Eater of Wasps by: Trevor Baxendale

 

Let’s take a moment at the beginning of this review to discuss WASPs, that is White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.  This is a specific term used to describe a subset of the population of the United States of America, the white, largely conservative or neoliberal, upper class.  The term originates in the late 1800s but was most popularly used throughout the early and mid 20^th century as a way to delineate the “proper” Americans from basically anyone who wasn’t a wealthy white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and yes it does feed as a term into white nationalism and white supremacy, as well as the eugenics movement.  Eater of Wasps is a Doctor Who novel that, whether intentional or not, examines WASPs in a specifically British context while writing the alien menace to be literal swarms of alien wasps that seep their way into the quiet English village of Marpling, first inhabiting and possessing the body of Charles Rigby, the village dentist, before spreading throughout the village, slowly picking off the population one by one.  There are also rogue time agents which are being used to set up a future arc and future installments of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, the only part of the book that doesn’t fit as nicely into the theming.  This is already a fairly basic setup for a base under siege, Marpling is a village that is isolated from the rest of the United Kingdom and is very, very white and very religious.  The alien wasps can easily be read as an example of the desperation of WASPs to hold onto their power as it corrupts what could be otherwise nice and generally good people.

 

It is very telling that the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji on arrival in Marpling are immediately accosted by an old and angry white woman, Miss Havers, who accuses them of being foreigners including a Romani slur, no doubt due to primarily Anji’s position as a person of color.  Havers is the prime example of racism in the novel, being the stickler for the status quo, going to the church and pastor in charge in an attempt to get the Doctor and company away from Marpling as soon as she possibly can.  She is a woman terrified of outsiders, using her faith and superstitions to justify it, which only is turned back on her when the wasps begin to attack the village.  It is also interesting to see that the Reverend, Ernest Fordyke, and Squire George Pink are the other major characters who represent the insidiousness of the racism and become victims of the wasps.  The Reverend initially attempts to calm Miss Havers down to the strangers in the village, and while he never attempts to throw the Doctor and company out, he is an example of that subtle racism and bigotry that invades everyone.  He entertains Miss Havers’ crazy conspiracy theories he does subtly imply that he agrees with them, especially since this book takes place in between the two World Wars and there are outsiders in the village who objected to the war and object to the continental turmoil that would eventually lead to World War II, and Fordyke is meaning to capitulate.  Squire Pink is on the verge of being in the out group of the village due to his brother, Hilary, being an objector to the war and later revealed to being involved in an affair with a bastard son.  The Squire is jovial and the one character in the book to conscientiously become better but not because of his class, but because his brother is killed.

 

Hilary Pink is the first real friendly face the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji meet and he is the only outright good person, he has his morals and has examined many of his biases.  He doesn’t treat Anji, the novel’s only real person of color, any differently, despite having his own set of sins to contend with.  He is an outsider, someone who because of being a conscientious objector has been set aside and this is why he’s able to provide the Doctor and company sanctuary at his brother’s estate.  Of course being essentially the only morally good character means that he is attacked by the wasps and killed, a sign of the wasps going after everyone.  Now the wasps themselves are alien and there are time agents which compose a subplot that doesn’t feel like it goes anywhere and is mainly disconnected from the book, but the horror and gruesome descriptions of how the wasps attack and kill are a highlight.  The misshapen corpses, breaking out in bumps and boils due to the venom as well as the way that Baxendale calls attention to how a single wasp becomes an indicator of the horror creeping in slowly before it swarms.  Pay close attention to the grace Baxendale uses as it’s important to dissect the aliens themselves.

 

Overall, Eater of Wasps is Baxendale’s first true triumph of a novel.  After two books of rather mixed quality, this one delivers on the horror of a quaint English village and the double meaning of the idea of a wasp, transplanted from the United States to a British setting.  There is an examination of the years in between the World Wars while the Doctor is perhaps at his most grim here which is wonderful, something McGann easily could have sunk his teeth into.  It’s a fascinating examination of xenophobia in particular through a British lens that should not be overlooked.  9/10.

The Dresden Files: Battle Ground by: Jim Butcher

 

The Dresden Files has released 17 novels and a number of short stories and as of writing this Battle Ground is the last of the novels.  While Jim Butcher clearly has plans, many of those set up by the end of Battle Ground, outside of some short stories there has not been any large plot movement after this book.  Battle Ground is also a big book in terms of scale but not necessarily in terms of plot.  Or at least that’s what some corners of the fandom like to believe but Jim Butcher perhaps excels the best here at slipping in the smallest of character moments while the battle is going on.  What’s actually surprising is that while Peace Talks was largely the calm before the storm, the points that are the most calm are at the beginning of this book.  Butcher manages to perfectly encapsulate those last few moments of serenity perfectly and the tension is palpable when the actual battle starts.  The moments in McAnally’s Pub with Harry rallying troops is perhaps the most important character moment for Harry Dresden since Changes or Cold Days, he’s a leader.  Peace Talks has Harry being threatened with expulsion from the White Council and his position as a Warder, two things that happen by the end of Battle Ground, the Council using the chaos and Harry being the leader of the forces against Ethniu and taking up the mantle of the Winter Knight.  Butcher making this decision makes The Dresden Files going forward an interesting position, the book ends with some early status quo aspects restored superficially but clearly differently that the next book is going to have to address.  Harry is taking up an active leadership role for the first time, he is the general in charge of and responsible for bringing the Last Titan down.

