Gareth Rafferty's Blog, page 23

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #17 – Birthright by Nigel Robinson

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#17
Birthright
By Nigel Robinson

Hmm.
Nigel Robinson's second New Adventure is marginally longer than his first, but Birthright still feels like a small story.  I mean, it shouldn't.  It concerns an exodus of carnivorous aliens from a barren world to a vulnerable old Earth; a band of humans fighting against them in the future; a spate of murders in the past; a centuries-old villain hell-bent on acquiring the TARDIS; the craft itself torn into a couple of dead police boxes millennia apart; and two companions out of time, without a Doctor to protect them or offer advice.  It should be epic, and I don't know if it's the conspicuous Doctor-shaped hole or the way he casually and unaffectedly shows up at the end or just the sheer lack of pages, but it's somehow bizarrely... slight, in spite of everything.
At least there's an abundance of neat ideas.  The TARDIS is dead.  Dead!  Bernice and Ace find themselves each waking up worlds apart in a husk of a police box, light falling in through the rotting windows, nothing to signify anything other than wood, and possibly a telephone.  That's a mind-bogglingly evocative image, mana to a crusty old Doctor Whofan, and it's equally thrilling to leave the Doctor's companions so suddenly and inexplicably adrift.  What a hook.  There is nonetheless a degree of just-don't-worry-about-it on reading, in an editor’s note, that this novel is contemporaneous with David Banks's Iceberg.  What, so it'll all sort itself out and some of the answers will show up in the next book, so we might as well just enjoy the atmosphere?  Feh.  Still, there's plenty of that in London circa 1909, especially with a series of Jack-The-Ripper-esque murders tearing through the city.
Of course the shadow of the Ripper – and the recurring voices of Cockney urchins and ladies-of-the-night – makes this virtually indistinguishable from pop Victoriana.  Victoria had only been gone eight years, sure, but there must have been somedifferences in 1909 besides the odd motorcar?  As it is, this 1909 could effortlessly feature Jago and Litefoot.  Starring Bernice "Lisa Bowerman" Summerfield as prominently as it does, it was all I could do not to imagine their sudden arrival by hansom cab...
Ah, Bernice.  Adrift from the Doctor but not forgotten, she soon comes across one of his homes-from-home, a veritable 221B Baker Street kept by the remaining Waterfield relative.  (It's a bit like his House On Allen Road.)  Benny's soon investigating the murders with the help of a Russian, Popov, and an urchin named Charlie.  She shortly encounters nemeses in the slithery young aristocrat, Bellingham, and the mysterious Khan.  (Unrelated to the Khan in the previous book!)  There's plenty of rushing about, an exciting bit where she's framed for murder and locked up in prison, and numerous encounters with assailants and what appear to be alien insects.  After 100 nearly breathless pages, the book seems just about wrapped up.  And then we skip over to Ace's narrative.
So far, it's plenty exciting and evocative, especially the TARDIS and the murders.  Bernice is written well.  Independent and quirky, attempting a Cockney accent with varying success and using her otherwise vaguely militaristic skills to bluster through her investigation, she's a totally compelling lead character.  She strikes up a fun rapport with Popov and Charlie, although neither of them is exactly a rounded character – especially Charlie, who would blend effortlessly with any Victorian cast ever.  There's not a great deal of character-building here, or rather there isn't much time for it.  Bernice is understandably upset by her situation, and has moments of reflection and even outrage at the Doctor's apparent abandonment.  She begins to ponder how well she knows him, recalling once again the loss of the Seven Planets (and his part in it), contemplating his callous attitude to death (and his lack of attendance at funerals), and briefly suspecting him of a murder as it seemingly kept her from danger.  ("Oh no, he wouldn't have, would he?  Not even him.  Not Margaret...  But... but I don't know him like Ace does: he's an alien, after all...  What would Ace believe?")  This novel is a precursor to the new series Doctor-lite episodes; the Doctor’s influence is felt as he manipulates events from wherever he’s got to.  All of which no doubt says something about him, but again, there’s not a lot of time to say exactly what.
Nigel Robinson captures Benny’s voice, and of course that acidic sarcasm of hers well.  For the most part though, her tale is one of hurried, murder-investigating incident.  That whole winding-up-in-prison fiasco comes and goes maddeningly quick, and all the while we're side-stepping into Interludes that progress something else (shh) while Ace's section looms.  Have I mentioned the book is really short?  While there is introspection, and plenty of colour, it all feels secondary to the watch-tapping frog-march of the plot.  Said plot later collides with characterisation within the TARDIS's telepathic circuits, and the resulting mix of psycho-analytical imagery and climactic Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! is like an ice cream headache.
But that's for later.  On to Ace. The Charrl are dying; they regret trying to colonise the grim dustball that is Antýkhon.  The indigenous humans feel the same since they are the Charrl's only source of food, and Ace becomes their leader by default – have gun, will lead.  She organises an attack on the creatures' hive, but eventually agrees to help the Charrl evacuate to/get help from Earth, even when it transpires that Antýkhon is – spoiler! – Earth of the distant future.  I kind of guessed that.  I also guessed just how well the Charrl would stick to their side of the bargain, which is to say they rhapsodise about the value of all life, and still eat people.  Do Not Trust.  Duh!
There's less plot in this (shorter) section, and Ace is less well-written than Benny.  "Toe-rag" and "bog-breath" are here again; there's even a "Wicked!", and a moment where she thinks "there's nothing more satisfying than a bloody good bang!"  (Ahem.)  All that feels just a little regressive.  Robinson examines the tension between Ace and Bernice, which is fair game in a situation where all the main characters are apart, only I think it's a bit redundant right after their improving relationship in Shadowmind.  You might say Ace's regard for Benny will naturally ebb and flow, especially when they're torn apart like this, or when it looks like the Doctor is giving her preferential treatment (e.g. a TARDIS key), and you might be right.  But it felt like awkward timing to me.  Meanwhile, Ace is also mad at the Doctor – a degree of jealousy re Doctor/Benny, but also just plain mistrust.  Again, this feels like old ground to me, though I can just about understand the argument for going over it again here.
Before long it's back to 1909 for the grand villain unmasking.  An ancient man who wants the TARDIS in order to prolong his life, he makes an interesting foe, his journey spanning all those interludes (which made more sense when I went back and re-read them afterwards).  I wondered if he could have been dropped into an earlier novel or two, to really build up his importance.  Oh well; as it is, you guessed it, it’s a teensy bit rushed.
The climax arrives and he triggers a telepathy-themed finale that didn't really do it for me.  I like TARDIS-centric stories, or the idea of them.  Whereas rummaging through the Doctor's psyche, with literal representations of guilt swimming through oceans of blood (on-his-hands), is not my kind of characterisation.  Bit on the nose, innit?  I don't have much truck with abstract imagery; see Transit, Time's Crucible, even some parts of Timewyrm: Revelation.  The latter book is particularly applicable here, as Birthright is full of intriguing ideas but is in some bizarre hurry to get through them.

I've not even touched on the mystery of Muldwych, a probable Time Lord stranded on Antýkhon who knows the Doctor somehow.  Is he a Doctor from the future, or someone else entirely?  Why is he exiled?  Is he living those years on a loop?  (It's implied he'll start the whole sequence over again at the end.)  Is it just a coincidence that his story seems to echo the villain's – Me Really Old, Me Want TARDIS?  No time, the book's over.  And it doesn't look as if Nigel Robinson wrote another New Adventure after this, so... never mind?
I've seemingly done nothing but complain about this one, so I'd better redress the balance.  I enjoyed Birthright.  It's astutely and creatively written, with ideas that reward the long-time Whofan as well as any frequent New Adventures reader.  I just rarely had the opportunity to savour them.  Robinson's plot is sufficiently interesting and in certain TARDIS-y places, downright cool.  The characterisation is hit and only ever-so-slightly miss; the Charrl would be a lot more interesting if they didn't keep killing people, and few of the people Benny and (especially) Ace meet have more than a couple of notes.  The book ties its settings and interludes together with some finesse, but much of it is undermined by the constant cloister bell of The Book's Nearly Over.  Now that it is, a worrying amount of it seems to have dropped away, and there wasn’t a lot to begin with.  It's one I'll surely read again, chewing its chapters one at a time, though not all of them call for it.
7/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #16 – Shadowmind by Christopher Bulis

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#16
Shadowmind
By Christopher Bulis

What's that ominous note of thunder?  Ah yes, Shadowmind: presenting yet another New Adventure that fans generally do not like.  Consensus is never going to account for everybody, of course, but we're basically talking Time-Flight or The Invisible Enemy here – in Doctor Who terms, it might as well give off stink-lines.

As it happens, I've read one of Christopher Bulis's later books, or should I say tried to read as I literally couldn't finish The Sorcerer's Apprentice.  A mixture of sci-fi and fantasy every bit as bog-standard as Witch Mark, studded with flat characters boasting godawful names like Nyborg, it did not make a good first impression.  And he wrote Shadowmind years earlier.  I read this one peeking through my fingers.

About a third of the way through, I wondered if I was reading the same book I'd been hearing about.  Over halfway, I was in a near-constant state of alarm that any minute nowit would all turn to mush.  By the end, I assumed I'd gone completely mad and dreamt the whole thing.  This is Shadowmind, right?  Godawful, out-of-character, stab-it-stab-it-make-it-die Shadowmind?  Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle: it's actually pretty good.

The first thing to strike me in a positive way was the pace.  It's Ace's birthday, and along with the Doctor and Bernice, she wants a holiday.  A proper one this time.  They settle on the bright, clement world of Tairngaire, and to my surprise as well as theirs, Ace and co. holiday their brains out for an entire day before trouble (inevitably) starts.  Tairngaire, or more specifically the city of New Byzantium, is nicely realised.  It calms Ace in particular, who now seems well adjusted to life with the Doctor and Bernice.  Her rapport with the latter is coming along quite organically; at one point, they both agree that the TARDIS is their home.  Quite right.  After the tumult of Lucifer Rising and the violence of White Darkness, it's good to see Ace mesh with friends.  And it's nice to have characters exit the TARDIS without stumbling immediately on a pile of corpses.  (Like in the previous novel, for example.)  The first 40-page chunk is fun.  The characters breathe.

But this is not What The TARDIS Team Did On Their Holidays, nor should it be, and trouble shows up in the form of a man being chased.  Ace intervenes too late to save him, but discovers he is not a person at all: there's something smaller living inside him.  Something that made a duplicate of the man she's seeing.  There are more duplicates on Tairngaire, and that's putting it mildly.  A full-scale coup is staged, as duplicates in key positions sabotage and steal technology, and even a few spaceships.  Suddenly there's a tremendous feeling of oh-my-god-what-just-happened?!, and the pace roars up a gear.  Moments before it all goes nuclear, there's a splendid scene where the Doctor deduces which of his colleagues are duplicates – it's like Agatha Christie with a stun gun.  Then, when the fun starts, Ace is ambushed by duplicates and ends up fleeing naked except for a Dalek-style helmet.  (Hmm.  There's your mental image for the day.)

