Rags by: Mick Lewis

 

Rags is a terrible novel.  It is 251 pages of Mick Lewis attempting to analyze Doctor Who, punk rock, the Jon Pertwee era, and the 1970s as a whole and completely misunderstanding how much of any of those things worked or became popular in the first place while coating the entire book in some of the most egregious violence and gore to feature in a Doctor Who novel.  After reading Rags, I have come to the conclusion that fans who claim the BBC Books are less edgy than the books by Virgin Publishing have not read any of the New Adventures or Missing Adventures or have read Rags.   This is not the first time that the content of a Past Doctor Adventures novel has included more violence, racism, and sexual assault than any of the books by Virgin Publishing.  This is also a book that while there are small ideas here that work: a villain that’s a representation of death is a good idea, but as with everything about this book it has been done elsewhere better.  Do you want a deconstruction of the UNIT family?  Blood Heat has you covered.  Do you want an exploration of punk in Doctor Who?  No Future does that and has it in spades.  What about a story set in an isolated British village with some folk horror undertones?  The Daemons.  Are you looking for a deconstruction of the Third Doctor and his relation to authority?  Watch any Jon Pertwee led Doctor Who serial.

 

Rags is also a book where the prose itself is nearly unreadable.  It’s incredibly basic and Lewis thinks using various slurs and cursing basically every other page.  There is a character who is referred to not by name in the narration but overwhelmingly as “the Chinese Girl”.  The rest of the characters don’t have character, they’re just violent and angry at the world while Lewis seems to think that’s what defines punk.  The Doctor is barely in the middle portion of the novel as the violence ramps with every page.  I mentioned The Daemons in the previous paragraph and that is the closest thing to what Rags is in terms of plot and even structure, but without the Master or really any character.  The Doctor is cruel, Jo is a complete ass to everyone around her, people vomit maggots and take glee in doing so.  This book deserves only as much effort in reviewing it as Mick Lewis had in writing it.  2/10.

The Dresden Files: Skin Game by: Jim Butcher

 

Skin Game is the first installment in The Dresden Files where the series feels as if it’s taking a bit of a step back in terms of where the series has been going.  Changes, Ghost Story, and Cold Days make up a brilliant trilogy for The Dresden Files shifting the series to a larger scope and Skin Game is the immediate follow-up to that.  Now, let’s get this right out of the way, Skin Game is not bad, nor is it even in the bottom half of The Dresden Files.  It’s a book that gets a lot right and is a damned good read, but this is a book where Butcher makes a few missteps which stop this from being on the same level as what has come before.  The biggest problem with Skin Game is its length, the paperback edition I read clocks in at 600 pages and there are things that do not justify the page count.  There are lengthy sequences, especially in the first two thirds of the novel, where scenes feel artificially inflated in places and some subplots opened and closed to be plot cul-de-sacs.  There’s also this switch between who gets to be one of the major supporting characters and while it was necessary and led to some great scenes, it still felt a little clunky with Murphy essentially being written out so Michael Carpenter can take a larger role in this novel.  Again, this is still good, Michael is a great character and Skin Game brings him back really well and once the heist that’s the main thrust of the novel is supposed to be starts his presence is great.

 

Michael also is used to establish exactly what the situation with Molly has been since the end of Cold Days.  Molly as a character doesn’t appear until the very end of the novel, so the reader can only get a view of how the mantle of Winter Lady is affecting her through Michael.  The fear comes when it is revealed that he and Charity don’t even know what’s happened to their daughter which is a terrifying thought and that Molly has apparently been doing better in their eyes.  Now in Ghost Story she was essentially a serial killer, so pulling herself out of the gutter and being their for her family while providing resources for herself, something that on the outside makes her look put together and honestly she is.  The power she wields has changed her, but not necessarily for the worse, like Harry it has subtly given her control, though if that control is over her humanity and she’s remaining herself and not a monster.  Family is kind of a big theme of this novel, with Harry’s internal conflict being a lot of how he’s going to interact with this daughter who he really meets for the first time here.  The scenes between Harry and Maggie are genuinely some of the best that Butcher has written, Maggie is written really well as a young child and not just a smaller adult as other writers sometimes do, and the tension there is interesting.  There are also parallels with the Carpenter family and the big bad of the novel, Nicodemus Archleone and his daughter, whom he sacrifices near the climax to steal the Holy Grail.  Yes, this book is about a quest to steal the Holy Grail and yes Harry does make several references to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