 

The action itself follows a fairly standard formula which is something some readers may find repetitive but Butcher puts in enough character moments as characters from throughout the series come to fight in the battle.  There are also characters exclusive to the several short stories collected in Side Jobs and Brief Cases so readers should be at least have read them as Butcher expects readers to have read everything.  The little mini battles across Chicago are also increasingly interesting as they reveal so much of how Harry has changed and Jim Butcher’s ideas of who Harry is have changed.  There is this idea that Maggie is the reason that Harry keeps going and the one thing he has to save, which is brought to the forefront with the one major misstep of the book. 

 

Karrin Murphy is shot and killed during the battle by a scared police officer, falling in battle.  This has made three love interests for Harry Dresden that have ended badly, the second to have been killed essentially due to him.  While this isn’t quite an example of fridging, it’s still an example of Butcher’s streak of killing off female characters.  Yes Murphy had a lot of development and the tragedy is great, but much of the death is just to continue Harry’s character arc and development, with Harry being the only character who’s allowed to reflect on the death and move forward.  There is a twist in the end where Mab puts Harry into an engagement with Lara Raith with an engagement period of twelve months which is what the next book is going to be.  The final thirty pages of the novel are essentially the big wrap-up and fallout from the battle with Harry trying to make something out of his life after the battle, but it’s a book that ends on a moment.  The final moments have a lot of hits, but the final scenes between Harry, Molly, and the Carpenters before “Christmas Eve” the short story included at the end set months after Battle Ground, are about finding a new stability.

 

Overall, Battle Ground needs to be read as close to Peace Talks as you can.  It’s the second half of that novel and it completes that story in such a good way, but it’s not perfect.  There is that one very big problem in the middle that is going to affect readers differently and yet another new direction is being taken with The Dresden Files putting it up to the present with Butcher now going on to work on where the series is going with several wrenches thrown in.  9/10.

The Shadow in the Glass by: Justin Richards and Stephen Cole

 

The Shadow in the Glass is a book which should not be good.  It’s Doctor Who tackling post-World War II conspiracies involving the survival and lineage of Adolf Hitler, yes Adolf Hitler survival conspiracies are the main drive of this book.  Justin Richards and Stephen Cole also only had a limited time to write the novel after Gary Russell’s Instruments of Darkness was delayed and they needed a Sixth Doctor book to fill the slot stat.  This is kind of indicative of the issues at BBC Books, if this were Virgin Publishing there would have been a delay a la So Vile a Sin and the slot would have been essentially skipped over that month.  Because this is the BBC and they are pushing out a lot of Doctor Who content in the early 2000s, with 2 books a month, the final VHS’s and by this point the growing DVD range, there seems to be no time to stop and let a release just deal with the delay.  Now having Richards and Cole cowriting this actually helps with the compressed writing time, the ideas are allowed to bounce off one another and the novel is wrapped around a fairly simple idea: an alien craft shot down during World War II near the British coast cause a legacy of military occupation guarding a secret which involves a conspiracy about the Hitler lineage surviving the apparent suicide in the bunker somehow.  The book has the Doctor being called in by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to help investigate and eventually unravel the conspiracy, culminating in a climax that travels to the bunker to see how it is done.  It's very much a novel going from point A to point B with little subplots or diversions, except the alien aspect which is perhaps where the book fails.  The alien threat is such a non-entity that despite often being brought up it leaves the reader’s mind quite quickly as the historical elements from Richards and Cole are far more interesting.

 

This is also hyped up as one of the best of the Past Doctor Adventures, and while it is very good, it still is a book that underutilizes its science fiction elements, though that is buffered by coating it in mysticism almost in parallel to Terrance Dicks’ Timewyrm: Exodus.  There’s also the more egregious example of essentially fridging the main and essentially only female character of note, Claire Aldwych, a journalist who serves the role of companion.  She is a wonderful character who honestly could have been a perfect match for the Sixth Doctor had the decision been made to keep her on, but her death is essentially the wrap up of the novel so Adolf Hitler Jr. can exist…or possibly not exist as it implies history is rewritten.  She is shot and her body burned to be the body double for Hitler’s wife and lover, no seriously.  This is a plot point that Richards and Cole try to treat with severity, but as it comes at the end outside of some genuinely painful reactions from the Doctor and the Brigadier, the ramifications of the death just aren’t dealt with and literally the entire plot, a plot involving almost exclusively other male characters, is hung on this brutal death.  It’s an added shame as the climax itself is excellent, there is some brilliant tension work as the Doctor, Brigadier, and Claire figure out some of the conspiracies before liaisons with Winston Churchill and Soviet forces, and having Hitler Jr. brought back in time (who could have easily been the body double as he is quickly shot by his father).

 

Overall, The Shadow in the Glass is a book with some genuinely shocking elements, some terrible uses of fridging, and a Doctor Who book with Adolf Hitler on the cover (luckily completely redesigned for the 2015 reprint).  It’s also a book that genuinely works at telling a good story from writers who were on a terribly short deadline but managed to include a lot of researched history, something Richards happened to be doing at the time, and tries to take some care with the subject matter.  It’s also a book that somehow manages to be leagues ahead of the previous Past Doctor Adventure, Rags, which is somehow more offensive than the one that literally features the son of Hitler so it’s weird that I actually recommend this as at least an interesting and really fun read.  8/10.

Kane's Story, Abel's Story, The Warrior's Story, and Frobisher's Story by: Alan McKenzie with art by: John Ridgway and letters by: Annie Halfacree

 

Kane’s Story, Abel’s Story, The Warrior’s Story, and Frobisher’s Story are written by Alan McKenzie with art by John Ridgway and lettering by Annie Halfacree.  They were released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 104, 105, 106, and 107 (August, September, October, and November 1985) and are reprinted in their original form in Doctor Who: Voyager by Panini Books.

