Kursaal by: Peter Anghelides

Taking creatures from mythologies and folklore and giving them a Doctor Who origin is nothing new, The Time Monster and The Horns of Nimon took inspiration from the Minotaur for their villains while State of Decay established the existence of literal vampires in the Doctor Who universe.  While The Greatest Show in the Galaxy included a werewolf in its story, Kursaal is the first novel to actually delve into what a werewolf race in the Doctor Who universe means, how it would function.  Peter Anghelides’s first novel has a decent premise, an evocative cover, and an enticing description.  Anghelides as a writer shows quite a bit of promise with Kursaal as there are good ideas here, the werewolf condition is passed on through a viral infection from a race long in hibernation.  The Jax is an interesting idea and the final third of the novel ends the plot on a high with Sam Jones infected and attempting to infect the Doctor to make him the king to her queen.  It’s a nice mix of body horror as Sam slowly transforms into a werewolf like Jax and character drama as the virus forces Sam to indicate she has romantic feelings for the Doctor.  Anghelides handles this aspect of the plot with grace, like when Charley pines for the Eighth Doctor, the Doctor has absolutely no idea what Sam actually means when she wants to make him her King.  He reacts with a pithy remark about calling him her ‘rex’ as there is a running note that Sam can’t speak Latin and wouldn’t find a use for the language as it is a dead language.  There’s also quite a bit of body horror as the novel goes into detail with the fact that being infected with the Jax is a complete rewrite of DNA.



Some of the biggest issues present in Kursaal is a lack of interesting characters and an incredibly standard Doctor Who plot.  The biggest theme of the novel is the importance of environmentalism and protecting endangered species above all else.  There is an attempt at nuance with the main villain of the novel being members of the HALF organization (HALF standing for Helping All Life Forms) which is a terrorist organization attempting to protect the species of the universe.  The setting is the titular Kursaal, a planet under development to become an amusement park which the Doctor takes Sam to for a vacation.  The plot has the potential to be engaging and full of twists and turns as Sam and the Doctor could easily have their relationship tested.  The first two thirds of the novel is incredibly weak: Anghelides moves the plot along at a snail’s pace which only increases once there is a time jump.  The actual time jump really doesn’t serve a purpose for the story and there comes a point where it feels Anghelides just used it as a way to kick things into gear.  Looking at the work Anghelides contributed before Kursaal makes me wonder if this started out as a short story and was expanded into a novel as the last third is great.  This is more apparent as the supporting characters do not have much character with the exception of Kadijk, who is an over the top military man, and Bernard Cockaign, who is the leader of HALF.  The rest of the characters are generally forgettable or only have one character trait.  As a novel, Kursaal doesn’t work, but as an idea there is a good story hidden somewhere which Anghelides needs to work on expanding the ideas and characters to make it something great.  4/10.