 

The actual heist scenario is honestly Jim Butcher flexing how well he can do character interactions between characters who genuinely hate each other.  Harry is always on the back foot through Skin Game until the big twist is revealed, so the entire team hates him as he is lashing out.  He’s only doing this because Mab ordered him to, so he has no way to wiggle out of it, though not for lack of trying.  The climax sets up several twists about what’s actually happening throughout the novel.  The heist is to steal the Holy Grail from Hades, expanding the existing pantheons and including some interesting revelations as to how death works in this universe, something that I think is meant to satisfy everyone going to the afterlife they personally believe in.  Butcher also is much more intelligent than to characterize Hades as Satan, and goes out of his way to show that this isn’t the case, even drawing on some translations of Greek phrases to set him up as a power house and a threat to the heist team, but not as an outright evil villain, that’s Nicodemus’ job.  There is also a chapter where all of the twists come into light right at the point in the novel where all hope is lost which works mostly well, the flashback is to explain how Harry wins, but it leans closely to being a bit too neat.

 

Overall, Skin Game may be a slight step down from the last few installments in The Dresden Files, though it is still great and keeping the series quality firmly in great territory.  It’s kind of a shame this one was the one that led to a slowdown in publishing as it could possibly be a stopping point, even if several things are unanswered and unresolved, but there is almost a pausing point.  Though of course it’s great that Butcher has continued with more short stories and novels to keep the series going.  8/10.

Earthshock by: Ian Marter

 

Earthshock was written by Ian Marter, based on the story of the same name by Eric Saward.  It was the 78^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Earthshock is one of Peter Davison’s all time classic stories at least in the eyes of the fandom.  It’s famous for two things, bringing the Cybermen back after seven years away in their last appearance in Revenge of the Cybermen, and killing the companion Adric.  These distinctions make it regarded highly although writer Eric Saward is one of those writers whose scripts are generally saved not because of a great plot, but generally good performances.  Earthshock is the second script he wrote for Doctor Who after The Visitation and while on television it is an improvement the process of having someone else turn it into a novel means that there is a chance for improvement.  Ian Marter, who played Harry Sullivan on television and novelized several stories in the 1970s and early 1980s, was chosen to adapt this one and his style is perfect for the story it is attempting to tell.  Marter as a writer is always very direct and that works in making the horror the serial on television was lacking in a script that should have been played for more horror brought to the forefront.

 

The Cybermen here are terrifying, drawing on ideas from The Tomb of the Cybermen and the 1960s stories keeping the Cybermen as cyborgs while on television these designs were very much robotic.  There are descriptions of fluids as the Cybermen die that are generally chilling and the climax itself being told from Adric and Tegan’s point of view on the freighter and in the TARDIS respectively makes the tension rise to the point where Adric dies, genuinely not knowing he was right.  On television the viewer never really gets how close Adric is getting to solve the problem, but Marter makes it explicit that he is close and will genuinely not know.  It also includes some closing lines reflecting on Adric’s death meaning that the ending is near perfect.  Now Marter doesn’t make it work perfectly as the middle of the story still drags, with a lot of the Cybermen being in the shadows doesn’t really work for the story itself and there is something missing without a lot of the performances.  Though the bookends are improved and perfect.

 

Overall, Earthshock is perhaps only as good as its television counterpart, although only in the way of improving some things while others are let down by the transition to the prose medium.   It is a breezy ten chapters and reads very nicely since Ian Marter is a more focused storyteller than Saward, but it’s not perfect and still an adaptation of an overrated story.  8/10.

EarthWorld by: Jacqueline Rayner

 

The first Eighth Doctor Adventure I ever read was EarthWorld, it was chosen to represent the Eighth Doctor in the 2013 50^th Anniversary reprint collection and you can see why.  This is the Eighth Doctor’s first trip in the TARDIS after being trapped on Earth with no memory for a century, Fitz is back but he still isn’t the original Fitz, and new companion Anji Kapoor isn’t adjusting to the death of her boyfriend well.  While there is quite a lot of continuity in this one, Jacqueline Rayner never really gets bogged down in letting it overwhelm the reader while someone who has been reading along will feel more enhanced, for the most part.  There are a few mentions of Compassion and her story arc which feel necessary to continuing Fitz and the Doctor’s stories but not enough to make the range continue it’s jumping on point.  When I first read this book I thought Rayner was using some abstract idea about a sentient TARDIS character and not a literal sentient TARDIS.  Now, this is Rayner’s first novel, and you can kind of tell.  The book has quite a few diversions and doesn’t really have that focused of a plot, but there is a genuinely fascinating idea especially as she was asked to follow up the ending of Escape Velocity which homages the ending of “An Unearthly Child” with the TARDIS materializing in a desert where the silhouette of a man looks on.