 

The collected edition of Voyager cuts off with a four-part arc with individual issue titles an no overall title which transitions to the strip for the first time bringing in a television companion in Peri Brown and moving away from having a single writer with Alan McKenzie leaving the magazine in the middle of the next story which John Ridgway will finish writing.  Kane’s Story, Abel’s Story, The Warrior’s Story, and Frobisher’s Story all contribute small elements to a greater whole while being self-contained, picking up on a lot of the ideas introduced in Funhouse and expanding the cosmic horror into melding with an evil human empire.  The Skeletoids are the alien race which are terrorizing the galaxy that the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher must defeat.  Alan McKenzie is again writing under the pen name as he did with Funhouse due to still being the editor when these stories were commissioned.  It’s still McKenzie’s style and there’s clearly an attempt to make one final mark on the strip before he leaves the strip completely.

 

Kane’s Story is essentially the setup of the state of the galaxy, with the Skeletoids dominating the two great empires of Daleks and Cybermen and making their way to the third, the Draconian Empire.  The Doctor and Frobisher crash on the outskirts of the conflict where they meet Kane, an ex-professor of phenomenology and his story is one where we get the first shades of the works of H.P. Lovecraft.  Lovecraft’s work would often have an academic in some pseudo-scientific field and this story is no different, but these shades are only further intensified in the following issues.  The backstory makes the Skeletoids a credible threat and once the story moves off planet to New York, 1985 we bring Peri on board as a way to help.  McKenzie writes passerby reactions to the Doctor’s arrival as perhaps the most interesting the comic strip has, thinking he must be an actor or a clown especially with that coat.  That coat wasn’t ever really commented on in television stories which makes for an interesting little additive.  Now there are some flaws, some of the pacing of the second half outside of the story doesn’t help it work as a frame story and Peri is characterized weirdly at the top as she’s apparently working as a secretary and quits.  8/10.

 

Abel’s Story is the installment where the Doctor doesn’t really appear but that isn’t actually an issue in this one.  Yes, the final page or so has the Doctor, Peri, Frobisher, and Kane all in the TARDIS travelling towards the planet Xaos which will be the setting for The Warrior’s Story while we follow Abel Gantz, an alchemist who is lost in space and mutated with telekinetic abilities trapped underground and being led to the Valley of the Gods where a prophecy of six representatives will gather to save the universe.  The mutation of Abel Gantz directly calls upon Lovecraftian imagery, as well as the blending of alchemy with some semblance of science.  Add on top of that the previous issue’s exploration of psychic powers at the start of the story makes for an interesting story.  This is also the issue where John Ridgway’s artwork perhaps shines the most as it is allowed to go into the horrific abstract places of cosmic horror that should be praised and injecting emotion into the abstract.  9/10.

 

The Warrior’s Story explores Draconian culture, continuing a lot of the ideas, as the Warrior is Kaon, one of the Draconians from War-Game which greatly assists in the cohesiveness of the last few stories, though that is still in the future for Kaon.  Kaon’s an interesting character and McKenzie does some interesting things in regards to fleshing out the honor system of Draconians, he is making his way to the Valley of the Gods for his own honorable purpose and to fulfill the prophecy.  This is the story that fully explains the prophecy as well as explores the fact that forces are converging at the Valley to defeat the Skeletoid menace.  It’s simple, but executed so well that it just works.  9/10.

 

Frobisher’s Story finally brings us back to the perspective of the Doctor, that being the one real flaw of the previous two issues.  The six champions are gathered and there is a big battle against the menace to destroy them while the forces of the universe repel them.  There is such scale in this story, something that Steve Parkhouse was also able to do but did it in such a different way that McKenzie’s vision is one that hits different.  Frobisher as the point of view character for the story is a stroke of genius as the companion has been the breakout character for the strip, being fondly remembered to this day despite leaving the strip in 1987 and only having sporadic appearances since.  He still managed to appear in an audio drama.  The actual defeat of the Skeletoids and the explanation of the prophecy falls just a bit flat, the prophecy is just a plot device and the six characters included don’t really have a unique reason for being involved in the plot.  It easily could have been the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher on their own with the other characters just being there.  It’s still a great little installment.  8/10.

 

Overall, this grouping of four stories manages to end the Voyager collection on a high continuing the strong streak that has made up the Sixth Doctor’s time in the seat of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and closes an era as The World Shapers begins the tradition of rotating authors every story.  8.5/10.

Funhouse by: Alan McKenzie with art by: John Ridgway and letters by: Annie Halfacree

 

Funhouse is written by Alan McKenzie with art by John Ridgway and lettering by Annie Halfacree.  It was released in Doctor Who Magazine issues 102-103 (June – July 1985) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: Voyager by Panini Books.

 

This is an odd one.  The second Doctor Who Magazine strip from editor Alan McKenzie and it kind of reveals McKenzie’s philosophy in writing stories.  The strip is essentially back to doing self-contained yarns with perhaps little character development between them which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  After Steve Parkhouse and his sprawling epics, going small-scale works really well, especially as at this point the television show was on hiatus and had a year before it would be coming back with The Trial of a Time Lord.  Funhouse is also one that has a trippy idea for a plot and is smart enough to not make the two issues overstay their welcome.  It’s essentially a two hander with the villain being this unexplained being taking the form of a house.  The image of a house on a desolate planet is a creepy one and John Ridgway’s art is stylized here in a way that brings up ideas of cosmic horror for the story.

