However you fall on this story, whether you see it as abhorrent or just a product of its time, Smith is ready to challenge your opinions.
Nick Joy, SFB
The Black Archive #58 is slowly picking up some critical steam, with early adopters giving a few positive comments on Twitter and a sprinkling of ratings. There have also been a couple of very positive reviews in some online magazine - I was particularly pleased with Graham Williamson remarking “One of the triumphs of Dale Smith’s Black Archive entry on this story is that it comprehensively demolishes the ‘acceptable in the seventies’ myth”, as this gave me some hope that the book was doing the things I hoped it would before I’d even written a word.
It’s not a review as such, but the excellent Doctor Who Literature podcast recently did an episode on The Talons of Weng-Chiang novelisation, and (at around the 45 minute mark) Kate Orman talks about the Black Archive. Pleasingly she describes my favourite point I found during my research as “really interesting”. That makes the podcast great for me, but even if you aren’t me it is well worth a listen, and I wish it had existed when I was writing the book.
Hopefully, some more people will start to read the book and feedback about it as the years go by, but so far, so good.
Smith has created a book which any future work on Talons will have to reckon with
Graham Williamson, We Are Cult