 

The actual plot of EarthWorld is a science fiction style one and not the historical runaround that is An Unearthly Child.  EarthWorld is an amusement park on the planet New Jupiter in the far future.  The human race has long since abandoned the planet Earth while a confused version of Earth culture has become the culture of the day with a President who is more like a king with the divine right that comes along with it.  EarthWorld is a tribute to the Earth with several of the details twisted due to poor records, the cultural warping of tales, and deliberate misinterpretation with Elvis literally being the king of the 1960s, phrases being written wrong, and the three daughters of the president (and their several android duplicates) taking up an almost fascistic rule of the amusement park.  Now, Rayner almost does something interesting in paralleling the warping of late 20^th century culture as a statement about how ancient cultures find themselves represented in the public consciousness due to the biases of the archeologists, but that isn’t explored nearly as much as it could have been.  There are also three young terrorists of ANJI which is how Anji gets involved in the story in a way that just feels like several cliches, though the character writing of Anji is great.  Rayner uses emails never sent to Dave as a representation of her grief which is where the novel really succeeds.  The way she works through the grief is beautifully portrayed though the King Arthur plot that takes up the climax of the book goes on way too long.

 

The three daughters, Asia, Africa, and Antarctica are fascinating but they end up making up most of the supporting characters through their several android duplicates who are immediately smitten with Fitz.  So of course, they try to kill him and he only gets through it by pretending to be a pop star greater than Elvis himself which is a fun plot, especially when Fitz goes through a breakdown as it’s revealed there was a duplicate made that also struggles with its identity.  Fitz’s plot is one where there are other characters who just kind of drop out of the narrative after a certain point.  The curator of EarthWorld in particular just disappears after Fitz runs away from her and it doesn’t actually feel like anything is resolved.  These dangling plot threads are the points of EarthWorld that don’t really work and bring the book down as well as the pace.  There is some great musing about Fitz and the fact that he still remembers becoming Father Kreiner, something that is surprising since the range at this point seemed to be cutting ties from its past.  The Doctor is also characterized really well, with his added aloofness permeating the page, but he’s sadly not in the book as much as he should be, especially since this is immediately after his second exile on Earth.  He’s back in the TARDIS, he’s free to have adventures, and his memory is kind of restored, but there’s this sadness there that needs to be explored.

 

Overall, EarthWorld is one of the few Eighth Doctor Adventures that you can read from a legendary Doctor Who author in their creative infancy.  It’s a book with a lot of flaws that Rayner acknowledges in her introduction to the reprint, but manages still to be a fun time even if there’s a bit too much meandering in it with some threads getting dropped.  7/10.

The Dresden Files: Cold Days by: Jim Butcher

 

Jim Butcher is an interesting author when it comes to the way he portrays family and family structures.  The Dresden Files is a series who’s protagonist begins the series without a family but fairly quickly Harry Dresden builds this found family around him, from Murphy in Storm Front, Billy and the Alphas in Fool Moon, Michael and Thomas in Grave Peril, and even Mouse’s introduction in Blood Rites, Harry keeps people around him that he can rely upon and treat as family.  Molly as his mentor is essentially a trial run for the reveal that he is in fact a father in Changes, killed and resurrected in Ghost Story, and finally Cold Days is the book that deals with familial conflict at its core.  The Dresden Files has set up the Summer and Winter Courts of Faerie as opposing forces and while it is in this novel that their purpose in the cosmic scheme of things, Summer tempers Winter who guard Faerie and the mortal realm from the Outsiders which is a fascinating dynamic.  This is a core point of Cold Days with Fix, the Summer Knight, actively attempting to oppose Harry’s duty as Winter Knight, in this book with the order from Mab to kill the Winter Lady.