 

The second issue also is another example of the Doctor going back through his regenerations before defeating the house by flipping a switch on the TARDIS console and throwing it into the Time Vortex, once again allowing a beautiful panel of Ridgway’s rendition of said vortex.  There’s also an interesting implication with a hallucination of Peri being used by the house as a piece of temptation to get the Doctor and Frobisher to stay.  Again following the idea of cosmic horror there are shadows and unearthly things in this house that makes this feel almost a tribute to horror movies of the early 1980s mixed with gothic horror from Hammer Studios.

 

This is overall a comic that actually doesn’t do much of interest.   The art is good and the plot works really well for softening the Sixth Doctor, and of course Frobisher’s sarcasm is great, there just isn’t a whole lot going on in terms of plot or character work that had been done so well in previous strips.  It almost feels like the strip is devolving slightly to the late Tom Baker era with its single and double issues not really allowing the comic to have enough space to tell stories.  Luckily, this is something that is almost immediately rectified with the Voyager collection ending with four connected single issues, and only one more single issue story for the rest of the Sixth Doctor’s strip run. 7/10.

Time and the Rani by: Pip and Jane Baker and directed by: Andrew Morgan

 

Time and the Rani stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Bonnie Langford as Melanie with Kate O’Mara as the Rani.  It was written by: Pip and Jane Baker and directed by: Andrew Morgan with Andrew Cartmel as Script Editor and John Nathan-Turner as Producer.  It was originally broadcast on Mondays from 7 to 28 September 1987 on BBC1.

 

There are many points Doctor Who fans like to point to as the beginning of the end of the show.  Today, most point to Warriors of the Deep as the story that gave Michael Grade the idea to cancel the show, but of course that failed.  Some say The Twin Dilemma at the end of that season led to the low viewership necessary to put the show on hiatus, however Season 22 did not have significant drops in viewership, at least not when compared to Seasons 19 to 21.  Then by the time the 1987 season was put into production, the BBC had enacted their move which would lead ultimately to cancellation, albeit after three more years of production before the plug was pulled.  That move wasn’t allowing John Nathan-Turner to move on to another show to see what a new producer would do, nor was it even the firing of Colin Baker forcing a recast, nor was it the hiring of Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor.  No, what gave them the final push to cancel the show was moving Doctor Who once again outside of its Saturday evening slot, something that was successful when done under Peter Davison due to the twice weekly airing and slightly earlier than the timeslot Season 24 was given.  The Season 24 timeslot was generally aired closer to 7:30-8:00 pm, directly up against ITV’s long running soap opera, Coronation Street which killed the ratings, peaking with the first episode at 5.1 million viewers, the full season peaking at 5.5 million for the first episode of Dragonfire.  Viewing figures peaking in the low 5 millions would only occasionally be broken, but would steadily decline until Season 26 gave the BBC all it needed to cut the show completely.

 

It is lucky, however, that Season 24 even made it to air, as John Nathan-Turner, promised he would no longer be in the role of producer at the end of Season 23 was dragged back and told to fire Colin Baker, cast a new actor, and get scripts and a new script editor ready for production to start and airing to happen in the fall of 1987.  Time and the Rani was commissioned as Strange Matter by Nathan-Turner, who approached Pip and Jane Baker knowing that they could work quickly and within budget.  Luckily, Bonnie Langford had already signed on for a second year as companion Melanie, Kate O’Mara wished to return as the Rani, and Nathan-Turner was able to negotiate with the BBC to at least use Colin Baker in at least the first serial to give him a proper sendoff and regeneration, all before production began.  Baker, rightfully unhappy with how he was treated by the BBC in an unjust firing from his dream role, declined the offer to appear in the serial so the regeneration scene would become the opening of the story which the BBC then vetoed so it was decided the regeneration would be filmed with the new actor as the Doctor, face blurred with special effects as a pre-title sequence.  Nathan-Turner was successful in hiring Andrew Cartmel as script editor for the Season, a role he would fulfill until the cancellation in 1989.  Sadly, Cartmel had little input into Time and the Rani as Pip and Jane Baker had little respect for the new script editor due to his inexperience, forcing Cartmel to use Nathan-Turner’s influence as leverage to cut certain sequences before production began.  This absence of influence is felt in the finished version of Time and the Rani, as it’s a serial that suffers from a meandering plot.  The Rani’s plan isn’t fully explained until the final episode while the first episode has the Doctor as an amnesiac while Mel spends much of it running around the planet with a character who isn’t even named until the second episode.  The plan itself also makes little sense with the strange matter she is attempting to harvest will give her power, somehow.

 

Pip and Jane Baker’s script is one where the characterization is all over the place.  The Lakertyan’s while under some really good makeup from Lesley Rawstorne and performances from stalwart actors like Donald Pickering and Wanda Ventham, don’t actually have much characterization outside of being a race enslaved by the Rani.  The Rani’s Tetraps again have an interesting enough design, but they don’t have any motivation outside of servitude and eventual rebellion, although the rebellion doesn’t come.  There also seems to be a statement against outside help with the Lakertyan’s dumping the Doctor’s solution to their bee problem so they can be self-sufficient, but that really doesn’t work at anything.