There are quite a few exciting and very visual scenes in this.  Bulis is a designer and illustrator, which no doubt helps.  He's also a massive Doctor Who fan, evidenced by the brilliant bit where the Doctor is cleared of all the usual (tedious) suspicion heaped on him when he's only trying to help by, er, getting them to look him up.  And hence find loads of records on how helpful and face-change-y he is.  Brilliant!  Good lord, why doesn't he do that every week?

After the duplicates make their move, there's another change of pace – a calm between storms, as the Doctor and the Tairngaire survivors figure out their next move.  I enjoyed the ebb and flow of the book.  I was aware, just from glancing at the cover, that it would take on a fully militaristic bent at some point, but there is plenty of lead-up to that, and the enormous-yet-intangible threat of the duplicates totally earns it.  And it's here I want to address one of the criticisms I've come across for Shadowmind: that the book, in particular the Doctor, takes on a pro-military slant.  Ahem: no.  The Doctor goes to considerable lengths to clarify his position on that.  Here he is on war:

“'I hate war.  I will do everything I can to avoid it.  But sometimes there is a dreadful inevitability about it.  And then you know that good people are going to die for the lives of others.  And all one can do is try to build something worthwhile from their sacrifice.'”

And on weapons:

“'I understand your unwillingness to use weapons, but–'
'Oh no, Lieutenant,' the Doctor interrupted bitterly.  'You do not understand at all.'  He sighed.  'I wish I was as pure as that.  My problem is that I have used entirely too many weapons ... I once triggered a weapon that destroyed an entire world.  And knowing it "had to be done" does not make the memory any easier to bear.'”

I mean, yes, the Doctor adopts military gear in Shadowmind, even carrying a gun – the local military rather insist that he and his friends can defend themselves, and in any case, it's under protest.  But he's quite clear that this is not something he's keen to do.  He makes numerous attempts to contact the intelligence behind the duplicates.  He even stops short of destroying Umbra, the force behind it all, and not before it kills a load more people for fun.  People die in Shadowmind, and it matters.  It is felt.  In an almost unbearable climactic scene, Ace must gun down new friends to buy time.  At no point is death celebrated.  Admittedly, duplication is painted as a boon to rival regeneration, but even that has its limits, since if you're not duplicated before you die, you're toast.

In a nutshell, Shadowmind is a violent story and its heroes must be violent in it, but it's about people struggling against a sudden, horribly expanding force that absolutely does not want to co-exist.  To borrow a line from Aliens, what were they supposed to use?  Harsh language?

As for the people themselves, there are a lot of characters – and to get the critic ball rolling, characterisation is a bit thin on the ground.  But the action spans several planets and spaceships, so it makes sense to cast a wide net.  That's not to excuse spotty characters like Santony, a man Ace connects with whose sad past comes via info-dump, or the rather odd Robson, one of the "main" duplicates who spends most of his time hanging around with a marsupial.  But I get why there are a lot of people here, and I didn't have as much trouble remembering who they all were as in White Darkness.  Everyone has some element of interest to them.  You feel for the Marshal and his bright starship-captain granddaughter, you can't help sympathising with duplicates like Gerry who are more or less innocent in all this, and of course there's Sorren.  A colonist unwittingly trapped within the duplicates' plans, she doesn't really connect with many other characters, but she reflects poignantly on what this all means for her, and to the fallen pastoral world of Arden:

“Lyn knew she should have cared more for this senseless destruction of the ancient woodland, exactly the thing the controlled colonization of Arden was intended to avoid.  But every so often she caught sight of Holly Freyman, working like a zombie, dead-eyed, uncomprehending.  And then she would see Liam Freyman, almost eagerly wielding a cutter ... to trim the branches of another tree, and then see his face go blank when Holly looked at him.  In the midst of such madness, she could find precious little within her to pity the trees.”

I think it's only fair to back-track here, because the duplicates are worth discussing.  These are not your average possessed-people or robots, spouting "I must obey", not remembering their childhoods and generally doing a good impression of wood.  The duplicates in Shadowmind don't know they're not real, and are generally in control apart from short, disorienting lapses.  There's a memorable (and tragic) sense of befuddlement to them, and inevitably some guilt for those who survive.  It's a very memorable and eerie take on a familiar trope.

“‘Everything seemed so bloody reasonable ... I think you can get people to do anything to anybody, as long as they think it's the right thing to do.  Not having any doubt and uncertainty, just knowing.  Believe me, it's easy to go along with.’”

And controlling them, the Shenn.  A hive of rodent-ish creatures that don't particularly rate individual life (calling Ace a "hive-of-one"), they're utterly memorable – and cute!  And... with the usual SPOILER ALERT to anyone who hasn't read Shadowmind and is considering it, that's a SPOILER incoming... even the Shenn aren't fully responsible for what's going on here.  Umbra, an emergent intelligence on a nearby asteroid, wishes to grow at all costs.  The Doctor can, and does understand that impulse, but unfortunately Umbra is petulant and irresponsible; it revels in revenge when it does not get what it wants.  "Emergent life = childish" is, perhaps, a simplistic view, but it was a lot easier to follow its goals than the similar malevolence in Transit.

And anyway, there is some moral greyness here.  An irresponsible creature wants to expand, so it convinces a lot of harmless creatures with no individual values to steal and murder to achieve that.  The whole thing comes off with a disquieting lack of understanding, particularly as the duplicates blank whenever they try to understand why they're killing (or worse, why they shouldn't kill), and that makes the violent reaction from Tairngaire all the more understandable.  You cannot reason with shadows.

I'm probably making it sound like a heavy and miserable book.  It isn't, although there are moments like that and swathes of action once we reach Arden.  More importantly the Doctor, Ace and Bernice are well captured.  Bulis has a knack for the companions in particular; I’ve no qualms with the Doctor's morals, but he does spend a lot of time helpfully spouting exposition.  Meanwhile Ace and Benny have fun, funny moments.  Benny's astute and learned wit is just right.  Ace's sense of responsibility, re violence, is well-earned and judged; she feels just as dangerous as Ace 1.0 (is that a thing?), but lacks the sheer recklessness.  I loved her self-reproachful running commentary on armament:

"The Doctor disapproved of her fascination with ordnance in general and explosives in particular, but even he (she was sure) would agree that this time there had been no choice.  The opposition had been packing some pretty severe hardware of their own (she would point this out) and didn't mind using it.  And she had resisted the quite reasonable impulse to fragment the murdering pair of... somehow, she knew the Doctor would still not approve.”

Look, I'm not barking mad.  Shadowmindhas flaws.  As above, some of the characters don't make a big impression.  Bulis doesn't have a great ear for names.  Some of the description is rather leaden, especially in an early scene where Ace and Bernice stare at each other and make note of their appearances for no particular reason.  Shadowmind is an Ace-heavy story, and it works well in that regard, but right now I'm struggling to recall much input from the Doctor (besides fact-gathering) and especially Bernice, who seemed mostly to be cracking wise in the corners of rooms.  There is an unfortunately large supply of typos and layout snafus which, okay, are a general problem with the New Adventures, but they really seem to pile up in this one.  (One character is alternately spelled "Khan" and "Kahn" every time they appear.  FFS!)  It clearly wasn't ready for the copiers, which is a pity; it reflects badly on Bulis andVirgin.

Honestly though, I'm drawing a blank.  I flat-out liked it.  This is neatly paced, and its so-called villains had enough layers to keep me curious and entertained.  The prose bobbed along, alternately reflective and exciting, and at least one of its main characters had what you'd call a life-altering experience.  That goes a long way to making Shadowmind, for my money, a substantial and exciting read.

7/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #15 – White Darkness by David A. McIntee

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#15
White Darkness
By David A. McIntee