 

Harry doesn’t want to kill Fix, the Summer Knight, or even kill Maeve at the start of the novel when ordered to.  He has to, due to his oath, but he doesn’t want to do this.  Harry keeping his identity is the main thrust for his arc in the novel while the exploration of family coats everything else, since it is family that allows Harry to stay human.  Having the climax not just be Harry alone defeating Maeve like Changes had Harry alone make the decision to kill Susan to save their daughter and the world.  This is a book where the climax happens because of actions that aren’t Harry’s, at least not directly.  Mab reproaches him in a manner due to who becomes the Winter Lady after Maeve, something that while true and gets to Harry’s heart and explores the bad things he’s done and has continued to do in pushing away his own daughter, it makes for catharsis.

 

The leaders of the courts follow the classic maiden, mother, and crone trinity from myth with the Lady, Queen, and Mother.  The trinity is an intergenerational mother to daughter, not necessarily in the literal sense but the magical bond makes it a family especially as those who have those mantles for an extended period of time.  The big reveal is that Harry is ordered to kill Maeve because Mab can’t bring herself to do it because it would be killing a daughter.  There is something human to Mab and the other Faeries who appear in Cold Days as this is all a close knit familial conflict with the Summer Court finding their way in due to Maeve attempting to steal her own power due to an evil corruption.  Yes, there is an evil corruption that is bigger than anything Harry has faced before building up from Changes and Ghost Story as The Dresden Files have changed to a story about primal forces.  This includes Demonreach which is where the book essentially starts when we get to Earth and where it essentially ends.  There also isn’t really a conclusion to the book as things end once again on an almost cliffhanger with the catharsis which is becoming a problem.  It’s a trope in long running fantasy series that their installments do not end with an ending, but end with a stopping point that sometimes ends in the author passing away.

 

Overall, Cold Days isn’t quite as good as Changes and Ghost Story and is perhaps Jim Butcher winding down from the high of the last few novels’ buildup.  It isn’t quite floundering for the series as there are still developments and Harry’s characterization in this novel in particular is brilliant, especially at the very beginning and very end when the narrative is in Faerie and he is attempting to just survive.  There is also almost an overabundance of action and the length of the book is a bit too long for one that is supposed to be occurring within a single Halloween.  It is still in the top tier of The Dresden Files, but you can kind of see almost the writer’s block setting in and the slow down in publishing come closer as after this there is one full novel before Butcher took a break from the novels between 2015 and 2019.  9/10.

Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors by: Brian Hayles

 

Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors was written by Brian Hayles, based on his story The Ice Warriors.  It was the 21^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Brian Hayles despite having written for the first three Doctors, only novelized two of his stories before his passing.  Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon was a novelization that did an excellent job on expanding upon the television story since it was translating a four part story into a longer novelization.  It did such a good job of bringing the Ice Warriors to page it placed into the mind of the fans that the Ice Warriors weren’t villains, so it is interesting that the other story Hayles novelized was The Ice Warriors, their first appearance where they were firmly in villain territory.  Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors is a book that has an interesting pace.  As an adaptation of a six parter, it’s one of those stories that focuses more on the first half of the story than the second half.  This is actually to the story’s benefit in quite a few ways since the first half of the story is a stronger buildup, with the base already under siege from the forces of nature before the aliens show up.  The sequences with the computer and the Doctor attempting to fix things in his own Doctorish way.  Hayles is a master at writing the Second Doctor who is a very difficult Doctor to capture in prose, with many original novels failing to adequately translate the character to screen.

 

It helps that through portions of Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors the Doctor is in the background allowing Hayles’ supporting characters and even Victoria to shine at points.  This is something which means that every character gets their own plot and character arc while Hayles explores ideas like conspiracy theorists around science arising when the world is in crisis, to a race of aliens who are simply attempting to survive though that survival is inevitably through the colonization of another planet.  This is also an interesting idea that was there on television that is allowed to shine in the prose.  The last three episodes only take up about 40 pages of this book’s page count and because of that it means several lengthy shot sequences are translated well as Derek Martinus’ directorial style (and really any director’s style especially in a show like Doctor Who) can be translated with the shortening of several longer sequences.  The final few scenes do suffer from the compression, with the ending of the book kind of just creeping up on you as the resolution happens and almost immediately the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are off on another adventure.  Client is also a character toned down in the novelization which helps with the weird trend of Season 5’s base under siege stories to fit the mold of leader on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors is perhaps the superior way to experience the story as it’s a very quick read with a lot of atmosphere and buildup in tension of the story that comes to a head and quickly resolves without dragging out the back half of a six-episode television serial.  The characterization is some of the best for the Second Doctor and company.  9/10.

Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen was written by Terrance Dicks, based on The Abominable Snowmen by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln.  It was the 10^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The Abominable Snowmen is an interesting choice to adapt as the first Second Doctor novelization.  Stories like The Web of Fear, The Tomb of the Cybermen, and The Ice Warriors were no doubt more popular and The War Games had both writers adapting serials into the novelization.  But Terrance Dicks had no real connections to The Abominable Snowmen, not coming onto the show until The Seeds of Death and not writing until The War Games.  His adaptation is interesting, influenced by his and Barry Letts’ appreciation of Buddhism the novelization adapts character names to be closer to accurate with the spirituality though this was still a book written in the mid-1970s by a white man who was not a Buddhist.  It doesn’t attempt to be historically accurate to the past as the story was set in the 1940s (before the UNIT Dating Controversy began).  Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen is an interesting adaptation as it manages to take a six episode story and speed it up.  Six episode stories are something difficult to adapt into a short page-count and this was Dicks’ first six-part story novelized as before this he had only done Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks.  Each episode gets two chapters, making it a nice twelve chaptered book on pace, improving the pace of the television story which languishes in the middle while expansions to the early scenes and the final battle makes things feel satisfying.  The translation to prose also improves the Yeti themselves, on television they were far too cuddly, looking almost like giant teddy bears which would be redesigned for The Web of Fear in a much more effective way.  There’s also the fact that Dicks can make the setting work as a snowy mountain monastery, as on television rain washed away the snow that was supposed to make the atmosphere work.  Dicks is able to make the atmosphere work and turn the story closer to the horror story that it was intended to be, though Victoria is still reduced to a screamer as she is still hypnotized halfway through which is a shame and Jamie feeling more like his characterization in Season 6, which is the season Dicks worked on.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen may be an improvement from a fairly okay television story, it does feel like a bit of an oddity since Terrance Dicks didn’t really have a connection to the season this was adapted from, though he would adapt The Web of Fear to at least fandom acclaim as it is among the novelizations that people associated as the story until its recovery in 2013.  It’s good, but not perfect.  7/10.

Doctor Who and the Cybermen by: Gerry Davis

 

Doctor Who and the Cybermen was written by Gerry Davis, based on The Moonbase by Kit Pedler.  It was the 12^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

This is an interesting novelization to really look at.  It’s the second Patrick Troughton story to be novelized and the third story to be novelized with missing episodes.  Now unlike The Abominable Snowmen which is currently missing 5 of its 6 episodes or The Crusade which was adapted before any of the episodes would have been junked, the two existing episodes of The Moonbase are two episodes which have always existed in the archives (and there was a chance Episodes 1 and 3 existed at the time Gerry Davis novelized the story).  Doctor Who and the Cybermen is the result and as the first novelization to feature the Cybermen, the title was changed to reflect this.  Gerry Davis served as script editor for the era and cowrote The Tenth Planet and The Tomb of the Cybermen with Kit Pedler as well as writing The Highlanders with Elwyn Jones and at the time of novelizing The Moonbase, writing Revenge of the Cybermen around the same time.  Doctor Who and the Cybermen is an interesting read since it’s early enough that the Target novelizations were able to experiment with how they would be adapting the stories and what exactly would be changed before Terrance Dicks became the dominant author and novels became fairly clear cut adaptations of their television counterparts before warping again towards expansions in preparation for the publishing of original Doctor Who novels.

