After reading all four books he has written set in the
Doctor Who universe, I perhaps think Simon Bucher-Jones is better suited
for writing short fiction than novel length Doctor Who and Doctor Who
spin-off adventures and that is no better exemplified than Grimm Reality,
his second Eighth Doctor Adventure cowritten with Kelly Hale. Grimm Reality Or The Marvellous Adventures
of Doctor Know-All are Bucher-Jones’ and Hale’s tribute to the fairy tales
of the Brother’s Grimm (and the like) but in a Doctor Who context,
attempting to mash together several fairy tales and fairy tale tropes into a
single novel. Primarily Cinderella
and Jack and the Beanstalk come to mind when reading the book, though at
different points, while being wrapped in two alien races on the planet Albert
and the science fiction tropes of quantum activity and black holes. Now, blending a science-fiction story and
fairy tales is actually nothing new for Doctor Who, Paul Cornell did it
excellently in Oh No It Isn’t!, the inaugural New Adventure led by
Bernice Summerfield, and where it succeeds is perhaps where Grimm Reality most
readily fails. Oh No It Isn’t! is
a book that doesn’t attempt to always take itself seriously, reveling in the
absurdity of the pantomime and fairy tales Bernice finds herself in, while
Bucher-Jones and Hale take the direct opposite approach, making Grimm Reality
a book taking itself all too seriously.
This means that the morals of fairy tales and cultural legends play
themselves essentially straight here, which isn’t a bad thing, but in the structure
of a novel means that there isn’t entirely one thesis that the book can come
to. Had Grimm Reality been split
into multiple shorter works of fiction from the pair about the Doctor, Fitz,
and Anji on Albert, it would have flowed better and tightened focus in on individual
ideas that could be resolved long before the book ends.
Bucher-Jones as an author also suffers from having a
style that is almost impenetrable for the casual reader. He has a tendency to use purple prose that is
almost incomprehensible, most apparent in The Death of Art, his first
novel, where the plot is a rather thin mystery that suffers from a writing
style concerned with how ‘clever’ the author thinks he is. That air of cleverness is here in Grimm
Reality especially whenever the science fiction elements appear, often
cloaked in the fairy tale elements which are often made needlessly
complex. Bucher-Jones’ penchant for
complexity worked brilliantly in The Taking of Planet 5 but that was dealing
with more esoteric matters while Grimm Reality simply isn’t. This makes the book drag and fall into the
trap of boring its reader. Bucher-Jones
and Hale also don’t really have a consistent characterization or any real idea
on how Anji Kapoor should be portrayed, which is such a shame after books like EarthWorld,
The Year of Intelligent Tigers, and The City of the Dead handle her
really well. She makes a deal with a
witch early on which is this tremendous lapse in judgment, being written as not
taking any skepticism of the deal itself, and is later essentially put into the
role of Cinderella as she continuously tries to wish for things that will help
her situation. While the ironic ways
they do not work have a tendency to be fun and one of the better portions of
the book, it doesn’t feel like what her character would or should be
doing. It’s a shame as the Doctor and
Fitz are excellent, Fitz enjoying the fantastical nature of the setting as
someone who grew up in the age of 1950s B movies and The Lord of the Rings
and the Doctor being romantically aloof about the situation. This is a slight shame on the front of the
Doctor after Lloyd Rose’s treatment of the character in The City of the Dead,
but on the other hand there is a nice pause between two books with emotionally wrenching
reputations.
Overall, Grimm Reality Or The Marvellous Adventures
of Doctor Know-All is at it’s core a Simon Bucher-Jones novel, something that
will never be perfectly appealing to me, falling into many of that author’s
traps despite sharing credit with Kelly Hale.
It covers ground that has been done better by other authors but is at
least an inconsequential book in the grand scheme of things with some nice
ideas that need to be in a different format to really, truly work. 4/10.
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