Autumn Mist by: David A. McIntee

Mixing science fiction and fantasy are of course genres that have always been closely linked to one another and mix often.  Doctor Who as a concept easily mixes fantasy concepts with the science fiction genre with time travel and several plot concepts that really only work with the idea of a soft fantasy magic system in mind.  The Daemons of course follows Clarke’s Law closely, however, often the show setting out to write a fantasy story seems to fail.  The largest example of this is the much maligned (and rightly so) Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark.  It becomes surprising then that David A. McIntee, an author known for either doing historicals such as White Darkness and Sanctuary, or era tributes such as The Dark Path and The Face of the Enemy, would write Autumn Mist.  Autumn Mist is the twenty-fourth Eighth Doctor Adventure and the penultimate story to feature companion Samantha Jones, and after about fifty pages is something completely different from McIntee’s usual style of novel.  The book begins like one would expect from McIntee: The Doctor, Sam, and Fitz arrive in Belgium on 15 December 1944, the day before the Battle of the Bulge began and right in the middle of Allies and Nazis.  This is conflict enough for the characters to interact with, especially with Fitz having to masquerade as a Nazi due to confusion, and Sam appearing to have died sending the Doctor into a depressive spiral.



McIntee sets up enough material to easily fill a novel with a pure historical, one that may rival Sanctuary for the emotions it draws from the reader, but Autumn Mist introduces a group of extradimensional beings who have been living in eleven dimensions in harmony with humanity for the most part since the beginning of time.  The Sidhe are explained by McIntee as the origin of legends of the fae and fae-like entities around the world, and their inclusion as the driving force behind the plot gives Autumn Mist a mythologic feel.  This group of Sidhe are ruled by Oberon and Titania who represent chaos and order, respectively, and the Nazi forces have been breaking into their dimensions causing them to fight back and retrieve Sam from her destruction.  Sam interacting with the Sidhe is incredibly interesting as they interfere with her biodata once again, effectively adding a little bit of themselves into her.  Their attitude towards the Doctor is interesting as he is given the moniker ‘the Evergreen Man’.  This title alludes to the mythological story of the Green Man, a protector of nature and representative of rebirth and spring.  McIntee uses this to reflect on the differences between the Seventh and Eighth Doctors in the novel, which ultimately falls flat as it is incredibly subtle.  The only confirmation is one line near the end of the novel which could easily be overlooked or thought of as accidental.  Sam’s experiences also lead her to demand the Doctor and Fitz to take her home, she’s done travelling and essentially leading into Lawrence Miles’ two-part epic Interference.



Autumn Mist suffers from some tonal dissonance, however, as the dark and gritty tone of the World War II segments don’t really carry over into the Sidhe sections of the novel whose tone is basically a serious A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  This causes much of the novel to feel incredibly disjointed in its construction and needing of some rewrites and reworking to really come together.  The easiest fix would be to make the Sidhe sections of the novel darker and more in line with the earlier sections of the book, especially as they are introduced early on as mysterious and dangerous from the prologue until they actually appear in the open.  McIntee’s prose is suited to a darker tone, but as it stands Autumn Mist is a book whose disjointed nature makes it an often overlooked or even derided novel in fan circles which is a shame.  There are many things to like about Autumn Mist, not enough as it stands to make it stand out as one of McIntee’s good novels, but enough to at least make it a little interesting to read and a book where the reader’s mileage will vary overall.  It does just about as many things right as it does things wrong.  5/10.