 

The Moonbase as a plot is largely unchanged, most of the dialogue is retained, but anything that might have been adlibbed by Patrick Troughton and company is nowhere to be seen as it’s clear Davis had access to Pedler’s original scripts for the story.  Things are slowed quite a bit, something that will be repeated in Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen which I had an issue with and while it is an issue here, it isn’t as bad as the first half of The Moonbase is more of a slow burn mystery about what is happening on the base.  It doesn’t quite work when the title is changed to Doctor Who and the Cybermen so the reader knows that the Cybermen will be in the novel so the twist is lessened somewhat.  There is also a great attempt to get Jamie integrated into the plot better than he was on television as this was a story where he was written in at the last minute by adding him in to the back half of the story as he is still forced with an illness to keep the TARDIS team on the moon.  The second half of the story also isn’t as poorly served as Davis’ adaptation of The Tomb of the Cybermen, partially due to the slightly longer page count, although it is only 10 pages, those 10 pages make up a lot.  Some of the language also hasn’t aged well with some 1960s/1970s sexism still being there and a slur being used at one point during the book (though that slur was medical terminology of the time and is used in that context).

 

Overall, while Doctor Who and the Cybermen has a reputation for being one of the all time great classic novels, it doesn’t quite live up to that reputation due to some minor changes that slow things down and just not adding enough to proceedings.  It is still quite a lot of fun as a novel as Davis does well with the characters and gives them voice, partially due to being so involved in the making of the story more than the writing which was not the case for The Tomb of the Cybermen whose novelization suffered as a result.  8/10.

Bunker Soldiers by: Martin Day

 

Bunker Soldiers is an interesting novel.  It’s one of the few books to use the team of the First Doctor, Steven, and Dodo, with only Steve Lyons’ Salvation doing so and Dodo only appearing in two additional novels, The Man in the Velvet Mask and Who Killed Kennedy?.  It is also a novel that straddles two ‘eras’ of the show, mainly the two subsections of the Hartnell era, reflecting much of the tone of the first two seasons under producer Verity Lambert while also reveling in a plot that fits in with the third season of transition away from history towards more alien stories.  This book is essentially a base under siege, but the base is the city of Kyiv on the verge of the Mongol Siege of Kyiv in 1240.  The siege lasted a week and ended with the people of Kyiv dead, with an estimated 2,000 survivors of the estimated 50,000 inhabitants meaning that the tone of Bunker Soldiers is appropriately dark.  Martin Day has learned since his last solo novel, The Menagerie, and grown as a writer to steep the novel in this atmosphere of doom a la The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve with some of the humor of The Myth Makers there just to make it not be a complete dirge.  The book also is steeping itself in the history, the Doctor at the very beginning of the novel establishes the idea that the city will be sieged and there is nothing he, Steven, and Dodo can do about it.  They just have to get away, which is difficult when the TARDIS is captured following the outline of earlier historicals like Marco Polo and The Aztecs.

 

Indeed, this is much of the first third of the novel following the historical ‘let’s get back to the TARDIS narrative’ leading to a point where the Doctor exits for a while as if Hartnell had a vacation.  Now this is not a pure historical story.  There is an alien killer stalking the streets of Kyiv, several chapters from the point of view of this thing, killing in odd patterns, letting some go for mysterious reasons.  It’s how the genuinely evocative cover of this book comes to be but a lot of it is a background threat as Day focuses on the character drama of Steven and Dodo attempting to stay alive while suspicion lays on them.  They arrive via the TARDIS arriving in a home while a family is eating dinner.  Dodo has the focus of making a friend and discussing young love adding some humanity to the proceedings while Steven is eventually thrown into a prison cell for the murders.  Although he is exonerated for the crime, the time from his perspective (and much of the novel is in the first person from Steven’s perspective) creates this intimate feeling to the novel almost like a Companion Chronicle, to which Day would contribute two installments at the time of writing this review.  There is a genuine fear that they will not be able to get away once the siege begins nor able to actually help anyone survive the siege.  Interestingly, they almost are able to in the end of the novel when the alien’s history is revealed and what exactly it’s doing in this time period.  The interference from Steven and Dodo really only ensure that history stays on the right track.  Day draws on historical records, with some license as you would expect from Doctor Who, to make Bunker Soldiers work as a novel.  The historical figures are close to what you would expect, with the interesting amoral perspective taken from the Doctor without shying away from the horrors of a city under siege and the destruction that was to follow.

 

Overall, Bunker Soldiers is a really nice little piece of Hartnell style Doctor Who, although this is a novel that suffers from some pacing problems and some of the flaws of certain Hartnell serials, especially those near the end of his run.  While Dodo is nicely characterized, she isn’t actually unique in her characterization and could be switched with Vicki quite easily, although Steven is clearly Steven Taylor and the Doctor is clearly the Doctor.  It’s an enjoyable ride of a novel, but does have some heavy problems.  7/10.