A somewhat prolific name in Doctor Who fiction, David A. McIntee makes his first impression with White Darkness.  I've read one of his later books, The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang, and they have some things in common.  Not all of it beneficial.
McIntee is a big fan of historical research, even including an Author's Note to underline it.  In both novels there's a trade-off between narrative flow and period detail; it's well integrated, such as an aside that two cars stopped is the Haitian equivalent of a traffic jam, but you're still aware he's taking time out to do it.  While there is an alien threat in both, the focus is on the people and how it affects them.  That's laudable – it reminds me of Malcolm Hulke and his interest in moral shades of grey.  But White Darkness is severely overpopulated, and between getting the historical period right and juggling the motivations of all the players, it is difficult to tell a single coherent story, or get engrossed in it.
It's Haiti, 1915, and a revolution is erupting between the ruling President Sam and the anarchic General Bobo.  Like a lot of historical Doctor Who, there is an inevitable feeling that these events will trundle on as scheduled, with or without the plot.  Despite all the evocative horror that ensues – especially a massacre of the island's prisoners, a key turning point – there is also a feeling that revolution is the norm for Haiti, and its seedy underbelly of voudoun practitioners [sic – see Author's Note!] will cheerily play the sides off one another and continue to exist afterwards.  There's a certain oddly dull inevitability to it.
Meanwhile, a team of Germans including an evil general, an evil number one and a couple of slightly opposed mad scientists are working on a formula for zombis– not exactly the brains-obsessed George Romero things, but servile and unkillable soldiers.  Such a discovery could win the war for Germany.  Meanwhile (again), the island's big cheese of the dark arts, Mait, together with servants Henri and Carrefour, secretly manipulates them in the hopes of resurrecting The Old Ones (or The Great Ones, or The Great Old Ones, delete where appropriate), ancient enemies of the Time Lords.  Meanwhile (Volume: III), a team of Americans are due to invade the island.  Meanwhile (keep up!), the Doctor, Ace and Bernice arrive seeking, however improbably, a holiday.  Meanwhile (why not?), various other folks flit between all of the above, including a disillusioned Haitian soldier and an American professor.
There is a great deal going on in White Darkness, and obviously a great many people are affected.  Unfortunately the end result is sprawling.  McIntee has a very evocative style, best evidenced during a terrifying shipwreck and the aforementioned massacre, but many of the characters and events still feel like bullet points.  I routinely confused the individual Germans, Haitians and Americans, some of whom (e.g. Henri) seemed to die before they really accomplishing anything.  There is a tendency to describe folks by what they are wearing – a device Terrance Dicks often employs, and one I can't stand as it not only reduces people to tedious constituent details, but means I have a bunch of stuff to recall the next time they show up.  Despite a presumable interest in historical fairness, the bad characters are 100% bad here – in the cases of Etienne and Richmann especially, there is nothing else underneath.
In the end, after a number of escapes and recaptures help to pad out the pages, historical flavour and horror collapse in a helter skelter of action.  It should be exciting – indeed, Dicks mixed a similar cocktail of Evil Military and Occult to great effect in Exodus – but instead it's wearying.  Things go bang and boom, people die and good lord, is it over yet?
I felt disconnected and a bit bored reading much of this.  Another reason, besides the large and thinly-written cast and the too-numerous themes, is the lack of an overall threat.  I'm dimly aware that The (Great? Old?) Ones are something to do with H.P. Lovecraft.  Some of us haven't the foggiest about Lovecraft, so we'll just have to make do with what the book gives us.  And right from the overly ethereal prologue that introduces them, I never got a sense of what they are or what they can do.  They're never "in" the story, as the Doctor prevents their coming altogether; it is suggested a few times that if one acts under their perceived influence, even if it isn't there, the result will be the same.  Sort of undermines them, doesn't it?  And with so much going on in the here-and-now, there didn't seem to be time to establish a coherent threat beneath it all.  I certainly won't lose sleep worrying about Old Ones: Round Two.
White Darkness spreads itself too thin, but hey, at least the main characters are well-written.  The Doctor is full of foreboding, whimsy and otherworldly disconnect from his surroundings, particularly when the prison massacre looms, and when he explains just why you shouldn't kill people, especially in your own past.  There's also a lovely moment where he picks up Cameca's brooch (see: The Aztecs), which doesn't really go anywhere, but I liked it anyway.
Bernice is on fabulous form: one of the novel's highlights is a scene where she is tied to a laboratory stretcher (with a side order of impending doom) only to escape entirely thanks to her own skills.  It sort of undermines the capture, and we march right back to that locale a.s.a.p., but it's still way cool that she can take care of herself.  And Ace slips into her role as the Doctor and Bernice's protector (whether or not Benny needs one), her discomfort around the latter finally beginning to subside.  She's moving more towards Leela at this point, as the apparently fearless and reliable fighter of the group, but there are still glimmers of further dimensions.  There's a moment where she contemplates a different life (“'I sometimes wonder what it would be like,' Ace said softly.  'Get married, have kids, stay in one place and one time...'  Be a mother, she thought, but what kind?”), slyly and simultaneously underscoring the open wound that is her mother.  Less sly, there's a theme in the last dozen or so pages of Ace becoming addicted to violence, which is a valid concern, but the tool used – a parallel, the brutal Richmann – is too bluntly and all too briefly explored.  There just isn't time to get into it.
But that's White Darkness for you.  Historical record, zombie horror, wartime adventure, Doctor Who novel – there’s too much to choose from.  McIntee is a good writer with a keen interest in people, but focus is a vital, missing ingredient.  I slogged through the result dutifully enough, but for the most part merely keen to finish.
5/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #14 – Lucifer Rising by Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#14
Lucifer Rising
By Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore

A popular defence of New Adventures, or at least some of the ones I haven't enjoyed much, is that they're really good at world-building.  The play might not be the thing, but hey, check out the ideas!  And I respect that, sorta.  It's just that for me, unless it's got a coherent plot, or puts its characters on a coherent journey, or ideally both, then all the ideas in the cosmos are still for nought.  That stuff is great, but it's scenery to me.  Like the Doctor once said, angrily to a pirate, what's it for?

Reading Lucifer Rising, I begin to see why people get so excited about world-building.  Here is a world you could almost walk around in, steeped in technical detail and flavour.  Project Eden concerns a number of celestial bodies: Moloch and Belial are linked by a mysterious Bridge, while Lucifer, vast and unknown, blots out everything else.  There are Angels on it, or so they say.  There are only people on Moloch and Belial – they are (at least neurotically) rich, strange, frequently hurt.  Further afield, planets are falling to a mysterious enemy.  There is an atmosphere of growing, but still uncertain fear for the future. (If they only knew.)  It might be scenery, but it's the bloody engrossing kind.
In the course of the novel, I got to know Belial Base very well.  Also the Bridge: host to the book's most visceral and terrifying sequence, when the strand between two worlds up and snaps.  Lucifer remains elusive, to say nothing of the Angels; unless I missed something (and it does sadly happen!), I counted no descriptions of them.  The tumultuous Lucifer, on which we never exactly set foot, undergoes a transformation akin to Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two.  Doesn't "a warning to all not to disturb the Angels at their worship" sound a little like "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS—EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE"?  But I don't mean to point out a borrowed idea or trope.  Lucifer Rising is, at times, obscure in its meaning and imagery – those darn Angels! – but there's a sense of mystery there, of space being a great unknown, and it shares thatwith Clarke.  Not everything is described, explained or within reach, but it is human to look for it.  That's the way of all good science fiction.
And I think I could begrudgingly appreciate all of that even if the story was just as odd and ethereal.  However – drumroll – it isn't!  There is murder afoot, and perhaps a plot to overthrow Project Eden.  There's a box marked "coherent plot" here: tick!  And we've got Ace back, but we haven't really had time to examine that – we do, or at least we resoundingly begin the process. Oh hey, box marked "coherent journey": that’s tick number two!  Isn't it great to have a book actually get more than one core thing right?
And it's nowhere near as straightforward as I'm making it sound.  Lucifer Rising attacks its goals from some odd, rewarding angles.  We witness the TARDIS's arrival through the neat literary trick of security camera footage (tweaked and occasionally rewound!), but we skip the bit where the Doctor and co. ingratiate themselves.  This might seem an odd omission, but it has the effect of putting us in the crew's shoes, leaving the Doctor's involvement as tenuous and yet strangely convincing to us as it is to them:
"With dawning amazement, she realized that he wasn't part of the Belial Base complement, and even as she did so she knew that it wasn't the first time she had remembered that.  She tried to recall how he came to be there, but the memories were soft and fuzzy, and her mind didn't want to focus upon them.  She couldn't seem to look away from his eyes.  It was as if he and his friends had always been there.  Had always been there."
The Doctor's influence is a sore point for Ace, and for Bernice by proxy.  It's only natural for Lucifer Rising to be a novel where that comes out.
"'It's you, isn't it?' [Bernice] said with a sudden realisation.  'Wherever we land, people accept us. I've always wondered why ... And now you're out of the way, whatever spell you've put on them is fading.'He just smiled sadly.
'And do you do the same to Ace and me?  Do you blind usto your faults?'"

Almost needless to say, the Doctor is blamed for the murders and his mysterious arrival is seen as evidence.  You’ve heard that one a hundred times.  But this time, it's really under the microscope.  And it's not your run of the mill murder plot, with the Doctor and the investigator eventually conspiring to flush out the real criminal.  It's an all the more satisfying hunt.

But, with all due respect, the novel's real strength isn't the plot.  It's character.  There is an enormous cast here and considerable effort is expended to make them real.  The first death, Paula, isn't just the (hugely evocative) opening scene – its effects are felt throughout, as grief rebounds off the various other crewmen for various reasons.  Everyone loses or has lost someone: Miles his daughter, Cheryl her lover, Piper her husband, Alex his whole family... the symbolism of Angels, and what they represent to the troubled individuals on Belial, often resounds.  These are not all nice or even good people, and they can do questionable things, but you're in there with them, as wrapped up as you are in the world.  One of my favourite bits is a montage of insomnia and dreams that covers seemingly everyone.  There are many insights including flashbacks, and all of them add organically to the story.
Okay, before I get carried away, it needs saying: there's isn't enough character development for everybody.  There are loads of people on Belial, which can necessitate sheer lists of names, jobs and nationalities.  We're still meeting people in the closing chapters, and some cannot hope to make an impression.  It can be, if not jumbled, at least a bit crowded at times.

And then there's IMC.  The book's antagonists are an unscrupulous group who'll stop at nothing to strip-mine Lucifer (which is sort of like what Project Eden is already doing, actually, except much more aggressive), and yeah, there's absolutely no question of who's doing the antagonising here.  One of the first IMC characters we meets counts their prior engagements in severed ears; later on, goons sit belligerently about watching porn (!), and one of them comes within a hair's breadth of sexual assault, because... evil, presumably.  It's easily the most disappointing thing about the novel, though to be fair, there is very little competition.  (And neither of the authors came up with IMC anyway.)
Still, IMC have an unfortunate knock-on effect.  Ace's loyalties are tested here – and if you've not read Lucifer Rising, you can go ahead and skip this paragraph.  Ace (all gone? We good?) is really working for (last chance...) IMC from the future, who are more morally ambiguous.  She has used the Doctor to manipulate Project Eden for later tactical advantage, which is a morally grey and, well, pretty bloody interesting modus operandi.

(Quick tangent: the blurb says it was Bernice's idea to investigate the suddenly-abandoned work on Lucifer.  I never picked up on that, and indeed the plot seems to pinpoint Ace as the catalyst.  Also, apropos of nothing, that's also the plot of The Pit.)