 

Nathan-Turner had Sylvester McCoy in mind for the role of the Seventh Doctor, after seeing him in a production of The Pied Piper and being suggested to him by both McCoy’s agent Brian Wheeler and BBC producer Clive Doig.  The BBC requested screen tests with some other candidates which were written by Andrew Cartmel (and one later integrated into Dragonfire) opposite Janet Fielding which landed McCoy the part.  While the script is doing McCoy no favors, he manages to hold his own throughout the production.  There isn’t even a characterization down yet, just some traits but there is a charm to McCoy in every scene except a few early on where he is just getting into the groove of things.  The scenes in Colin Baker’s coat feel out of place, for good reason the costuming just doesn’t fit with McCoy as an actor or as a person (it’s far too big of a coat).   He and Kate O’Mara are shining off one another, both realizing that this script is one that must be taken with some elements of camp to make it work.  This is a story where the Rani disguises herself as Mel and claims Mel is the Rani after all, a plot point that only works with campy performances and that’s something that O’Mara delivers on.  The fandom at large is often harsh on Bonnie Langford, but like McCoy and O’Mara she is working admirably with the material she is given.  There is a sense of independence in her subplot, although not explored, as the first half of the story has her attempting to find and save the Doctor from the Rani and her first scene with the Doctor is one of the shining moments of the serial.

 

The serial’s direction was given to Andrew Morgan who clearly has talents that aren’t really being used here due to the location filming consisting of a standard Doctor Who quarry although the effects to the sky and early use of computer-generated imagery on a large scale while aged, is admirable.  Morgan also manages to make a lot of the studio sessions work well enough, but where he really shines is whenever there is a need for pyrotechnics, something that he will repeat and improve greatly upon the next year when he was contracted to direct Remembrance of the Daleks.  The music by Keff McCulloch is far too synth heavy, although his rendition of the Doctor Who theme and the new titles that accompany it is excellent.

 

Overall, the fascinating story of the troubled production of Time and the Rani goes a long way to explain why the story is so weak, mainly due to a weak script, the lack of a script editor, and a generally rushed production, it does not forgive it.  There are still some things to enjoy here, with Kate O’Mara dominating every scene she is in, McCoy developing the way he is going to play the Doctor as the story progresses, and Bonnie Langford holding her own in a script that really is doing her no favors, and of course the direction, but it is still a very weak start to a season that already had little support.  3/10.

The Dresden Files: Peace Talks by: Jim Butcher

 

Peace Talks is a lot.  It’s the long awaited sequel to Skin Game and was so big that Jim Butcher had to split it in two, with Battle Ground being published only a few months after, and as the title implies it’s all about peace talks between several factions.  Butcher entrenches the book with this sense of tension, the Fomor have been not necessarily a background threat for the last three books, but they’ve not been Dresden’s priority and since Harry is our point of view for the series, we don’t actually see them as often as the influence they hold.  He is also being attacked by all sides, the White Council getting ready to strip him of his official status of wizard and his brother, Thomas, being captured after apparently doing a murder.  Peace Talks is a book that has so many parts to juggle and, honestly, it’s just Act One of a clearly larger story, ending not on a cliffhanger, but a point of tension.  The ending itself is something that while it’s clear everything is about to hit the fan, read on its own it feels like there is a sense of completeness.  Now, I doubt Battle Ground is going to leave much of a gap in the timeline as it’s clear that everything is about to kick off, with one of the plotlines that drives this book forward being pinched off and put to the side just for the moment to be dealt with in a later novel.  It provides this beautifully emotional climax to the book as everything has fallen apart and Harry realizes just how little he actually knows about what has been happening in the wider world.

 

There is also this focus on the importance of family, with Butcher really following up from “Zoo Day” in developing the relationship between Harry and Maggie (and by extension Mouse) who are now all living together in an apartment.  Maggie being put in danger is a point of contention and this for the first time really delves into Harry’s own family traumas.  Maggie is still having panic attacks because of the events of Changes, but it is not being treated by Butcher poorly like other authors might.  It is something Maggie is going to have to face every day, but Harry has been suppressing quite a bit of trauma in regards to his childhood where both his parents died, his grandfather never revealed himself, and he eventually had to kill his mentor (the only consistent parent figure he had).  This is something that Butcher should have begun to do way back in Blood Rites, something that contributed to that book being incredibly weak, the worst of The Dresden Files as a whole.  But here, Butcher has evolved as a writer and knows just how to twist the knife to bring out Dresden’s trauma.  Thomas is in perpetual danger, beaten and broken after murdering one of the svartalfs, though not the one he was apparently trying to murder for reasons that aren’t revealed in this novel, but it seems like Battle Ground might actually cover that.  Harry is also confronted with Ebenezer McCoy, not as a villain, but as suspicious of Thomas’ White Court nature, but Harry refuses to tell his grandfather that Thomas is family and not a normal White Court vampire.  The climax with McCoy is wonderful in and of itself because it brings everything into stark contrast.

 

Overall, Jim Butcher clearly is writing the first act of something that brings The Dresden Files towards another escalation.  This is a book where Mab is outmatched as the Peace Talks find themselves unravelling very quickly with Harry stretched too thin to do anything about it.  There is a new god in town.  Pieces are being put in place with Goodman Gray from Skin Game being put in play to protect Justine, Butters having his role to play as a knight (though his appearance is all too brief), Thomas completely out of play and underneath Demonreach, and the Carpenters still none the wiser to what has happened to their daughter.  If the Sword of Damocles was hanging before, by the end of Peace Talks it has been cut and only falls flat since this doesn’t have an ending, just a pause in the action.  8/10.