The Dresden Files: Ghost Story by: Jim Butcher

 

My review of Changes was intentionally short.  It was a brilliant book, but one that I perhaps didn’t have enough time to really get my thoughts out on why it works.  That may be for the best since its follow up novel, Ghost Story, is an intense character examination of the fallout from the end of that novel.  Harry Dresden is dead, but the forces that be have pulled him from the afterlife for one final task.  He has to solve his own murder.  This is Jim Butcher’s one last good old fashioned supernatural murder mystery before the series finishes shifting focus away from that genre.  It’s genuinely sad to see it go, but Butcher knows just how to escalate the mystery with so many twists and turns built into the narrative to give the reader one last bow.  Ghost Story opens with this excellent musing from Harry as he tries to come to terms with his death and the fact that he is going to be sent back, seemingly immediately after his death.  To help him with this is Karrin Murphy’s father who is a fascinating look at the man that made Murphy.  I cannot tell if Butcher is intentionally using Jack Murphy to explore the trauma of Murphy, as when we see her in the novel she is hardened from Harry’s death as a capstone.  Jack does seem to care about his daughter but there is a final discussion before Harry goes back to Chicago establishing this respect and pride in his daughter.  Harry is also immediately skeptical of his situation as he already knows what can happen with spirits who go back to Earth, Dead Beat and White Night are not forgotten (Dead Beat in particular as we deal with some of the lingering fallout of the Corpsetaker getting away in that one).

 

One the narrative gets back to Chicago, Butcher has pushed Harry to his lowest point.  As a shade, he is unable to access his magic and in typical ghost fashion cannot be seen, heard, or touched.  Butcher doesn’t make him helpless, he still has his wits about him after all, but Ghost Story is one final journey of self-discovery.  The book ends with Harry back alive, something that really isn’t a spoiler when you have four currently published sequels (and several planned others), but Harry has to find himself and stick with himself if he is to survive the road ahead.  The ending of Changes essentially lost him to Death.  There is a point about 2/3 of the way through Ghost Story where Lea appears and Harry tells her a story in exchange for three questions, through this he discovers he already knew his killer.  The reveal of the killer is masterfully done and this beautiful parallel to Harry finding himself, stated in the final chapter when he is alive and in someone’s very particular care.  It’s something that Butcher hints and foreshadows throughout the book which is really the only reason that the reveal works.  There is plenty of misdirect for who it could be and several suspects, both human and supernatural.  The story he tells Lea is also vitally important, it is one of his past and how he ran away from his former tutor Justin DuMorne.  Lea already knows what happened when he stumbled across her, but there was a significant period of time in between these events.

 

This is where Butcher takes the book down a cosmic horror route.  He Who Walks Behind, an entity of great power has been behind Harry for the very beginning and has plans.  It is, in essence a thing that sparked Harry’s power and morality, it has been moving things behind the scenes and is still out there, walking and waiting.  It is perhaps the best single scene in anything in The Dresden Files.  This is also the novel that has Harry really examine what he does to other people.  Molly Carpenter has been on a downward spiral, not dealing with her grief in any healthy way.  She has been using her power without guidance and has fallen under the influence of the Sidhe, specifically Lea at Harry’s orders, and this rule of Chicago through fear is slowly weakening and killing her.  Much of Ghost Story is dealing with this as well, getting Molly to an adult who can care for herself.  The same for Murphy and Butters and everyone Harry has been touching in the last twelve books.  This is a book of closure because the series is past a point of no return.  It’s nearly perfect.  9/10.

War-Game by: Alan McKenzie with art by: John Ridgway and letters by: Annie Halfacree

 

War-Game is written by Alan McKenzie with art by John Ridgway and lettering by Annie Halfacree.  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 100-101 (April – May 1985) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: Voyager by Panini Books.

 

With Steve Parkhouse’s exit from the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip there is the immediate fear that the transition wouldn’t be something that could go over smoothly.  Editor Alan McKenzie took over as writer and would stay with the strip for about 10 more months before shifting away so different writers could alternate strips and essentially take the pressure off one writer to keep things moving especially as production on the television became more than hectic.  McKenzie’s run begins with War-Game, continuing the trend of shorter stories that ended Parkhouse’s run, without setting up any big story arc but bringing in some interesting ideas and exploration of a Pertwee era villain.  This is a simple story about the Doctor and Frobisher landing on a planet at war where a Draconian who has crash landed has built his own power in an attempt to find his daughter.  It’s a touching little piece, but if it is any indicator as to where the strip is going we have some interesting things.

