The Burning by: Justin Richards

 

The Burning is an integral book to the Eighth Doctor Adventures.  It sets up the amnesiac Eighth Doctor, stuck on Earth with no memory of the previous books and a piece of paper in his pocket from Fitz telling him to meet him in St. Louis in 2001.  The only problem is that he has no TARDIS, a small black box, and is in England in 1890.  Justin Richards’ novel can be highly summarized as a fresh start for the range as the reader is presented with a story where they are as much of an outsider as the Doctor.  The Doctor doesn’t appear until approximately 50 pages into the book, with other characters being hinted at possibly being the Doctor, though none of those characters are ever seriously entertained as possibly the Doctor, bar one who reveals himself to be antithetical to the Doctor once he opens his mouth.  The book is primarily concerned with the industrial revolution and a fire creature taking over industrialists who end up reopening a mine and foundry essentially building to an explosive climax.  The plot is deceptively simple, but Richards is one who does an excellent job of putting this idea of flames slowly rising into the readers head as this group of characters all have baggage under them.  The Doctor is trying to solve this mystery of these artefacts and who he is, indeed who this Fitz could be, but has no real way of finding him without waiting.  The entire creature is an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers fire elemental which is trying to create itself a body, a creature of flame and warmth, taking the warmth away from those around this manor house, while the story eventually ends with a great flood.

 

Richards manages to analyze who the Doctor has been without actually mentioning who the Doctor is.  Without his memory, the Eighth Doctor is still the incredibly charming, showing up at a dinner party and getting the guests to believe he came with someone else, and essentially charming the villain to give him  all of the information he wishes to know.  There is never any idea of him being out of character without his memory, he still attempts to fight the injustice and cannot let things go, but there is almost this edge.  The Doctor is almost callous when it comes to the young daughter being taken over by the burning, and although he saves her, Richards implies that he is definitely able to leave her behind.  The book ends in a great flood and the Doctor essentially leaves without a real word of anything which is almost brilliant.  The Russell T. Davies era of the show often made the Doctor out to be a force of nature, but it’s this book where it’s felt without being connected to themes of the Virgin New Adventures and the idea of Time’s Champion.  There is some visceral imagery of the Doctor being at some of his most violent here, defeating the villain by pushing some of its servants into a river which turns them to stone which then crumbles to dust.

 

Nepath is the human villain of the book who is excellent, being the closest that Richards comes to tricking to reader into thinking that the Doctor has arrived to save the day.  There is this dastardly mix of gentlemanly kindness and pure unadulterated evil.  He manipulates Lord Urton into falling into the thrall of the burning and slowly expanding the power by promises of money and prosperity.  Some of the fear comes from the fact that these aren’t actually empty promises, building mines and industrializing is something that would make the rich even richer, often with deadly side effects for the communities that industrialize and Richards knows this, being done obviously through metaphor and allegory.  The perspective is from the upper class, the Doctor not really interacting with the lower classes which is something the book falls flat on.  The book is one with quite a slow pace which is a double-edged sword, some of it being absolutely brilliant of setting the atmosphere and scene to an appropriate level of creepiness for things to build to.

 

Overall, The Burning is quite a good book at setting up a clean slate for the Eighth Doctor, but there are some definite issues with pace and some of the scope of the book not quite being enough to fully do the Industrial Revolution plot Richards provides.  The characters and ideas are there, just not quite enough to make this up there with the perfect Doctor Who books.  8/10.