Vanishing Point by: Stephen Cole

 

There has been something interesting about the last grouping of BBC Books 1990s/2000s Doctor Who novels that I have been reading.  Bunker Soldiers was the standout, brimming with great ideas and characters plus an interesting style of narration injecting something great into it.  Outside of that Escape Velocity was a fairly average end to the Earth arc, but was promising in the way that it ended reflecting the end of An Unearthly Child and EarthWorld just focused on telling a solid Doctor Who story.  But Rags took out quite a lot of my enthusiasm for the range and consuming Doctor Who things in general, resulting in a rage filled review, which while popular, is not the type of review I wish to write nor do I enjoy it.  This meant that Vanishing Point, the next book published and the third Eighth Doctor Adventure to feature Anji as a companion, may have had an uphill battle to get the book to come together, especially as it becomes clear that the editing situation at BBC Books was not conducive to actual editing.  Vanishing Point is perhaps a book that desperately needed the hand of an editor in focusing what it wanted to do.  The book is all over the place, starting in media res from the perspective of a supporting character which is not a bad way to start a novel although author Stephen Cole doesn’t give enough time to the character to explore who she is or really even establish much of the setting before the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji are introduced and the plot attempts to move forward.

 

The ideas at their heart should work and be an introspective science fiction tale.  It’s a tale all about the mixing of science and religion, with the religion all about this society where genetic engineering is heading towards a mythical “vanishing point” and the society’s God is a literal person.  There are also undercurrents of eugenics within the novel, something that reads as almost cynical fears about the burgeoning genetics research of the early 2000s which hasn’t exactly aged well and is just one of the many ideas.  Nathaniel Dark is one of Cole’s more interesting characters throughout the novel, though he isn’t actually the villain of the piece, but honestly he should be.  The character’s name is already one that fits a villain and there are implications that possibly the Daleks might be behind this somehow with “the Creator” being an expy for Davros which doesn’t work.  The Doctor, Fitz, and Anji are fine, Stephen Cole was the editor of the range before this point after all (even though editor doesn’t really edit and more gets all the Doctor Who releases from the BBC: books, VHS, audiobook, and DVD in order) and he clearly understands the Doctor and Fitz, though Anji might need more work and consistency as her only trait is dealing with the grief of losing Dave in Escape Velocity…despite EarthWorld doing such a good job of working the character through her grief in a clever way that managed to show it happening over the course of the book and not just saying it.  Now that doesn’t mean it can’t be mentioned, but her being in grief seems to be the one character trait Cole can pin down which is a shame.

 

Overall, Vanishing Point is a book with a lot of problems, possibly from the fact that Cole was writing another book at the same time.  There are moments that are really good and the ideas are solid behind the book, but it lacks a sense of identity and falls flat in opening with a good hook to bring readers in so there is a lack of a hold to keep going.  5/10.

The Dresden Files: Brief Cases by: Jim Butcher

 

Side Jobs while mixed in places was an anthology that was organized wonderfully around traveling through the timeline of The Dresden Files from lighter, fun stories, to darker, more reflective stories on the events of the later novels.  It’s such a winning formula that Brief Cases, the second short stories collection, took it and continued the idea.  However, unlike Side Jobs, Skin Game wasn’t a book that changed everything, it was just the last novel installment of The Dresden Files until 2020 brought Peace Talks and Battle Ground (which were originally intended to be one novel but were split due to length) and thusly Brief Cases doesn’t have as much of a necessity to deal with fallout for characters.  It did close with an original short story, “Zoo Day,” and was published only two years before the latest installments would be so for fans it was essentially a spring in a drought.  Brief Cases is also structured chronologically like Side Jobs, but features more variety in points of view for each of the short stories.  Of the 12 short stories, 6 are from the perspective of Harry Dresden, 2 from Molly Carpenter, 1 each from John Marcone, Waldo Butters, and Anastasia Luccio, and 1 switching between the points of view of Harry, his daughter Maggie, and Mouse.  The story introductions also generally didn’t go into detail on where these were published previously, so that information is being drawn from the wiki page (https://dresdenfiles.fandom.com/wiki/Brief_Cases) for further information.

 

The collection opens with the story from Luccio’s perspective with the pulpy titled “A Fistful of Warlocks” originally published in Straight Outta Tombstone.  From the title of both the story and the anthology it was originally published in, it is a Western, and that is perhaps why it’s a story I didn’t quite connect with me.  Westerns as a genre are something I’m not really interested in and haven’t consumed much of outside of knowing a lot of their tropes, and “A Fistful of Warlocks” is a story full of tropes.  This isn’t an entirely bad thing, it makes it a fairly fun and quick read, set before the time of Harry Dresden and following Luccio as she tracks down a warlock in the Wild West, meeting Wyatt Earp, and being attacked by other warlocks.  It is a story that doesn’t really have a nice conclusion, but ends with Luccio finding a vital piece of information on two of the warlocks featured in the story.  Now she is a very fun character to follow, but this one suffers from being a bit too disconnected to what’s going on in The Dresden Files proper.  Sure, the warlocks featured do have some major connections to Dead Beat, but this was a story where we didn’t really learn a whole lot more about Luccio or the warlocks because this is explicitly a prequel written after the fact.  It’s an issue with prequels in general which stops them from working since you have a character your audience is already going to have some understanding of where they’re going.  7/10.

 

The second and fourth stories in Brief Cases are the first two installments of a trilogy of stories included but split up and will be discussed in sequence with the third installmetn of the trilogy (the seventh in this installment) so going to the third story of the anthology, “AAAA Wizardry” we have another of the smaller stories.  This was part of a tabletop role playing game based around The Dresden Files and shows Harry teaching some young wizards about magic and kind of how it works as a frame for a story about an exorcism Harry had to perform.  It’s really quite a simple story and closely resembles micro-fiction, as the length makes it easy to read with one final twist about what’s causing the horrors of a family who’s children have been suffering from a bogeyman.  The twist itself is perhaps a bit too obvious, especially when you realize that the “AAAA” in the title stands for four A’s used in understanding magic.  This is a story that’s nothing new and I’ve seen done before in other places, but here it is still a lot of fun with both the frame and the story proper works to tell something that just works.  8/10.

