Ghost Devices
is a weird book. The second from author
Simon Bucher-Jones and the first of the New Adventures to feature
Bernice Summerfield that really feels like it was meant to be a Doctor Who
story but the Doctor has been removed.
Not even the previous book, Deadfall, which was an adaptation of a
fan Doctor Who audio story, felt like it was meant to be a Doctor Who
story. Ghost Devices is
different, it’s a story that feels divided into several 50 page chunks which
almost changes like it’s meant to be a classic Doctor Who serial. Importantly, there is a cameo from the Seventh
Doctor with the serial numbers filed off implying that this is all one of his
plans a la Birthright, but because the Doctor can’t be used his
influence throughout isn’t integrated which was what made Birthright
work. The final 50 pages are actually
the most interesting going into several possible timelines which is as densely written
as Simon Bucher-Jones is known to be, but the story is also all about a
mysterious artefact and an amnesiac of the People. There are reptilian races and imperialism and
honestly a lot going on for a 250 page book, especially when the plot likes to
go off in different directions every 50 pages.
Bucher-Jones’ prose is quite difficult to follow in places, especially
as it feels like the first 50 pages especially could be cut and the plot would
remain largely unchanged. The final 50
pages which go into an almost dreamscape/alternate universe sequence which is
what Bucher-Jones excels at, especially when there’s an imperialist soldier
version of Benny who honestly deserves a novel on her own, who grew up with her
father present as he didn’t run away in this timeline.
The Spire itself, the alien artefact on the planet,
has this weird presence in Ghost Devices, in a way that it’s mentioned
on the back cover as this important thing, but when you’re reading there really
isn’t importance put on it until what feels like quite late in the novel. The same can be said with the People:
Clarence is a character who appears here in a stereotypical angelic form, is an
amnesiac People, and is set up as a major player, but then he really isn’t. Like he appears throughout, but he feels more
supportive than being a main character in the novel. Clarence is a given name from Benny, with
Bucher-Jones not really doing a lot to explore the people, at least not like
Ben Aaronovitch or Lawrence Miles would. He gives his People character a normal name, a
reference to It’s a Wonderful Life, not following the naming conventions
Aaronovitch laid out in The Also People.
Clarence being essentially a reference to It’s a Wonderful Life,
and to a lesser extent The Bishop’s Wife, is perhaps an encapsulation of
the issues with Bucher-Jones’ style and Ghost Devices. It’s a book that is full of references to
things inside of Doctor Who and pop culture and film at large. There’s also a tendency to switch perspective
to in universe books and other perspectives, marked initially in bold in
between paragraphs, but then after the first 50 pages stops happening unless it’s
an extract from Benny’s in universe diary which makes the transitions from
scene to scene more difficult then they had to be. That isn’t to say there aren’t things to
like, Clarence is fun and the last 50 pages could easily be their own story on
their own, Benny’s characterization is fun and it’s clear Bucher-Jones preferred
her to Chris and Roz, plus a few other characters who appear here and there.
Overall, Ghost Devices is a short book that
feels quite long, almost too long. It’s
a book which doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be about, wanting to play in
a box of the Doctor Who universe but doesn’t know how to do that without
the Doctor there, going so far as to putting him there in a way that wasn’t
just tangential to the plot like some of the other cameos. It’s a story whose title including ghosts
feels like this book is almost a ghostly imprint of something that could have been
great, but doesn’t quite have bones to pull it together. 3/10.
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