| AUTUMN MIST by David A. McIntee |
| Story 24 Synopsis: The TARDIS lands on Earth again, during wartime. The Doctor, Fitz and Sam get split up, and the TARDIS topples into a river. Fitz works with the Nazis, and helps free a special prisoner of theirs. Sam is helped by American GI's, but later captured by Nazis and shot dead. The Doctor helps at an Allied hospital, and is drawn to the mystery of disappearing bodies. He is contacted by a strange lady whom he realises is the Sidhe Queen. The Sidhe also take care of Sam, restoring her. Their realm is being infected by the Beast, aliens that the Doctor recently met in 1963, and by the knock-on effects of WW2. The Sidhe King is fomenting chaos by working with the Nazis and the Allies. The Doctor manages to trick him and closes the rift between the Sidhe land and the real world. Sam tells him she wants to go home. |
| Review:- Set in Winter, published in Summer and titled Autumn, this book is a mess. The Sidhe alone are broadly interesting enough to be the focus of a story, but when it becomes clear that Oberon is just being malevolent because it's his raison d'etre, then interest fades rapidly. His brief supposed jealousy at the Doctor seems to be a woefully drab red herring. The Nazis are not much better. The Battle of the Bulge is rendered tedious, which perhaps it was. Once it becomes clear that Leitz and Lewis are just two sides of the same coin, trying to double cross the Sidhe to later attack the Russians, then the reader must ask if the book is supposed to be trying to depict historical realism, or just arguing that Communism was slightly more worrying than Fascism? Or is it too much to read messages into a book like this, or is it that subtexts are examined because the main text is such a drag? Sam dies except she doesn't, which is a pretty tired and pointless plotline. How can death be given its impact when characters recover from it? Fitz gets to betray his past by pretending to be a Nazi, and has to see the Beast survive to go on and kill his mother, as shown in The Taint. But at least he is a character with depth, which makes all the difference. Other characters such as Bearclaw and Garcia have fair back-stories that allow for sympathy at their plights, and the senseless death of the latter is a poignant, jarring end to the story. As for the Doctor, he shows little interest in the Sidhe, but still causes trouble with the management. His audacious solution to Oberon is sadly executed with calm brio and a lack of desperation. There is no sense of danger, and thus no cause for interest. Mercifully short, this book is a surprising failure considering its normally reliable author. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of the book. |