The Man in the Velvet Mask by: Daniel O'Mahony - A Re-Review

WARNING: The following review and the book it is reviewing, The Man in the Velvet Mask, contains scenes depicting sexual assault, rape, and general adult topics.  These topics are understandably difficult to discuss and potentially triggering nature of said topics, discretion is advised.

Daniel O’Mahony is, to say the least, a controversial author.  He wrote two novels for Virgin Books, both receiving mixed reception.  The first was the New Adventure Falls the Shadow which detractors called overly violent and ultimately meaningless, however, it is one that I quite liked for what it attempted to say.  The second is a Missing Adventure featuring the First Doctor and Dodo Chaplet in an alternate France.  The Man in the Velvet Mask is shorter than Falls the Shadow, but equally dense in style.  O’Mahony’s choice of placement and TARDIS team is already telling: at this point Dodo is a character who appeared in 6 stories and only 19 episodes of the show, the third shortest run of a companion behind Sara Kingdom’s 9 episodes and Katarina’s 5 episodes.  She’s a character often regarded as a clone of Susan and honestly Jackie Lane has already undergone plenty of rather nasty reviews in regards to what is a rather weak character.  It is odd that The Man in the Velvet Mask would not only choose this team, but not include Steven Taylor who would be a grounding influence for Dodo.  Yet, this turns to be a stroke of genius from O’Mahony in several regards.

First, O’Mahony writes the First Doctor as a man close to death.  There are several sequences in the book where the Doctor knows that he is about to die and regenerate for the first time, and he wants to be alone when it happens.  It has never happened to him before, and he does not know what to expect.  On some deep level the Doctor is scared, something that both Moffat and Davies would later lift and mangle in Twice Upon a Time and The End of Time, respectively.  He’s separated from his companion and haunted constantly by the idea that he is going to die, going so far as to starting the regenerative process at one point in the novel.  O’Mahony uses The Reign of Terror as almost a blueprint to juxtapose what the Doctor has become.  The Doctor’s favorite period of history is the French Revolution and The Man in the Velvet Mask occurs in an alternate 1804, near the end of what is generally thought of to be the French Revolution.  The Doctor here isn’t amused or excited, he’s really suffering from an existential crisis.  There is this inability for the Doctor to find the energy to save the day, sure he does in the end, but he’s just really tired throughout it.  O’Mahony’s characterization feels like an accurate portrayal of what the character is internalizing as there are lines which would be Hartnellisms and probably featured, but because the reader sees them through the eyes of the Doctor we see them as a real mask.

The character of Dodo is also given a lot of life through O’Mahony’s explorations of her own thoughts and inner struggles.  For much of the novel she is with a troupe of actors performing for the ruler of France, where she has to put on a role.  She has this sexual relationship with another actor, which she uses to take control of her own life and choices, even if this control will possibly lead to her own death after she leaves the Doctor.  She doesn’t have self-esteem or a real idea of what makes her a good person and O’Mahony makes her perspective fascinating.  Dodo feels like she has transcended in this novel the Susan clone she was and it dovetails into O’Mahony’s main theme.  The Man in the Velvet Mask is all about putting on masks: outside of the Doctor and Dodo all of the characters go by several names throughout the novel, the actors take on the names of their characters, and the main ‘historical’ figure here is at times only known as a number in an obvious reference to The Prisoner.  It’s a book about looking underneath the mask and to what people really are, and a lot of these people really are horrible.

The Marquis de Sade is a major player in the novel, with his not historically accurate adoptive son, Minski, capturing him in the Bastille and making a deal with interdimensional maggots to take over the world.  This is where the controversial nature of The Man in the Velvet Mask really comes out.  Sade is the root of the word sadism, and as such the novel delights in gore and rape and sex.  Dodo learns to accept being stripped naked, the Marquis de Sade and Minski both rape or at least have raped several women.  O’Mahony never goes to the point of gratuity or really handles them lightly like say Timewyrm: Genesys or Deceit, but uses them to make the reader incredibly uncomfortable with these people.  His prose is almost lyrical, but for some it will be tainted with something that has every right to leave you with a disgusting taste.  The Man in the Velvet Mask becomes an incredibly difficult book to read as it makes the reader face the worst of humanity, yet never devolves into shock value.  It’s one that begs the reader to think without giving a straight answer.  It’s a book I read and loved, but one that you might not.  8/10.