| FALLS THE SHADOW by Daniel O'Mahony |
| Story 32 Synopsis: The TARDIS is hijacked, and lands in the cellar of a spooy country house. Ace meets a giant insect, and then is found as an intruder by Harry Truman. The Doctor meets a botanist, Wedderburn, who assumes he has come to meet Professor Winterdawn. Bernice meets a nutter with a knife and is lucky to escape. Winterdawn is enthused to learn the Doctor understands his researches into quantum theory, and together they journey outside reality. But then become trapped there. Two strangers, Gabriel and Tanith, arrive with immense powers. They kill Bernice, sending her spirit to Cathedral, a place built to bring diverse cultures together. Ace barely survives. The Doctor and Winterdawn are rescued by a grey stranger, who built Cathedral. Gabriel and Tanith destroy the grey man in battle, and then use Bernice to kybosh Cathedral, so they can leech its power and unmake the universe. But the grey man is not dead, and breaks their connection to the power of Cathedral. Bernice is restored. Ace, having been badly treated, stabs Gabriel and shoots Tanith. Cathedral falls, and the Doctor takes his friends safely away in the TARDIS. |
| Review:- It's another spooky country house, but this time the odds seem stacked too high, and there is blood on everyone's hands... Coming so soon after Strange England, this might seem at first set for a retread of themes, but really even the setting is used differently. Winterdawn's experiments recall the interstitial antics of The Time Monster, whilst Wedderburn and Justin Cranleigh nod (eventually) to Black Orchid. But it is Gabriel and Tanith who are the stars of this show. Superbeings pretty much always get my vote, and these two are particularly impressive examples. The problem, though, is that once they arrive, the plot tails off badly. With the Doctor on ice in the middle 1/3 of the book, all that remains is for the baddies to imperil the goodies. This gets old very quickly. Once Bernice is killed off, then the burden falls on Ace's shoulders, and that was something that had got old long before. With her exit coming up in just a few books' time, the reader is treated to yet another mirror for her character in Jane Page, assassin. Whereas the sentient insect Qxeleg turns out to be quite bright once removed from his panic situation, Jane is nothing but a killing machine. Both these provide examples of alternate realities, which ties in with Gabriel and Tanith being representations of the pain caused by the extinction of parallel realities, or something. Though provides a fair excuse for their power, it does rather lead to the inevitable problem of how to defeat them. The grey man is a more interesting creation, even if he frustratingly never gets a proper name (is he the Grey Guardian?). His Cathedral is a rather tenuous idea, and the Mandelbrot Set make for a rather silly bunch - I was only reminded of the giant stone head from the film Zardoz, which was probably not the idea. The tetrahedron is just a weapon in the wrong hands, as ever, and Winterdawn comes across as an increasingly foolish man. He is given convenient speeches about his motivations that perhaps are meant to make him sound noble and justified, and actually make him sound even more of a berk. Fortunately, Page gets much the same treatment and comes out even worse. As for the Doctor, all he can do is hope for the best and it's astoundingly lucky that the grey man survives his multiple deaths to explain the happy ending (which references Superman II, and probably others). After that, all that remains is to go back to the TARDIS and leave the grey man to his devices. When I originally read this book, I enjoyed it, and on another go, I still did, but it's clear that it's not very good. It's clearly far too long for its own good, and takes too long to get to the real guts of the plot. Terrible ciphers like Wedderburn the bonkers botanist leave a nasty taste in the mouth, and the heroes don't save the day. And the cover is absolute crap. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of this book. |