 

First off, McKenzie really gets the Doctor/Frobisher relationship, perhaps because he had been in the editor on the magazine since Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom was running.  He would have had a hand in creating the character and here does an interesting move and has Frobisher shape shift into this Conan the Barbarian style slave as this is a story against slavery.  There are also these brilliant moments at the beginning of the story in the TARDIS where the Doctor is attempting to teach Frobisher to play chess.  McKenzie almost wants to use this to tie things back into the War-Game on the planet, but it really doesn’t except for the themes of battles being noble and having territory taken.  Chess, however, isn’t really about territory being taken, but about simulating the battlefield of people being taken.  People are the focus of chess and that aspect is almost brought through in War-Game, despite it not necessarily working.  The two issue length is perhaps to this story’s detriment as it is very self-contained and it doesn’t really give any sense that the story has changed.  John Ridgway’s art, however, is beautiful.  This is perhaps the best the strip has looked and Ridgway’s style really fits the style of the Sixth Doctor as seamlessly as Dave Gibbons’ art had fit the style of the Fourth Doctor.

 

Overall, War-Game is a good, little, self-contained adventure that explores some interesting character dynamics especially with the exploration of the Doctor/companion dynamic when the companion is an atypical one.  It brings in a new writer and a potential new style for the strip before the graphic novel it is in is rounded out.  7/10.

Revelation of the Daleks by: Eric Saward

 

Revelation of the Daleks was written by Eric Saward from his television story of the same name.  It was the 173^rd story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

Those following my reviews as I write them may have noticed that Resurrection of the Daleks was a novel which I called the worst book I had read so far in 2022.  Commissioned and published to finally complete the classic series Doctor Who novelizations, Revelation of the Daleks is a book where Eric Saward shows that he at least has the potential to grow as an author, though not enough to make this an enjoyable reading experience.  Many of the problems with the former are still present in Revelation of the Daleks, especially when the slaughter of the characters begins in the second half of the story.  Saward also introduces another body to be slaughtered which doesn’t need to even exist and is given his own backstory.  There’s just so much time dedicated to this character who is essentially a redshirt.  He is a character who doesn’t need to be there and doesn’t add anything, which is a thread to every aspect that Saward adds to the story bar the opening scenes in the TARDIS.  The opening scenes in the TARDIS is this small piece between the Doctor and Peri where they are actually allowed to be decent friends which makes a change from the television series’ bickering to a more light hearted friendly ribbing.  Sure, the bickering was toned down by Revelation of the Daleks but it wouldn’t have evolved into something like this until The Trial of a Time Lord.

 

There is something quite punchy to the pace of the first half of Revelation of the Daleks.  While it does take up the first half of the novel, Saward does explore the Doctor and Peri as characters which are fun while tightening some of the events of that first episode.  Just giving the characters the time to interact and be people is enough to make it feel as if the first episode is worth anything.  This is undercut by the end as there is added worldbuilding which doesn’t actually need to be there as it undercuts the Soylent Green-esque plot which doesn’t really get wrapped up in the novel while it does on television.  By the time things get to Part Two, Saward’s issue with cluttering every scene with asides and characters who shouldn’t be there at that time yet somehow taking the attention away from what is usually the focus of the scene in the television version of the story.  There also isn’t anything done to really establish scene or location after a certain point in the novel making it feel as if Saward got bored with writing the book after a while and just wrapped things up as quickly as he could.  This is somehow a shorter book than Resurrection of the Daleks and it’s something that makes the story have even less time to tell its story.

 

Overall, Revelation of the Daleks is a conclusion in its first half but quickly goes back into the weird, Douglas Adams style of writing which doesn’t mesh with the tone of the original television story.  There is at least some time spent on making the Doctor feel like the Doctor and Peri feel like Peri with Davors as a villain, however, this is undercut by not really following the witty dialogue and timing.  The Robert Holmes-esque double acts from television are also called double acts which makes things even more self-aware in a story that shouldn’t be self-aware.  4/10.