She's still angry at the Doctor for the events on Heaven (oh hey, running theme, Heaven, Hell... yeah I just noticed it, I'll get me coat), and it's an incredible twist to put her in the opposite position, manipulating him for a change.  She feels justified, not just because she's mad as hell but because IMC aren't cut-and-dried evil.  Well, in theory: the ones we meet in Lucifer Rising unequivocally, disappointingly are.  Even Legion, the unearthly captain of the IMC's flagship, cannot morally grey things up for long, as a bald, obese lady Adjudicator who is specifically more evil than the other Adjudicator turns up to steal its thunder.  Ace's story still works, but this particular aspect aims for grey and comes off oddly black and white.  But hey, I guess something had to tip her off that she'd bet on the wrong horse.
I don't want to undersell Ace's journey, so a few words on the rest of it: it ain't over.  And a few more: her discomfort and rivalry with Bernice, which seemed such an odd note in Deceit, becomes central here.  It pushes her away from the Doctor, then becomes a point of pride. ("Ace gazed levelly at the woman, savouring the taste of jealousy that Bernice had left behind her: a dark and bitter envy of the depth of the relationship that still existed between Ace and the Doctor.")  The Doctor gets a taste of his own meddling, and ultimately takes a life, unambiguously, gun in hand; in that moment, he sees little difference between manipulation and the real thing.  Which is refreshingly honest, and bloody dark, is it not?  Ace can trust him a little more in the wake of that, which helps explain why she's back with him.  Another reason is that she's calling the shots, or at least more so now.  And oh, all right, she begins to see the Doctor's point of view, and a few scales fall from her eyes over the Jan affair.  Which feels rather earned, because that relationship made sense contextually, but yeah, a lot of it was a reaction to the Doctor.  Jan was sort of a dick.
Bernice is less involved, or at least has less of a hook in the story (despite that blurb), but that's not to say she's poorly written.  File Lucifer Rising under "Good Benny writing", with the requisite confidence, modesty, sarcasm and booze.  There's not a lot to her yet, but it's good when all the ingredients show up.  She has that certain ease with the Doctor, the sense of two smart and witty people just getting on, which was such a gem in The Highest Science.  (There's too much to quote, but there's some zingy banter on pages 101-102.)  There's some decent character development for her, including a delightfully frank complaint about how time travel robs archaeology of its meaning, and of course there's a climactic glut of the stuff for all three regulars at the end.  I'm still not convinced it's a great idea to drive a wedge between Ace and Bernice, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.  I'll probably always wonder how she'd be progressing if Ace had planted roots by now, but at present, both hold my interest.
And the Doctor? Trickster and manipulator as per usual, he's nonetheless surprised and a little shaken by Ace, among other things.  And yet after all that, he still finds time to work a little influential magic on Earth's future, and his own past.  We get under his skin with all that hypnotic effect stuff, but there's plenty of whimsy too, including his extensive pin collection.  There's some downright lovely writing for the Doctor, among others. Here's an easy highlight:
"Perhaps it was the white Panama hat perched upon his head like a nesting bird; perhaps the fact that beneath its brim, like two large, round eggs, his eyes were bright and full of joyful intelligence.  Whatever it was, the sum of all the individual details added up to a personality shining with the conviction that, whatever the situation, whatever the galaxy, it could be grasped as firmly and immediately as the crooked handle of his umbrella."
Lucifer Risingwas co-written, and due credit to its co-conspirators: it's seamless.  The only hint of a gestalt is the occasional leaning towards the evocatively visceral, and then to the wistful and beautiful, or the scientific and clever, or the ethereal and intangible... and actually, sod it, I can't tell who's who.  But it works, and a rich tapestry is the result.  It's a world-builder that leaves some things to the imagination, then describes others in bone-shattering detail.  Its people are driven and unhappy and real, apart from the few that aren't.  (D'oh.)  The Doctor, Ace and Bernice have all grown at the end of it, which is the mark of something substantial.  And as it happens, bloody good.
8/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #13 – Deceit by Peter Darvill-Evans

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#13
Deceit
By Peter Darvill-Evans

Surprise!  Ace is back!  Phew?

I'm biased because I really like Bernice, and these books came out too long ago for me to say I didn't see it coming, but... really?  After three books that shoehorned Benny into the plot with varying degrees of awkwardness, it's rather sad to throw away the possibility that the writers will get better at it, not to mention the chance to developing an organic friendship between Bernice and the Doctor.  However these books shuffle it, what you're going to get from now on is one too many people in the TARDIS.

Okay, dismount soapbox, now for the actual book.  I might as well address an elephant in the room, as I did for The Pit: Deceit is another infamously unpopular New Adventures novel.  (Two in a row.  Huzzah.)  Knowing this and reading it anyway carries an obvious risk: you've only yourself to blame.  But I think it's important not to take received wisdom for granted, to make up your own mind and in any case, the rough will help you appreciate the smooth.  I want to follow the whole New Adventures story, warts and all.
Here be warts.  Deceitisn't as terrible as I was expecting, but it still makes complete sense that people tend not to recommend it.  This is a book many feel they have to read because it reintroduces a long-running character; it's as important to the world of the New Adventures as Love And War, but only in the strictest technical sense.  Given its significance I couldn't help wondering how this is the best they could come up with.
Deceit begins, as so many New Adventures do, by spinning a bunch of plates.  Over here you've got a sinister relationship between man and computer (and soon, womanand computer); over here, a woman tries to contact her husband in deep space, but he'll never get her messages; over here, a military operation sets its sights on the mysterious world of Arcadia and gathers soldiers for the cause, including a familiar citizen of Perivale; and over here, Arcadia itself, a medieval world descended from Earth colonists, where people die at a young age and strange Counsellors rule by suggestion.  The Doctor and Bernice are off doing nothing much in the vortex.
The book gives an impression of a lot going on, but it's false.  Instead of chapters we have parts of roughly fifty pages, and Peter Darvill-Evans saves much of the book's action for those intervals.  At 50-odd pages we finally hear from the Doctor and Bernice.  At 100-odd pages the TARDIS lands on Arcadia.  At 150-odd pages so do Ace and the remains of the military.  At 200-odd pages the Doctor and Bernice arrive on a creepy space-station.  At 250-odd pages, so does Ace.  Darvill-Evans is impressively strict about this, but in the interim, not a lot actually goes on.  Ace investigates her ship, her crewmates and her mission – really though, she just travels to Arcadia.  The Doctor and Bernice separate on Arcadia, they walk lots, meet people, meet up, get locked in rooms.  It kills time. Once the action shifts to the space-station it becomes Journey To The Centre Of The Corridor, while Ace and co. make shooty-peeow-noises on Arcadia for, as we later discover, no reason at all.  The 300-page mark looms, we learn what it's all about and the Doctor sets one of his traps to make it stop.  Then, congratulations: it's over!
There is no reason for it to take as long as it does.  Deceit is noticeably the longest New Adventure yet, a generous 325 pages including an Epilogue, Appendix and rambling Afterword.  As editor of the range, Peter Darvill-Evans didn't have to submit his book for editing, and it shows.  In the Afterword he admits: "I'm aware that I've tried to cram a lot into it.  Perhaps too much."  Ya think?

And yet, that's kind of the opposite of the book's problem.  He crams too many pages into it, certainly, but story, and even that frequent New Adventures fall-back, ideas are in short supply.  Action scenes trundle and explode, corridors are walked and answers take the scenic route.  In truth, it's long because it's long.
Fortunately there are someideas to be getting on with, most having to do with continuity.  Deceitmarks the return of Ace, three years older and even more skilled at demolition, so obviously there's some emotional content to do with Love And War.  Darvill-Evans does quite a bit of narrative housekeeping, and it's here you feel his hand as editor of the range.  The concurrent, similar endings of Nightshade and Love And War are folded into the same Doctorly narrative.  Events from Warhead inform Deceit's villains.  Something unseen occurred at the end of Witch Markwhich is only now resolved – the tail-end of a sort of Cat's Cradle 2.0: Now Even More Off-Screen, as Darvill-Evans explains the Doctor and the TARDIS's so-called erratic behaviour since then.  (A way to write off the clumsy handling of the-Doctor-and-Bernice, perhaps?  Say he had other things on his mind?)  He even takes the ending of The Pit, when the Doctor had to let seven planets die to appease history, resound in a way that Neil Penswick had neither the time nor the ability to manage.  It's arguably a continuity-fest, which can be the worst kind of fan writing, but it's trying to inform the characters rather than simply stack up Do You Remember This points.  It felt more rewarding than intrusive, so he must be doing something right.
And as for those characters, while it is undeniably a mistake to maroon them amid great oceans of nothingy non-plot, they are at least likeable and recognisably written.  The Doctor is, let's face it, hard to get wrong: he plots and schemes, he has eccentric moments, emotions bubble beneath his eyes.  Darvill-Evans's Bernice is more of a boon.  She's in tune with Love And War, still possessing that nervous sarcasm and modest intelligence: "'Read all about it,' Bernice shouted, lifting her hands in what she hoped was a universally recognized gesture of peaceful intent.  'Town terrorized by unarmed archaeologist in scruffy jeans and old jacket.'"  But there's also a vulnerability that comes with half a dozen not-altogether-fun rides in the TARDIS.  When she meets Elaine, a troubled and grief-stricken girl locked in an attic, her distress and anger are palpable. And when Ace signs up at the end, her world is shaken. "The Professor and the Doctor.  They made a good team, didn't they?  They understood each other. ... The Doctor didn't need Ace any more.  Did he?"  I'm still – and I can't believe I'm writing this – surprised that the Doctor and Bernice spend much of Deceit apart, and that he sort of forgets about her again.  Just pair them up already, for god's sake.  But she acquits herself well.
And there's Ace 2.0.  Older and wiser, doesn't seem to say "toe-rag" or "bilge-breath" as much (never again, pretty please?), but still maintains a cheery and rebellious attitude.  And phew for that: I thought she'd be a humourless space marine.  She's recognisably Ace, only a bit more balanced.  It's just a pity she spends so long marching through endless action scenes.  Now, I've more than once heard that Deceitdevolves into little more than an action sequence as it goes on, and that's not entirely true; there is, believe me, plentyof tedious walking down corridors and sitting in rooms as well.  But the action is there, and it's simply monotonous.  Lines like this only serve to suggest even Darvill-Evans knows it's filler: "'You could let them land here.'  'Don't worry, Doctor.  We intend to. Although I think I'll play a few games with them.  I don't want them to have an uneventful journey.'"  Jeez.  Are "uneventful" and "tediously repetitive" our only choices?  What’s to stop the baddies simply beaming them up if they're so keen to have them?  Is it intrinsically more interesting to zap a bunch of androids first?  (Going back to that quote, there are other moments of possible self-reflection dotted about.  Take "'Do you know,' the Doctor said, 'I rather think we're getting somewhere at last'", or "It seemed like hours since she had slipped away to find Ace, but nothing had changed much. "  It's like the book knows it's swaddled in padding, which – surprise! – only makes it worse that it is.)
Unfortunately, while Darvill-Evans demonstrates a good ear for the regulars, his supporting cast are dead weight.  Arcadia is medieval-yet-alien, so a bog-standard Tara, then.  You've seen and heard it before, and the whole "You die when you reach 30" dilemma reeks of Logan's Run – not to mention Timewyrm: Apocalypse, plus the countless things that inspired Nigel Robinson in that.  We scarcely meet any Arcadians apart from Francis (cowardly and sleazy) and Elaine (small and vulnerable), so when their fate hangs in the balance, it is necessary to restrain a shrug.
And what of the military?  About 95% of Ace's compatriots die before they reach Arcadia, leaving Defries, a woman single-mindedly obsessed with bringing down those responsible, and Abslom Daak, a Doctor Who Magazine creation who's pretty much just single-minded.  "Daak was always the same: without reference to the creed, colour, gender or opinions of whoever happened to be around, he was rude, randy, rebellious and always ready for a fight. "  When even the narrative agrees that a character is "always the same", there can be little hope for them.  He amounts to nothing more than a watered-down Gilgamesh, including a lascivious intent towards Ace.  He's hardly even irritating, he's so bloody boring.
Perhaps the most interesting characters are Lacuna, the Sinister (with a capital s) interpreter for Pool, a group of minds responsible for the Arcadian dilemma.  And Britta: a wife stuck light years away from her husband, drawn into an abusive and servile relationship with Lacuna, whose monstrous feelings are Pool's only outlet.  I say "interesting" here – perhaps that's the wrong word.  Lacuna and Britta fall into a bizarre and troubling Stockholm Syndrome, and it is damn uncomfortable to read.  By the book's end, they are in each other's arms, presumably forever.  It's, uh... yeah.  I'm not sure what to make of that.  I'd say it was the weirdest bit by miles, if not for the scene where Daak makes his umpteenth rapey advance on Ace and she comes within a hair's breadth of actually going for it.  You, uh, only live once I guess?
The prose is solid and readable, and so an obvious improvement on The Pit, but it's not something that brims with personality.  I probably couldn't pick one of Peter Darvill-Evans's sentences out of a line-up.  But given a more layered and interesting story and, ironically, an editor, I'd probably read another of his books.  I can't recommend this one.
Deceit needs to exist only inasmuch as Ace (apparently) needed to return in one of the books.  If you're desperate to know what happens to her, as I was, here's the edited version: she joins the army, meets the Doctor and Bernice again and sticks with them.  If you're still bloody-mindedly determined to read it, and to hell with the negative reviews, it's best to think of it like lancing a boil: a necessary but unenjoyable task to be got out of the way.  There is absolutely no point in taking your time over it.
4/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #12 – The Pit by Neil Penswick

