Note that special effects in this context refers to the cover and production qualities that went into publishing the book, about the only thing of value to this project anyways.

This was a special level of awful. I expected something at least a little questionable based on the reviews but this has to be one of the worst books I ever read. I had to basically force myself through the tail end of the book. Things were so bad I likely would have given up were it not for this being the first in a series of books, and I had a pretty heavy dose of the sunk cost fallacy after a while reading this thing. The crazy part is, Timewyrm: Genesis isn't very long in terms of page count, but it was a very slow and clumsy experience getting through.

It's a shame, too, because buried under all this nonsense is a big, sprawling adventure that kind of feels like it wants to be told. Ancient Mesopotamia is a fun setting for a historical Doctor Who adventure, and it is cool to get into the Epic of Gilgamesh a little bit. I like how this is a pretty honest look at a despotic ruler from history, often acknowledging that these figures aren't exactly saints and are very flawed individuals, to put it politely.

Unfortunately, writer John Peel, who seems more gifted at adapting Doctor Who rather than crafting original stories for the franchise, feels wildly unqualified for this type of story. You need someone thoughtful and intelligent enough to really balance the real-world implications of tyrannical rulers and the absolute powers they had over others when compared to how we want to view these figures and how they ought to function in a story like this. Gilgamesh is basically a statutory rapist, so if the Doctor is going to defend him a bit, you really need to be careful with how you go about this content or it is going to come across as very, very troubling. And that sucks because there is a conversation to be had about this stuff. The Doctor probably tolerates a lot of backwards human behaviour in his travels, and I'm sure he finds a lot of stuff about Ace from the 1980s as problematic and backwards as he might find the people of Mesopotamia. There's an interesting point to be made in all this, but Peel is wildly unable to make that point. His prose is simple and barely gets the voice of Doctor Who right to begin with, so sophisticated plot ideas just fall apart completely.

And none of that is to even mention the mountain of aborted plot lines, unexplained or barely used choices and characters, a ridiculously truncated ending that just made no sense at all, and a bunch of rather painful references and cameos from the Third and Fourth Doctor. I *really* hated this book. It's one of the worst Doctor Who things I've encountered thus far. It's funny, because Sophie Aldred does say some nice things at the start of the book, and I can see where she is coming from. For a while it was content like Timewyrm: Genesis carrying what little had remained of Doctor Who after the cancellation. So I understand why hopes were high for these books, and Ace does have her moments throughout this story where I could see Sophie appreciating her character's role here. The story pairs well with The Ghost Light in that regard and there are some useful connections made with Nimrod and Enkidu that makes a lot of sense and works well with the real world Epic of Gilgamesh. Hell, even the intro with our villain Ishtar and Gilgamesh, in my opinion, was really well done.

But after a while, Ishtar becomes a lame villain. Cruel for the sake of being cruel and lacking origins all that compelling, Ishtar is a huge part of this story and all too rarely entertaining, either. On top of that, the action is so silly and doesn't work or make sense, the Doctor's character work with Ace is just awful at times and featuring some of the worst dialogue I've ever seen assigned to these characters, and all our Mesopotamian characters don't have anything meaningful to do after a while. An extremely disappointing read on the whole that did have some interesting ideas that just completely stumbled on execution of them. The nudity some of the other reviews mention is there and a bit eyebrow-raising, but hardly the most objectionable part of this thing. That Ace happens to sleep in the nude bothers me a lot less than the way that Gilgamesh is casually mentioned to have been likely to have assaulted her were it not for the Doctor's disapproval. So yeah, this sucks hard. I'm sure there's more wrong with it but I'd much rather to just be done with this book once and for all. I read it thinking it would matter for the other Timewyrm books and I'm not even sure that was worth it.