 

The lighthearted “Curses” is next, which is a story that you’ll get more out of if you have a connection to Chicago, the Chicago Cubs, or Illinois in general.  This is Harry taking on the case to reverse the Billy Goat curse on Wrigley Field, something that came from a man being escorted out of a World Series game in the rain due to his smelly goat in 1945.  Now, the real world curse would be broken in 1945, but since Jim Butcher is a Chicago native and Harry is based in Chicago, it’s the perfect little story to tackle something insane like that.  Butcher writes it like a film noir, slowly going through the suspects with a mysterious client representing the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field because they don’t want the media even having the idea of them thinking the curse is an actual thing and the Cubs would like to win the World Series for once.  Harry then uses his detective skills to track down the pub William Sianis owned, and eventually the one who set the curse, the goat.  Yes, the curse was set by a goat.  Well, not really a goat, but a Fae, the king of the Tylwyth Teg, Gwynn ap Nudd, who was a fan of baseball but the game was sold out so Sianis had the idea of him disguising himself as a goat to get in and he did it a little too well.  The fake out and delve into the Nevernever here is honestly wonderful, it makes the story feel so unique and weird and the conclusion makes it all the better putting it near the top in terms of quality for the anthology.  10/10.

 

“Even Hand” gives readers an insight into the mind of Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, who has been in The Dresden Files since the very beginning and has steadily built up his power as a signer of the Unseelie Accords, making him a Baron in the supernatural world.  This short story allowing readers into his mind is really interesting since we explore how he operates within the mob, always at a distance and always to his organization’s own game.  This was published originally in Dark and Stormy Knights and the idea of Marcone as a dark knight is an interesting one, one that “Even Hand” duly explores as he goes out of his way whenever there are children involved.  Justine brings a child to him and asks for protection from the Fomor (the frog like creatures who popped up post Changes with the genocide of the Red Court).  Marcone also finishes the story by imploring Justine to getting the child to St. Mary of the Angels where she could be safe, again something very reflective of who Marcone is.  He begins the character taking care of an enemy in a very violent fashion, but after that moment there is a lot of class in his dealings from that point.  Ghost Story, Cold Days, and Skin Game all take their time to put Marcone nominally on the side of our heroes, though Skin Game does have him as the victim of the heist at the center of that novel, but Butcher uses this to remind readers that nominally is the key word.  Marcone is still power hungry and working only in his own interest which may be a portent of things to come.  9/10.

 

Now it’s time to discuss the Bigfoot trilogy of novellas, and yes they are novellas as all three of them are the three longest stories in Brief Cases.  “B is for Bigfoot” from Under My Hat: Ttales from the Cauldron, “I Was a Teenage Bigfoot” from Blood Lite 3: Aftertaste, and “Bigfoot on Campus” from Hex Appeal deal with Harry being hired thrice by Strength of a River in his Shoulders (shortened to River Shoulders), a Forest Person who are Bigfoot/Sasquaches/Yeti/etc. to protect his scion son, Irwin.  The trilogy itself develops and evolves as The Dresden Files evolves as they are set after Full Moon, Dead Beat, and Turn Coat respectively.  It is also important to note that these three were also published in Working for Bigfoot, a special edition of the three stories published by Subterranean Press in 2015.  “B is for Bigfoot” is a story which could easily have stood on its own and not really made for a trilogy, River Shoulders is worried that his son is being bullied by those in school and his gentle nature from his bigfoot heritage is influencing him to not be fighting back.  It’s a very human motivation for getting Harry involved, though it is made clear that he has to stay on the sidelines, only made worse by the fact that it’s supernatural threats which are causing the bullying.  It’s a nice version of early Harry and wraps up nicely, especially with the way Harry interacts with everyone unburdened by what he will become, but the story does get bogged down in explaining the bullies and the fact that the PE teacher is part of it is one of those things that feels really cliched.  The characters are solid, however, especially the supporting cast and Butcher clearly realizes that he has something special with these characters.  7/10.

 

“I Was a Teenage Bigfoot” continues the light natured tone of the previous short story in the trilogy, but it is one with hints of some of the darkness to come.  Irwin is sick with mono despite being a scion, something in The Dresden Files universe that are invulnerable to general human illness.  Harry is brought in to observe him by River Shoulders, with continual contact to Irwin’s mother, Dr. Helena Pounder.  Irwin actually realizes who Harry might be in this one though this is a really simple story.  Harry has to use deduction to understand what exactly is ailing Irwin by understanding what Irwin faces at this school, it’s a school whose director has gathered several scions as a possibility to hone the skills of scions subtly.  This is then subverted when it is revealed that the dean resorted to black magic on Irwin so he could reverse his male pattern baldness.  It’s such an absurd plot point that it makes the story really just fall into place as it’s secretly about dealing with adolescence and growing up without a father or a traditional family.  8/10.