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#12
The Pit
By Neil Penswick

Ah, The Pit.  Neil Penswick's novel is not what you'd call "popular".  (In Doctor Who-ey, New Adventurey terms, that is.  Obviously you're not likely to find it in Waterstones.)  It crops up in a lot of fans' Worst Ever lists, often claiming the top (or rather, bottom) spot.  I doubt it's anybody's favourite book, with the possible exception of Neil Penswick.  I felt nothing other than apprehension about reading it.
And before we crack on, I'll say that there were times, during my Homeric stroll through its 276 pages, when The Pitseemed unfairly maligned.  There are some decent ideas in it.  The prose can be harmlessly readable.  It is a largely inoffensive work.
But, alas.  Much as I'd like to go against the tide and write The Proverbial Good Review For The Pit, I can't.  Under any form of critical scrutiny, The Pit most definitely sucks.
First, let's discuss those ideas.  A planetary system is about to go missing, and no one knows why.  Bernice asks the Doctor if they can go to one of the planets and find out.  Meanwhile, a team of android assassins land on the same (doomed) planet, tasked with retrieving a deadly missile.  This is held by a couple of sinister shape-changers, and their band of (psychic) natives.  A man and his wife are studying the planet, unbeknownst to all.  Meanwhile on the planet Nicaea, capital of the doomed system, chaos is erupting – first a series of gruesome murders, then all-out civil war.  A policeman investigates.  Oh, and the Doctor has disappeared, trapped in another universe (and later Earth in different time-zones), in the company of William Blake.  Yes, thatWilliam Blake.  And all of the above has something to do with an ancient enemy of the Time Lords.
When you stack it up, The Pit seems to have enough plot for several books.  That's not a compliment: the story is spread too thin, endlessly hopping between situations that have no apparent link.  It's very difficult to engage when you can't figure out which strand is the "main" one, especially as barely anything happens in any of them.  The androids search for the shape-changers.  Bernice travels with an android, hoping he won't kill her.  The Doctor and Blake quest about from place to place.  The scientist man is killed by some sort of spreading evil; his wife panics.  A depressed policeman investigates the murders.  Civil war is civil-warlike.  It plods on and on and on with no end in sight.  You could cut half of it.
In the midst of such a sprawling plot, your only hope is to cling to the characters.  Good luck with that: Penswick's cast are a dull bunch, repetitious and endlessly introspective.  (And it's worth saying: unimaginative.  There are assassins, so they're called Killers.  There are monsters, so they're Monsters.  Hunters = Hunters, Shape-Changers = Shape-Changers.  And the law-enforcers on Nicaea?  The Justice Police.)
Still, it's pretty obvious that The Pit is going for a theme of spiritual debate and its characters are the instruments, what with William Blake and his Bible references, and the book's other denizens pondering their place in the universe and reminiscing about their past, and then pondering some more and reminiscing again, no matter who they are or who they're with or whether it's relevant.  Even if you can ignore the sheer repetition – and oh boy, is it annoying – none of it is interesting.  Everyone in this is a half-baked philosopher.
And little of it rings true.  If you're going to write androids, why make them as openly spiritual as everybody else?  (You couldgive them a neat, androids-only spin on religion, like in Red Dwarf, but no, they worship the same "Prime Mover" and fear the same "Form Manipulator" as everyone else on Nicaea.  It also couldn't hurt to show them successfully assassinating anybody.  They are terrible at their job.)  If you're going to write a cop investigating a murder spree, and the best you can come up with is that he's so obsessed with the horrifying aspects of the case that his wife leaves him, is it even worth sharing his thoughts?  We hear reams and reams of what these guys are thinking, and so much of it is either mind-bogglingly banal or just weirdly obvious.
“She looked down at the body and felt sadness.”“Blake felt sad for the Doctor.”
“The major left the room, punching the wall.  He was angry.”
“Blake was not averse to entering such places, but could think of a number of things he'd prefer to do at this time.”

You could easily fill a whole review just with quotes – it’s the sort of book that will hang itself with enough rope.  To save time, here's the single most pointlessly inane bit I could find.  Steel yourself:

“The travellers had been driving for six hours, and as the meter in the cab had been showing a steady sixty miles an hour, they must have covered over three hundred and fifty miles.”

Urrrrnnnggggggh.

So many characters state the obvious and ask the same questions and just go round in monotonous circles.  But in fairness, much of that concerns the side characters.  The linchpin of a Doctor Who New Adventure is its main characters... who are sadly in much the same state.  Near the beginning, Bernice starts a conversation about how movies only have one ending:

"'You know, Doctor, I used to hate watching twentieth century films and seeing the words "The End". ... What happens to the people after the film's finished? Those films were so...'
'Finite?'
'Yeah. Things can't be changed. I remember that I'd watch The Great Escape to see if other people would escape. I always got upset when Donald Pleasance was shot at the end. Why couldn't they do a version where he survives?'
'Because there's no justice. In real life good people die as well. But never give up hope.'"

Huh?  This is presumably here to foreshadow the ending – spoiler alert, those planets are toast – but it does it oh-so-clumsily.  Why is Bernice confused?  Why does she seem to think it's only films that work like that – you know, with narrative structure?  Hasn't she ever read a book?  The whole thing seems to come out of nowhere.  And it's followed by this gem:

"'Doctor, are you never afraid of the monsters?'
'What monsters?' he replied, pulling out a felt hat from his jacket pocket.
'The monsters you meet on your travels: Cybermen, Daleks, you know.'
'They aren't monsters. They're alien races with their own agendas, plots and dreams.' His voice slowed. 'But there are monsters out there, very real monsters. Monsters which shadow us; that are part of our imagination.'"

Now, I'm aware that Paul Cornell's fellow New Adventures writers were unused to Bernice Summerfield, but come on.  In three books, she has never been the sort of person to offer up childish misunderstandings or infantile My First Doctor Who Companion questions.  Thinking charitably, perhaps childishness is a theme: later, when she's separated from the Doctor and stuck with an android, she reminisces (over and over) about her childhood.  But there's no apparent reason for that in the text.  It just seems like Penswick hasn't got a clue what she sounds like (apart from cursory, overwritten references to sarcasm) and shruggingly opted for "doe-eyed".  Her subplot with Spike-the-malfunctioning-android consists entirely of travel and (you guessed it) lame philosophical pondering.  You could easily cut her from the book, if it wasn't for her original suggestion setting the plot in motion.

And what of the Doctor?  All that "monsters of the imagination" stuff seems to come a little too easily to him, but that's him all over in The Pit: the famously mysterious Seventh Doctor simply cannot shut up about his mysteries and secrets.  He spends much of the book with no clear idea what's going on, and passes the time mystifying William Blake with tales of Gallifrey, different dimensions and sonic screwdrivers.  He's strangely redundant in the end, not least because he cannot act against history – a concept the book never comes close to dealing with – but also because all the major players work independently of him.
I've no idea what we're supposed to get out of William Blake, incidentally; no doubt Penswick finds him interesting, but he fails to translate that to the character who asks a lot of dull questions and is permanently confused and never does anything of use whatsoever.  You could cut him and just have the Doctor and Bernice together, considering she's in a fair portion of the book anyway.  But alas, we're right back to the Kadiatu dilemma: multiple authors submitted a possible companion, and Neil Penswick seemingly chose William Blake, which means A) Bernice gets short shrift again because she was added at a late stage, and B) the Doctor is stuck with William bloody Blake.  I mean, ye gods, how the hell was that ever going to work?
Now, getting back to the man in the question mark pullover, there was at least one moment of Doctorliness that worked.  It's probably my favourite part of the novel.  I feel honour-bound to reproduce it.  Don't blink:
"The stranger pulled out a clothes brush and dusted his clothes. 'Nothing a needle and thread couldn't fix.' He pulled out a needle and piece of cotton from another pocket and started to sew his jacket."
Fun, huh?  For balance, despite showing that momentary grasp of the oddity that is the Doctor (who is otherwise bumbling around, useless and bewildered), Penswick later delivers arguably the most jarring summation I've encountered in this entire range.  Behold, Bernice describes her friend:
"The funny man who had found her on a distant planet and had treated her as a human being.  He hadn't tried to get her drunk or rape her."
Well thank goodness for that, eh?
To the vague extent that Penswick musters an authorial voice – and I am sorely nostalgic for the likes of Roberts, Aaronovitch, Cornell, even Gatiss – it’s dictated by vague and obscure thoughtfulness, unambitiously short sentences (which have a knack of draining your excitement), clumsy she-felt-sad dictation and weird, technical detachment.  He likes to describe people in metres.  Who's narrating this?  The Terminator?
Oy.  There is clearly a lot to dislike, and maybe even hate about The Pit.  But I said it showed signs of being unfairly maligned, so...?  Well, it might be sprawling and pointless, but it's easy to follow from page-to-page.  I was able to dip in and out of its simple images and ideas harmlessly enough, although the eye-rolls mounted up towards the end.  There's a feeling that Penswick has got a theme that really interests him – it’s just any meaningful conclusion that eludes him.  The civil war stuff on Nicaea is sort of interesting, though it's far from the best example of urban futurism the range has produced (see Warhead, Transit); it's viewed through such dull characters and bland, peripheral observations that I didn't feel any of it.  (And come to think of it, you could cut almost all of that as the planet will go up in smoke by page 276 anyway, murders and civil war be damned.)  There are some fleeting moments of creativity: the psi-operatives, particularly the way they have to distract themselves all the time, are interesting.  Overall, if it weren't for numerous examples of unequivocally bad writing, this would be a bland, overstuffed, yet passable effort.
It's not the first time I've had to seriously rummage around for something nice to say.  Ultimately, I can't find anything that counter-balances the sprawling plot, uninsightful insights, random stupidities, considerable bloat and overall obscurity of what The Pit is trying to achieve.  I'm not certain it's the worst New Adventure I've read, and that's about as close as it's getting to a positive appraisal.
Oh, and there's no pit in it.
3/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #11 – The Highest Science by Gareth Roberts

