The Book of the Still by: Paul Ebbs

 

Perhaps it’s because it has been such a long time since I’d dipped back into the adventures of the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji, but I found their involvement to be the best part of Paul Ebbs’ Doctor Who debut The Book of the Still.  Okay, this isn’t really doing much to move forward the larger arc, but Paul Ebbs as a writer is clearly overflowing with ideas on what he wants to do with this book that The Book of the Still is at its core a fascinating read.  Structurally, it begins at the end with an epilogue opener and prologue closer, both written with this very light tone of an author beaming with the fact that he is getting the chance to play in this little sandbox.  The Eighth Doctor Adventures as a series of novels often likes to play around with the idea of the Doctor being unable to stop things, often making the Eighth Doctor far more deadly and dangerous than the Seventh Doctor before him, paradoxically with an almost lighter attitude towards the universe being on the surface.  The Book of the Still is Ebbs’ one chance to really explore that, wrapping the titular book as in a roundabout way a take on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but for stranded time travelers, plus the actual plot involving the creation of a species that should not exist means there’s a lot of influence on the novel from other eras of Doctor Who.  The plot itself actually wraps itself up nicely by the end, sadly being perhaps the weakest element outside of Ebbs brimming with ideas.  When you get to the end of it, despite Ebbs using his structure to be intentionally backwards, it’s a simple creation of a paradox that the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji are technically only tangential to actually happening.

 

Despite the simplicity of the plot, being split into Anji doing the actual work, Fitz having a fabulous romance and heist for the actual book, and the Doctor just trying to keep everyone alive while being a prisoner himself, it’s actually a lot of the set pieces that Ebbs includes that really make The Book of the Still stand out.  There is a museum of locks, a masquerade ball, and several high-tension chases that are at the very least competently written.  The idea of the villains literally being the Unnoticed is another great conceit for storytelling, the way they eventually come about is perhaps a bit obvious in hindsight, Ebbs is tributing a bunch of Doctor Who with this.  The supporting cast is also quite small, only really having five characters because this is attempting to replicate what possibly could have been done on television in I suppose 2002 when this was published (or possibly recalling the cast sizes of Big Finish Audio Dramas as Ebbs had written The Greatest Shop in the Galaxy around the same time).  Yet, for whatever reason this is a novel that just doesn’t ever quite add up.  It’s certainly a well-written book, the plot is interesting and fun, the characters are brimming across the page (there’s this one moment where Fitz nearly realizes that he actually loves the Doctor yet for whatever reason the BBC Books range never makes that connection proper), but somehow it is held back because there are almost too many ideas.  Despite hitting both the page count of approximately 280 pages, plus enough of a word count to use a smaller font size while keeping the hard page limit of these books, it doesn’t seem to have enough time to explore everything that it wants to.

 

Overall, despite having several problems with how everything adds up, The Book of the Still is actually a very solid little adventure that puts a lot of classic Doctor Who ideas together.  Really what’s impressive is actually Ebbs’ strengths as a novelist establishing a surreal mood that while clearly being inspired by Douglas Adams isn’t trying to be or even emulate Douglas Adams.  There are problems but it made me realize how much I still love this particular team.  6/10.