The Empire of Glass by: Andy Lane: If Laputa is in Italy, is Lilliput in France?

There’s a very 1960s quality to Andy Lane’s first Virgin Missing Adventure, The Empire of Glass in quite a few places, but for the majority there is this very 1990s feel to a lot of the story.  Now the plot is one of the things that just feels straight out of the Hartnell era of the show as it is a meandering story that takes its time to go through its thin plot which is an enjoyable change from a string of brilliant books that are at a breakneck pace.  It’s a novel that you enjoy to savor through the pages and absorb the story whenever the tonal issues are at a minimal and Andy Lane is allowed to write a period piece.  I am of course getting ahead of myself and should really just get down to the plot of this novel.  It’s basically the spiritual successor to The Time Meddler with the Doctor, Vicki and Steven landing in Venice in the early 1600s where they get embroiled in political intrigue, Christopher Marlowe being an agent for the government, Shakespeare and suddenly a giant floating city appearing out of nowhere bringing with it an intergalactic peace conference led by, oddly, Irving Braxiatel.  This plot is all over the place in terms of solid pacing and just possible to make sense.

The biggest problem is that there really isn’t much conflict in this story outside of the usual peace conference going wrong and some slightly interesting espionage bits in there, it just doesn’t do much to be interesting or even that engaging.  What the plot does extremely well is the historical setting and atmosphere as well as getting Steven Taylor into the oddities of the past which he doesn’t understand.  Even in that there are quite a few problems as there is Christopher Marlowe being alive even if he was supposed to be dead and the actual history says that there is no way that is a mistake.

Lane however is brilliant on how he characterizes the First Doctor and Vicki who are pretty much written as they were in The Romans.  They’re pretty much two best friends mucking about in history and honestly it is hilarious.  The characters are having this wonderful time figuring out just what is with the weird murders in Venice and the giant floating city before Braxiatel even shows up.  Now Braxiatel is also interesting as this novel decides to reveal a few little details from his past and the Doctor’s past.  Vicki is initially suspicious of Braxiatel because she is reminded of the Monk, but the Doctor obviously knows and even respects Braxiatel.  It is almost implied that they are related by blood.  It’s really interesting as the Doctor seems to have incited a little rebellion to encourage people to go travelling in time which is a really interesting idea.

To summarize, The Empire of Glass on the surface is an extremely mixed bag with quite a few problems in the fact that it really doesn’t have a lot of plot to go through, yet tries its hardest to be fast paced.  There are quite a few problems in its supporting cast in the area of execution even though they are really ambitious ideas.  Comparing it to his other work The Empire of Glass is extremely weak, but it is still pretty good overall.  65/100