Akiva Reads

by Peter Anghelides, Stephen Cole

Not nearly as good as I was led to believe. Also, needs a massive TW for an important plot thread that's basically just continual rape threats against Compassion.

LIKES: Father Kreiner's arc. After all those years, he's still Fitz. I know a lot of people ship him and the Doctor; through that lens, Kreiner's death is really moving.

The Time War stuff is a mess, but if it was simple and understandable we'd never believe it was a Time War. The ideas were generally good, with one exception: THEY GOT KLEIN BOTTLES WRONG! A Klein bottle isn't closed in 3-space either, that's the entire point: it's only got one side, what's inside is also outside. Even within the plot, how do you expect us to believe that people who construct time machines out of pure mathematics would make a geometry mistake like that??

DISLIKES: Author is sexist as hell. All the female characters are described as lovingly assembled collections of curves, "inviting" lips, sexy legs and butts, pale smooth skin, etc etc etc.

President Romana's motivations NEVER make sense, she does whatever the plot requires of her and functions as a bad guy for no real reason. Why does everyone refer to her as Lady President? The male Presidents aren't Lord President, and I don't think Romana would put up with that unevolved bullshit. She's a classic woman-hating mean girl herself in this regeneration, who surrounds herself with doddering old men she can control with sex appeal, and honestly, why?

Everyone wants to "breed" Compassion like a time-traveling cow, and her humanity is constantly in question, even by Fitz and the Doctor, even though her personality hasn't changed at all. There is a truly horrifying moment when a technician thinks about running away with Compassion to travel the universe... and the first perk that occurs to him is that he can alter her appearance into his ideal sexy woman.

Compassion's "win" at the end doesn't do anything to counter the rampant misogyny. It comes across as "look, all these people tried to abuse and control her, and it turned her evil."

I was browsing my other EDA reviews, and oh look, the other Anghelides book I read, [b:Frontier Worlds|153056|Doctor Who Frontier Worlds|Peter Anghelides|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1172247772s/153056.jpg|147738], was also full of misogynist tropes. Great.