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#11
The Highest Science
By Gareth Roberts

There was no other Doctor Who alternative at the time, but it's still somehow surprising that Gareth Roberts made his authorial début with the New Adventures.  He's a pretty obvious fan of Season 17-era Who, or The Funny Douglas Adamsy Stuff, and would later emulate it in three jolly and well-received Tom Baker books.  His television scripts are (unsurprisingly) among the funniest: neatly and unthreateningly tailored to the voices of their respective showrunners, they're good, and they rarely frighten the horses.  I don't mean to damn him with faint praise – I respect and enjoy much of his writing.  (Even Closing Time.)  But he's not someone you'd expect to help put the "new" in The New Adventures.
Sure enough, that's not what The Highest Science is all about.  This isn't Season 17, but it's still a romp – the rompiest (ahem) New Adventure so far, especially coming right after Transit.  Your mileage may vary.  As for me, well...
For the first time since Time's Crucible (and for very different reasons), I re-read the early chapters before going further.  They don't feature the Doctor or Bernice – a point of contention I'll bet, having to wait 32 pages for anything TARDIS-shaped.  They focus on various groups of people and warlike, tortoise-ish Chelonians as they become inveigled in the plot, taking in a few other perspectives along the way.  These include a memorably misanthropic commuter: "The train had left Chorleywood station over ten minutes ago. So where is it now, screamed the vengeful demon that lurked behind Mr Peploe's respectable exterior."

There's a certain detached humour to the narrative voice, shown off nicely in this sinfully grim anecdote about a human-Chelonian conflict (that ended in the latter suddenly vanishing): "Several generations later, the Priest King, Jobez's great-great grandson, stood at the head of a mighty army assembled to confront another alien force that had arrived in the Wadii deserts. The people were confident of another miracle and waited for the return of the blue lights spoken of in their histories. Nothing happened, and the Chelonian assault force extinguished all parasites on the planet and settled down to some determined grazing."
It's inevitably tempting to draw comparisons with Douglas Adams, since Roberts has done that many times since.  (Shaaaadaaaa!)  Maybe that's lazy, but then the phrase "These events should have been totally unconnected" puts me in mind of Dirk Gently's theory of random interconnectedness, or even the Infinite Improbability Drive.  There's a whiff of the lost planet Magrathea about Sakkrat, the ancient planet of untold power.  Perhaps this is all coincidental (and how apt), but the Adams-ian randomness and lightly acerbic narration just made it all the more fun to read.  That's why I re-read the intro – I was having a good time and just wanted to appreciate it.  I still read it all in a day.
The grouchy characters and, even better, the obvious difference between the Chelonians and anyone-that-isn't-a-Chelonian provided a fun contrast that kept me engaged.  Roberts celebrates his maniacal tortoises at every turn, mixing Sontaran superiority with sheer Vogon stubbornness.  And there's a little light and shade to them in spite of their warmongering: they're proud of their babies, known for their prowess at flower-arranging.  I found them delightful.  I know they crop up a few more times among the Virgin novels.  I've heard Big Finish's The Well Mannered War, and loved that.  I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for more.
As for the human characters, they're a little less endearing.  We have the 100% nefarious bad guy, Sheldakhur, and his unwilling cohorts, including a brilliant but suicidal (Marvin-esque?) monster, all tasked with finding Sakkrat; a trio of dim-wits who were innocently heading for a rock concert when the "Fortean flicker" (read: time-storm) deposited them here; and a gaggle of commuters in the same situation, who almost entirely avoid the narrative.  The Chelonians try to annihilate all of the above.  For much of the book, not a lot else happens.  You can thank Roberts's bouncy writing style for carrying it off so well, since the plot, which unfolds deliciously in the last 30-odd pages, stays resolutely in "Not Telling" mode until the home stretch.  (Perhaps, like the city of Sakkrat, it is trapped in a slow-time envelope.)
So, having ticked off plot and writing style (that's "so-so" and “yay!"”, respectively), all that's left are the main characters.  We would later find out how good he was at writing the Fourth Doctor, but Roberts also has a great handle on the Seventh.  This story is not one of his grand manipulations, but wrong-footing his enemies still comes naturally; he's essentially winging it, figuring things out not too far in advance of Bernice (or us) and constantly fibbing to stay ahead, which lends him a pleasantly vulnerable aspect.  He's taken by surprise once or twice.  Roberts accentuates the smallness and oddity of him, which can get lost in the Time's Champion-y bluster that was the focus of Season 26, and several New Adventures since.  His spoons re-appear, and there's a lovely moment where he locates a television, gets it to play something melodramatic and naff, laughs at it, then keeps watching anyway.  There's a relaxed quality to him when he's with Bernice; he's lost the burden of laying tracks in front of his companion.  He can potter about and just be quaintly fascinated.  It suits him.
It's a pity that, like Ben Aaronovitch, Roberts feels the need to get Bernice out of the way for much of the novel.  He needn't have bothered.  He writes her very well, easily recapturing that sarcastic but-not-obnoxious wit imbued by Paul Cornell.  The already-delightful prose brightens up further when she's around. "But then, she reflected, that's always the way with boring people.  Having never experienced any other reaction, they assume that being yawned at, insulted and walked away from is the norm for human social interaction."  Her archaeological knowledge, not to mention her unexplosive temperament, seem to refresh the Doctor.  "'War, disease or climactic change could account for such a throwback. Although the additional buildings would suggest population growth rather than loss, which argues against those possibilities.' The Doctor stared at her silently for a few seconds. 'Bernice, you're a pleasure to know,' he said finally."  The Highest Science is little more than a taster of the-Doctor-and-Bernice, but I know their days without Ace are numbered, so I did my best to enjoy it.  I got considerably more out of her here than in Transit.
As for why Bernice is out of action, the random (okay, "Fortean") appearance of an addictive and memory-erasing soft-drink-dispenser seems like a desperate contrivance even if you are referencing Infinite Improbability, which Roberts might not be.  She adds to the Doctor's character just by being with him, which is just what I wanted, but there's virtually nothing she can do for the three rock fans she's stuck with, who are bound to fall out with one another and then do.  Who’d miss them?  (You might expect Roberts to insert his own companion here, as Aaronovitch did, but if he did then I didn't notice.  I'd almost rather he had, as it might explain why she has comparatively little to do.)
There is no great substance to The Highest Science.  While there is a solid and satisfying answer to the plot's questions, the interim is mostly just a lot of witty waiting – not least for Bernice to get her act together.  Roberts nonetheless fills his story with colour, and has a reasonably exciting Indiana Jones-ish climax to cap it off.  It's so downright charmingly fun that there's an argument to be made that it doesn't really belong in the New Adventures.  Roberts himself has admitted that at the time of writing "nobody – least of all me – knew quite what the books were supposed to be", and that his style "stuck out like a sore thumb."  Younger readers might even like it.  But not every New Adventure has to be Love And War or Transit.  It's okay, once in a while, to sit comfortably within the envelope and tell a fun story.  And I'll bet it isn't half as easy as it looks.
7/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #10 – Transit by Ben Aaronovitch

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#10
Transit
By Ben Aaronovitch

Before reading any New Adventures, I tried to get a broad idea of which ones were well-liked and which weren't.  (That was when I was going to cherry-pick them.  Those were the days!)  Of course certain books were red flagged.  More-or-less everybody loves Love And War, Set Piece, The Also People.  Nobody much likes Timewyrm: Genesys or The Pit.  And then there's Transit.  Strong feelings on both sides, this one.

Transitis a bloody weird book.  It has plenty of stuff that's really good and plenty of... other stuff.  Is it good?  Er, what is it might be the more apt question.