 

The pinnacle of the trilogy is “Bigfoot on Campus” as this is a story set after Turn Coat, at a point where Jim Butcher was writing Changes and giving Harry a daughter of his own, with several years having passed, Irwin being in college in Oklahoma and having fallen in love with Connie Barrowill.  The story has a frame narrative with Harry in a jail cell explaining what happened on campus that evening where violence broke out due to Connie being not human, but a young vampire of the White Court whose father wishes her to come of age and kill Irwin.  What’s really interesting is that Jim Butcher does a really good job of setting up Irwin and Connie’s relationship in a relatively short period of time.  It’s not entirely three dimensional, but compared to some other relationships he’s written, it’s amazing to see it come together throughout the story as they vow to stay together despite both of them technically being monsters.  There’s also this great tension between Irwin and Harry, all because River Shoulders still hasn’t had built up the courage to meet his son, something that is rectified by the end of this story. Connie’s father, Charles, is also great, having some history with Dresden as one of the vampires at the events of the climax in Blood Rites although this is a retcon, but not a bad one.  It immediately creates some history for Charles as a character and gives sufficient reason for him to dislike Harry and be willing to make things harder for him.  It makes the story work all the better and leaves things open for further appearances of Irwin in the series (one that I believe has happened but not been collected in an anthology like this).  9/10.

 

The next two stories are those from the perspective of Molly Carpenter with “Bombshells” and “Cold Case” set after Ghost Story and Cold Days, respectively.  “Bombshells” explores her psyche during the period where she isn’t quite certain if Harry Dresden is going to be alive again, while he is being healed by Mab.  Again, this is a novella and not a short story, and an incredibly necessary one, especially since Molly Carpenter as seen in Ghost Story was a broken one and getting into her psyche is brilliant.  For much of this she’s paired with Andi and Butters, with Butters she takes advantage of his hospitality while Andi attempts to get through to her as a human being to come back to her senses.  This is complicated when Molly and Andi have to work together to infiltrate a stronghold when a treaty of non-aggression is being signed and of course shenanigans happen.  The treaty isn’t actually signed because of the ladies and a lot of the story reads like the title “Bombshells” was thought of before the plot though that isn’t much of a detriment, it just feels like Butcher wanted to write about powerful women infiltrating and causing explosions.  It just goes on a bit too long as a novella and either would have worked better as a tighter short story or as an actual novel with a deeper plot, but those of these suggestions would cause the story to be irreparably changed.  7/10.

 

“Cold Case” fairs better by being tighter and hitting a better subgenre of fantasy, specifically Lovecraftian horror as Molly, under the mantle of the Winter Lady, has to travel to Alaska where one of the Old Ones is sleeping.  The Sleeper is essentially Cthulhu and “Cold Case” is Butcher’s tribute to At the Mountains of Madness, playing on an isolated setting with a very small cast, and cultists causing cosmic horror.  It also explores Molly coming to terms with the Winter Court as an organization, simply because she is trying to be Harry in her actions and can’t.  The story pairs her with Warden Carlos Ramirez, a relatively important supporting character, and ends with Molly injuring him accidentally since as the Winter Lady she must remain a maiden to complete that part of the maiden, mother, and crone trinity.  It’s made work by the sacrifices, all children, being taken to be part of the Winter Court’s war against the Outsiders, giving Molly a real taste of what she has become.  9/10.

 

Butcher espouses some weird views about the American justice system in “Jury Duty” where Harry has jury duty, is selected, and solves a year-old murder with the help of Will Borden.  The inclusion of Will is just so Harry has a way of tracking down physical supernatural evidence using his werewolf powers, but his inclusion is a nice one.  It adds a bit of optimism as Harry has extreme cynicism about the justice system.  Now, I cannot tell if Butcher is using this story where a man is innocent but all of the evidence points to him being guilty of the murder, to be as clever as he implies about how the slow nature of the court system doesn’t work and is interfered with by asking easy questions, or if it’s examining the implications of having a hidden magical world underneath the normal world causing issues for normal humans.  The later would work better for the story being told, especially since the trial ends in a mistrial due to the White Court being responsible for the murder and a witness being found, but unable to be called due to the supernatural threat.  The former just doesn’t feel very well thought out, or coming to the proper conclusions when presented with the problems of the justice system.  Butcher isn’t exploring the systemic racism embedded in the justice system which is very weird in a story like this.  7/10.

 

“Day One” is the story from the perspective of Waldo Butters on his first day to be trained as a Knight of the Cross and is the weakest of the stories in Brief Cases.  It’s not bad by any means, Butters is a great protagonist and his interactions with Michael Carpenter are great.  Harry being a mentor to Butters and having to stay on the sidelines while he undergoes this quest is great and Butcher does make a good job of doing his best.  There’s also a great examination of Butters’ ideals and the way he deals with the trauma of slaying monsters.  6/10.

 

The final story is the one completely new installment with “Zoo Day” which explores what happens when Harry takes Maggie and Mouse to the zoo.  It’s the story that deals with the fact that Harry is a father and wants to be in the life of his daughter.  There are three narrators to this story, Harry, Maggie, and Mouse, all three telling of what happens that day from their perspective which gives great insight to who they are.  Harry is obviously nervous but making an actual connection with his daughter, realizing how to be a good role model and to spend time with her despite being the Winter Knight and protector of Demonreach while helping a young warlock because it is the right thing to do.  Maggie is Butcher’s brilliant exploration of post traumatic stress disorder through the eyes of a child.  She has a panic attack and is constantly dealing with voices in her head, but is attempting to come to terms with them.  This story has her chase them away through manifestation of haunts.  Mouse’s perspective is of the best of boys, always there for his friends and family but has to confront his evil brother who doesn’t like the fact that Mouse is subservient to humans which is kind of hilarious and dark all at the same time.  Honestly this, like “Aftermath” in Side Jobs is the apex of the collection.  10/10.

 

Perhaps it is because it includes stories written well into The Dresden Files’ publication, even when it is set earlier, but Brief Cases manages to be the superior short story collection in almost every way though there are some weaker links, but the highs are higher and there are more of them.  8/10.