Dymok into his cruel games.

If there's a weakness to Divided Loyalties, it lies in the very ambition that also makes it such a gripping read: as the story thunders to its climax, there are so many threads reaching their zenith that the actual conclusion is-- almost by necessity--not given quite the space it deserves. But this gripe is a minor one, as the journey to the end of the book is truly exciting. Helping the action along is Russell's incredible grip on the characters of this era. The fifth Doctor is by turns quiet and unsure, then exasperated and authoritative, just as he should be. Tegan is the right mix of brassiness and capability; Nyssa is the sensitive, intelligent one the series always made her out to be; and Adric? Well, Adric is just as annoying as he was on the small screen. But at least here Russell eventually manages to mellow him into a halfway likeable character. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book, though, doesn't feature these characters at all. Divided Loyalties features a detour to the very beginning of the Doctor's adventures, as a young Time Lord-to-be. Here, we witness his first meeting with the Toymaker, and ... well, anything more would be spoiling it. Suffice it to say that, for this part of the book alone, Divided Loyalties is well worth a look. --David Bailey

Customer Reviews

Not worth the paper it's printed on.
This book, the latest from Gary Russell - leader of the school of recycling the worst ideas of Who - lives up to his previous offerings. It's got old monsters, old characters and a plot so tedious you'll be begging for the book to be over. Still, at least it's not a very long book so you'll not be pained by it for too long.

Russell brings the Celstial Toymaker together with the 5th Doctor. This could have been good on its own. Sure, he drops in a reference at the end to lead into the never filmed 6th Doctor Toymaker story. OK, Russell revels in his ability to take loose ends and needlessly tie them together in a convoluted web of continuity. Even then it could have been a good book. But then halfway through Russell seems to run out of story and so the middle third of the books becomes a Gallifrey runaround featuring the 1st Doctor before he left on exile.

The sort of thing reserved for the worse excesses of fan faction.

Russell decided that every single timelord we've seen in the series who knew the Doctor was at school with him, either as teacher or most likely as student. Is this supposed to be a good idea? So every single Time Lord who's caused the Doctor hassle - The Master, The Rani, Drax, The Monk, etc - were in his class at school? Utterly ridiculous. Gallifrey 90210 is not a good idea.

It's a shame to see the Amazon reviewer - David Bailey - giving such a good review to the worst Who book ever published....

Advice: Don't buy this book. Please...

A Waste
This book should have been a classic, instead, Gary Russell has written a book with poor prose, turgid characters, bland regulars and the most appalling use of continuity I have ever seen in a Doctor Who novel.

Do not read this book.

A waste of trees and your time
Media tie-in novels often get a bad reputation in the science-fiction community; it's books like DIVIDED LOYALTIES that bring that about. Characters are two- and one-dimensional, the plot is less exciting than the opening credits from the television show, and the prose itself would not be deemed publishable anywhere else. I don't know what Amazon.co.uk reviewer David Bailey sees in this novel--except for, perhaps, his name (which has already appeared in three other Gary Russell novels).

There are a lot of good media tie-in novels out there. This is not one of them. Try your luck elsewhere.