Ben Aaronovitch's book concerns a futuristic parody of the London Underground: it's much bigger and nastier.  Perhaps inevitably it feels a little like Andrew Cartmel's worst-case-scenario in Warhead, though its denizens seem less upset about the ever-present grime.  Downbeat futurism has been all the rage since Alien (at least!), and Transit's mucky existence chimes with similar visions like Blade Runnerand, in its satirical black humour, Red Dwarf.  There are some deliciously funny ideas stuffed into the background, such as a dedicated "Bad News Show" (with a fake holographic host), politician-fluffing Rent-A-Crowds and sleazy, post-wartime Ice Warrior cosplay.  It's almost a full-blown comedy at times, particularly as we follow the everyday miseries of the transit crew, with weirdo names like Credit Card, Lambada, Dogface, Blondie and their boss, Ming The Merciless.  The gradual build-up to a disaster on the line, as a new intergalactic tunnel to Acturus (sic) turns the President and assorted followers into blue smears, makes for a palpably exciting first act even with the Doctor nowhere in sight.
Then the Doctor turns up and, I'll confess, it's here I started to lose my way.  The novel divides into three(ish) threads: the Doctor and a new friend, Kadiatu, investigating the train disaster; Ming's crew doing much the same, dealing with the mutated horrors that are the result; and Benny, possessed by something-or-other, trying to start some sort of revolution with a couple of prostitutes.  The plots never mesh much, and when they do I tend to forget who's met whom.
Aaronovitch's prose is, if nothing else, deliberate.  There are enough unusual words to warrant a glossary at the back, and the dank, futuristic setting makes little concession for the slow-thinker.  You have a lot to get your head around, including technical processes, violent altercations and floridly dismal living conditions.  There are a lot of characters with weird names (see above) and everybody seems to be determined to do something.  I was never in any doubt that Aaronovitch knew what, and why things were happening.  Unfortunately I did not.
As the Doctor and Kadiatu globetrot, and Benny hurls bombs and leads her unwitting co-conspirators somewhere, and the horribly malformed "cake-monsters" of the transit system struggle against Ming and co., my eyes often rolled over prose only tenuously following it.  There was a constant feeling of "Any time you want to let me in on the joke, Ben."  Even the Doctor seems perplexed, as the intelligence behind whatever-is-going-on seems to regard him barely at all.  That isn't normally how he rolls.
Perhaps the most disconcerting element, from which a lot of the confusion spreads, is the-Doctor-and-Bernice, or the lack thereof.  You've only just met the new companion, you're dying to see her in action, and then she's kept apart from the Doctor as much as possible.  Huh?
It probably wasn't Aaronovitch's idea to follow Bernice's introductory story with one that totally side-lines her – more on this in the next paragraph – and to his credit, he makes considerable use of Love And War, referencing scenes and character habits with seasoned familiarity.  Nonetheless, I can't imagine anybody finishing Love And War and not wanting to see how the Doctor and Bernice get on, and that's the opposite of what you get here.  It makes no sense to spend an entire book post-Ace – the next one in particular – ignoring her replacement.
The reason for all of the above is simple: numerous authors (including Ben Aaronovitch) had the chance to come up with The New Companion, and several novels were submitted with them in.  Which seems like a really fun idea, until some bright spark decides that the winner will be the first one out of the gate.  This couldn't exactly be helped, since Paul Cornell helpfully wrote Ace's departure into the story that introduced Bernice Summerfield, but this inevitably meant several books had to hastily crowbar in Cornell's character whilst still making a redundant fuss about their own Design-A-Companion.  If Virgin were really serious about giving each one a chance, Bernice probably shouldn't have gone first.  If they'd already made up their minds before the books were even published, well, was there really much point in commissioning full novels for each character?
Hey ho: Cornell had Bernice, Ben Aaronovitch has Kadiatu.  Given the choice, I'd still pick Bernice.  Kadiatu isn't uninteresting per se; genetically modified and descended from the Lethbridge-Stewarts, there's definitely something fannishly exciting about her, including an ending that prefigures the otherwise (thankfully) irrelevant The Doctor's Daughter.  Despite her relatively broad trappings, she's a person of reasonable depth.  So much so that the Doctor can't help putting her though the motions to follow in Ace's foot-steps.  (Being super strong, she seems an obvious candidate after Miss Nitro-9.)  He's disappointed when she doesn't, and then he reluctantly returns to Miss Third Wheel.
What with The Rewriting Of Doom, the Doctor meets Kadiatu and seemingly forgets Benny exists.  She could be a blue smear on a wall for all he cares, until about halfway through when he bumps into her trying to kill him (due to mind control, which explains her acting like somebody else, because ugh, last minute rewrite!).  Since this whole mess leaves the Doctor looking like a capricious jerk, maybe there ought to have been a disclaimer at the start?
Still, benefit of the doubt: I could understand some disassociation on the Doctor's part, as he has just lost his closest friend.  You might as well pretend that's what's going on, actually: he even gets drunk at one point.  Elsewhere Ace's shadow looms, or at least peeks over the book.  Two Nitro-9 cans sit in an otherwise empty fridge in the Doctor's house/base of operations from Warhead.  (Incidentally, cool continuity.)  In the mental/technological realm that houses the finale (incidentally, oh dear; not my sort of thing, this), the Doctor is protected by a whole bunch of leather-jacket-wearing explosive experts.  The plural is an explosion of Aces.  She's clearly on his mind, as she should be.  By necessity, Benny isn't: even the epilogue skims over how any of this has affected her (she has killed dozens of people!), preferring to give Kadiatu her sequel-ready grace note.  The only truly Benny-centric plot strand is her attempt to give the Doctor a book, but I confess, I missed where that came to fruition, probably in the last-100-pages dash that only speeds up when I want it over with.
My favourite thing about Transit, besides all the squalid and funny background details, has to be the prologue.  A two-page cutaway that mirrors the story's theme of emergent life, and somewhat literally (towards the end) the life of Kadiatu, it's a perfect vignette, a short story.  That kind of elegance is rarely matched later on, and despite feeling interested in the story's theme – a transit system coming to life – I was too confused by its minutiae to really invest in it.  Ideas like the "cake-monsters", suffering hideous and random deformities but feeling quite chipper about their lot, don't seem to contribute in the end.  A computer system achieving sentience – a fun parallel – is practically thrown away in the aftermath.  And as for the mental realm where the fate of Transit is finally decided, I was so confusticated trying to tally it with the preceding story that any dramatic climax went off like a squib in a pond.  Again I find it difficult not to imagine Aaronovitch in front of his word processor, comprehending every word of this and seeing the connections like a rail map.  I envy him; I was lost.
It's not as incomprehensible as Time's Crucible.  For the most part it's simply a case of characters travelling and plotting and not letting the reader in on it.  Occasionally even they seem to be winging it.  But Aaronovitch's world is still rich enough to enjoy, with much the same lived-in quality that I admired in Warhead.  There's a stark and memorable foulness here, because of course, this is the New Adventure that pushed the boat out.  Sex and swearwords don't make me blush (in print, anyway), but I was still surprised how readily I accepted them here.  It somehow didn't feel like a major progression from what we've already had.  You'll find the odd "bitch" and "bastard" among the Timewyrms, and obviously in Warhead, while heated words (and heated other things) are exchanged in Love And War.  All in all, it suited the world of Transit, where meals are "made out of pet food" and "the one thing that was clear was that you never got out."  There are, quite frankly, more important things to worry about than sex and swearing, though I can understand a sense of controversy about what was (to the world at large) a book for kids.  The New Adventures were obviously moving away from that with a vengeance; any pre-conceived notions would go in time.
Transit is... interesting.  Though muddled, it's far from unreadable.  It's often colourful and hey, memorably unpleasant.  There is probably some rich food for thought concerning emergent life and the difference between us and it, but in my heart, not to mention my distant-but-undeniable headache, I don't feel like Transit really chewed on any of it.
6/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #9 – Love And War by Paul Cornell

Working title:Attack Of The Furry Tentacle ScrotumsDoctor Who: The New Adventures
#9
Love And War
By Paul Cornell

For me, this one's a big deal.  (Also for other fans; it's pretty popular.)  I only started reading the New Adventures because I'd heard Big Finish's Love And War  adaptation.  It had a certain feel that wasn't quite like the McCoy era I knew.  It was emotional, like some of those Season 26 stories, but it also did things that the TV series must (or in any case did) shy away from.

The Doctor hurts his companion.  Not like in Ghost Light, where he dabbles in her neuroses ostensibly for her own good, or The Curse Of Fenric, where he turns her into a chess piece and once again exposes her to her demons.  She forgave him then.  In Love And War, Ace is collateral damage in the Doctor's plan.  She doesn't take the fall, but someone close to her does.  This time it's too much.  I had to read the book, delve into the stories that led to this.  And of course, see what happens next.

Reading Love And War has been a mixed blessing because of that.  Bluntly, I know how the story goes, Big Finish having reproduced it in apparently lavish detail.  (Seriously, how did they cram all that into a couple of hours?)  But I'm not here to talk about Big Finish.
Paul Cornell's novel is, well.  It's quite something.  I think I've read enough of these to say, with some confidence, he is one of my favourite New Adventurers.  He "gets" the Doctor and Ace in a way that others, aside from maybe Andrew Cartmel, do not.  There's an ease to their relationship.  Not much needs to be said.  And when things are difficult between them – which they often are in Love And War– it is more convincingly articulated than in, say, Nightshade.  He'll struggle to tell Ace she should attend a friend's funeral, for instance: "He'd told her that there was a sad event she ought to attend. Of course, he hadn't told her what it was, but that was because he had real trouble with spiky feelings sometimes".
He struggles to tell her a lot of things here.  Much of the novel sees him all but wincing with dread at the fork in the road he's all but pushing Ace towards.  He tries to spare her, shoving her away from the man she loves by bluntly assuring her he'll hurt her in the end (which is true: he'll die, or worse), or offering an example that really says more about him.
“‘You mean I have to decide between you?’
‘Yes.’  The Doctor wasn't looking at her.  ‘My granddaughter did, a long time ago. She'd fallen in love.  With an Earthman.  Like marrying a mayfly ... You think you've fallen love.  One day you'll wake up and he'll be gone.’”

This is true, of course – he knows! – but he could just as easily be talking about himself, and the pain of loneliness which is his greatest fear.  In a terrifying piece of (no offence meant) ret-con, Cornell adds ten years to the Third Doctor's lasttrip home.  The TARDIS wandered in the vortex, its frilly-shirt-wearing occupant rotting alone the entire time.  It became the Doctor's worst memory, his nightmare place.  And no wonder he's thinking about it now.  He resents the love of his companions and friends, he views it as a thing that takes them away.  Why should he understand?  “I left [Susan] on Earth, with her boyfriend.  I only saw her once more.  She's living out her incarnation, waiting for him to die.  Then she'll call for me.  Yes... she'll call.  And I'll find her again.”  It's one of the most heartbreaking stories for the Doctor, an eyes-wide look at his weakness, his absolute need for someone out there in the vortex.  (It goes a long way to explaining the end of Nightshade, where he simply decided not to let Ace go with her new boyfriend.  Nonetheless, despite a few timely references to Nightshade and to Robin, the betrayal and what it meant are largely ignored, no doubt because Cornell is devoting a novel to the same concept and it's not his fault they're stacked next to each other.  (Seriously – why end a book the way Nightshade did if you've got no guarantee the next guy's going to bear it out?)

Unfortunately for the Doctor, Ace is feeling something similar, and not for him.  In Nightshade, I found her sudden interest in Robin Yeadon hard to fathom.  He wasn't terribly interesting, and they didn't spend much time together.  In Love And War, Ace's feelings are at the forefront, and of course she becomes attached to people on the fly. "Being flung across time and space made you into a real party animal.  You could either talk to anybody with food or a job or a squat, or you could be shy and dead.  And love got to be like that too."  It's suddenly annoyingly obvious, to me at least – how else is someone like Ace supposed to meet someone?  When's she going to have time for courtship?  Little of this really hit home in Big Finish's adaptation (just a brief mention – shutting up now!), leaving me in much the same position with Jan as I was when I came across Robin in Nightshade.  On the page, Ace's attraction to Jan makes sense.  They are kindred spirits, obviously, his way of life mirroring hers.  (Even down to the worship of a "trickster god"!)  But he also has that same sense of transience.  He counts his ex-lovers among his close friends.  He believes in adventure and impulse.  Ace believes, rightly, that the two of them could settle down.  No doubt the Doctor sees this, as well as Jan's monstery fate, considerably in advance.
There's a poignant inevitability even if you haven't spoiled the plot for yourself.  From the autumnal setting (when things end) to a planet of corpses called Heaven, there's a death-worshipping cult, a death-interested collective, a death-feeding parasite, a hulking ball of death and heck, there are great big hints in the dialogue:
“‘What's more important, winning or feeling good about yourself?’
‘Doesn't one always lead to the other, Professor?’
‘Not always.’”

It's a story about endings, partings and – duh! – death.  But there's also a compelling plot about monsters, because (as with Timewyrm: Revelation) Cornell is more than able to juggle rich emotional themes and sheer, page-turning excitement.  What starts as a deliberately "trivial" way to get Ace's mind off a friend's passing becomes an all-out war against armies of the dead, orchestrated by a nightmare force that is equal parts The Thing and the Borg.  Of course the Hoothi allow Cornell to explore that theme of death, but they also pose a terrifying and well-thought-out threat.  And there's a refreshing sadness to their victims, as they tend to know their fate.  Alternately they explode in a nightmare image of fungus and tentacles and... yeah, that's gonna be playing in my mind-cinema for a while.

When you move away from the emotional heart of the novel, it's difficult not to slide into random, disjointed observations and compliments.  The rest of it's all really good, but it's not as important.  Still, as was the case with Revelation, there are many dazzling ideas that burn bright for not very long.  I love the horrific Planet Of The Spiders ret-con, along with Cornell's imaginative premonition of The Matrix (not the Doctor Who matrix, The Matrix matrix!).  Speaking of premonitions, the bit where the Draconians refer to the Doctor as "the oncoming storm"?  Paging Mr Davies.  Then there's a character weirdly named after Paul Magrs.  And oh yeah, there's the casual suggestion that the Sixth Doctor was sacrificed to make way for the Seventh, and the resultant self-loathing created the Valeyard.  Cornell didn't need that idea – no doubt it informs later New Adventures – but by god, I sat up when I read it!  And then, whoosh, we're past it.  I don't know whether to be disappointed or impressed.  Love And War has a more relaxed pace than Revelation, there isn't such a frantic crush of thoughts and twists, but Cornell still turns it on a sixpence.  It's an assured work.
Amid all this, aka the Doctor and Ace feeling great pain and monsters devouring worlds, Cornell casually changes the New Adventures in a more positive way.  Bernice Summerfield, yo!  And what to make of her?  A guarded, almost panicked sarcasm leaps off the page, not to mention her whims and foibles.  It's early days, but there's a lot to enjoy, confidence and obvious flaws winningly mixed.  She is unlike most other Doctor Who companions in that she feels less imperilled, more on an equal footing.  Also it's interesting how the relationship is born out of the ruins of Ace.  ("‘You call me Benny, and I'll call you Doctor.  Professor isn't true for either of us.’")  They are not equals just because, say, they bring different things to a fight, or because there is some great problem with Benny that the Doctor can fix.  (Unless you count her lost father.)  There's no ghost of Pygmalion here.  I suspect the differences between them (Benny and Ace) will inform the friendship from here on.
Benny signing up is no great burning desire of the Doctor's.  It's more of a moot point, no doubt fed by that permanent ache for companions.  Benny, meanwhile, sees a great opportunity and takes it, but she knows from the outset what damage the Doctor can do.  That's an intriguing and fresh dynamic, and for a novel that is not as optimistic and – will anyone mind? – sweet as Revelation, that Love And War still manages to salvage a note of new life and joy from the wreckage is proof, as far as I'm concerned, that Paul Cornell is a big softie.  As am I.
Is anything wrong with it?  Well, I haven't seen this many typos since Genesys, although there aren't nearly as many and they're not as bad.  It's still distracting amid articulate and interesting prose to hear " The walked up Horsenden Hill", "She hadn't know what to wear" or "Jan shouted, angily."  Worse, names might get muddled, as when Roisa drugs Máire to spare her life: "She took one look back, and watched Roisasmile as she fell into some blissful sleep."  She watched herself?  But typos are merely an inconvenience, and as should be obvious, the last refuge of the critic.  It's probably not Paul Cornell's fault, although I'd be that bit happier if they weren't there.  I'll bet he would, too.
I find strongly positive reviews harder to write than negative ones, because there's usually a reason bad things fail and you can go after that.  When something works, hopefully it does a whole bunch of things well, and I fall into a pattern of just listing them.  Well, shucks: Love And War does a whole bunch of things well.  It is an end and a beginning, an essential part of the New Adventures and, in many ways, an important piece of Doctor Who.  So let me count the ways.
9/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #8 – Nightshade by Mark Gatiss

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#8
Nightshade
By Mark Gatiss

Mark Gatiss is one of those New Who writers you can learn to predict.  He will, in all likelihood, trot out something you've seen before, with a humble reverence that is quite sweet but doesn't add very much.  Robot Of Sherwood repeats a lot of sci-fi tropes (not to mention Maid Marian gags); Cold War does Alien-meets-Dalek on a submarine; Victory Of The Daleks pluckily references Power Of The Daleks, then runs out of steam after twenty minutes.  He's on stronger ground when he embraces the other of his poles, the macabre, usually defined by Victoriana.  His biggest hits are unsurprisingly The Unquiet Dead and The Crimson Horror: scary, creepy and a bit funny, they have more in common with his own imagination than the annals of Doctor Who, etc.  In other words, he often lets nostalgia get the better of him.  Which is a little ironic given the subject of his New Adventures novel, Nightshade: nostalgia can kill, so don't look back.  Too ruddy true, Mark.
Nonetheless, for a writer obviously intrigued by the halcyon glow of the past, and to a lesser extent whether it lies, killer nostalgia is a canny idea.  Gatiss gets the most out of it, and then some.  You may notice that Nightshade has an enormous supporting cast, and there's a good reason for that: body count.  The novel quickly reveals its trump card, a nostalgic remembrance followed by ghostly apparition followed by death, and repeats it and repeats it and repeats it.  The Doctor, curiously ineffective and clueless, is unable to prevent a long list of deaths.  It's never exactly monotonous – restlessly bouncing between characters and situations every couple of pages, the novel bounds along like you're binge watching all four episodes of a classic serial – but it is very obviously the same gag on repeat.
Fortunately amid the sheer repetition, Gatiss finds some absolutely killer variations on his theme.  We have a monastery full of elderly people all creating their "ghosts" at once; Edmund Trevithick, the Quatermass-ish television star heroically battling one of his old monsters in a lift; and the Doctor meeting what appears to be an old friend, which promises to be a real coup if they reproduce it in the Big Finish play.  (Quick glance at the cast-list: they did.)
Conversely, some trips down memory lane are inevitable and obvious.  The aforementioned "Remember; see a ghost; get killed" rinse cycle becomes predictable, especially when no one's doing anything to stop it.  But more annoyingly, scarcely a book goes by without Ace remembering specific events from Season 25 and 26, not to mention her dratted mother.  Sure enough we get Ghost Light and Remembrance refs in this, plus Mummy Ace and her associated baggage.  Even Ace's heroic "I don't believe in you!" moment feels derivative of The Curse Of Fenric.

I wonder if I'm becoming difficult to please, re Ace. I love character continuity, but specific episode continuity gets boring fast.  In her case, the two are annoyingly synonymous.  She's always looking back in order to inform her present.  But at least there are nods to the Timewyrm books, suggesting that yes, her life does continue beyond 1989.  And hey, she's leaving soon (spoilers!), so maybe it's a necessary step to blow out the past before embracing the future.  (She's certainly trying to do the latter, with her would-be boyfriend Robin.)  Again, I thought this was more or less achieved in Timewyrm: Revelation, but then I thought the Doctor got over the Time War in The Parting Of The Ways, so what do I know?
The plot is surprisingly light, or rather very little seems to be achieved over the course of the book.  The ravenous force that is killing Crook Marsham, called The Sentience for want of a real name, ploughs through bodies with abandon.  The Doctor, Ace and a few others zip from location to location without really learning anything.  (A hefty flashback to the Civil War does clue them in a bit, but it doesn't help until the very end.)  Probably more important is the scattered character development, but I'm not sure how much it really achieves.  All the minor (doomed) characters have murky pasts for The Sentience to prey on; Gatiss flexes his character muscles over and over to that end, but since they're all destined to be bumped off anyway, it's oddly futile.  (Also, the definition of "nostalgia" quickly becomes tenuous.  The abbot sees Jesus instead of a departed loved one; Doctoe Who-esque TV star Trevithick sees old monsters trying to kill him.)  The only characterisation that can actually stick is in the main two, and that's a mixed bag.
The Doctor is feeling "a profound dissatisfaction and loneliness, a yearning to belong," which is a little on the random side, isn't it?  He seems crabby and irritable about his inability to stop interfering, he this time doesn't do much towards that end, besides a visit to a monastery.  One could argue his general inability to sort anything out is deliberate, but I'm not sure looking on while people get killed is quite what he had in mind.

He suggests packing it all in, going back to Gallifrey and applying his skills at home.  (And speaking of his home turf, there is a brief flashback to an earlier Doctor on the day he left – that's a past Doctor in four books out of eight, score-keepers!)  It's inevitably hard to take that seriously in what are, as we all know, the ongoing adventures of Doctor Who.  Added to which, the Doctor felt considerably more at home in the country village of the previous book (incidentally, what unfortunate juxtaposition – two "sleepy British villages" in a row).  If he was going to feel a yearning to settle down or change his ways, it might as well have been there, right?  Especially with the TARDIS on the fritz.  But no.  With its odd, irritable Doctor ringing the changes seemingly out of nowhere, Nightshadedoes not entirely convince.
Meanwhile, Ace is also considering settling down, which is incredible timing as the Doctor suspects she'll do just that, and then she apparently falls in love with the first young man she sees!  It's difficult to invest in Ace-and-Robin for a number of reasons – not least the nagging foreknowledge that she'll go through similar motions over somebody else in the very next book (spoilers?) – but frankly, I never saw much in him as a character, or anything that explained Ace's determination to go with him.  She's known him for a day or two.  He's a young man and he's nice enough.  Aside from the excitement of meeting anyone in her constant whirlwind of travel, it's tough to feel cut up when they are forcibly parted at the end.  Even more so when the Doctor's apparent decision to do so comes without explanation or pay-off.  I'm in an odd position of knowing the rough plot of Love And War from its Big Finish counterpart, and I certainly don't recall any adherence to this; I hope Paul Cornell does something with it.  (I only question it because Witch Mark wasn't even finished when it came out, and certain New Adventures character beats – including a similar failed romance between Ace and Raphael in Timewyrm:Apocalypse – seemed to happen without wider consequences.)
It may repeat itself too often, and its character arcs may not convince, but Nightshadestill makes good thematic meat out of nostalgia.  The Doctor and Ace react to it and both learn to reject the past.  Where they go from there is annoyingly unclear, though.  I wonder if Nightshade is better enjoyed as a simple horror treat than anything deeply emotional.  Gatiss's ghostly rinse cycle, with its eerie mix of yearning and monstrous hunger, feels like a solid Stephen King idea, and he marries it to Classic Doctor Whowhile he's at it, with Trevithick's scuttling monsters, a supernatural barrier around an old village, and good old nostalgia for a TV show that gave folks the willies.  It could be argued as typically familiar Mark Gatiss fare, but knowingly so, and probably better for it.
7/10