| WOODEN HEART by Martin Day |
| Story 15 Synopsis: The Doctor finds a signal from a ship, the Castor, which appears to be abandoned. Investigating, he and Martha find a prison hold full of hundred-year-old corpses. But through a door, they come into a strange jungle land, and find a village where children have been disappearing mysteriously. The Doctor suspects something is wrong with the village, and urges Martha that they should try and return to the spaceship. But when they are attacked, Martha stays behind. The Doctor is attacked by a dark shadowy creature that focuses on all the evil in his life. He survives it, and finds a way through to the creature at the heart of the ship. Many years before, the creature was found and used as a storage for all the evil in chosen criminals. This had given rise to the shadowy thing. The trapped creature had devised a fantasy world, to try and find some good to counteract the evil. Martha's selfless choice to remain in the village had provoked a sense of joy, and when she finds a way back to the ship, she brings a village elder, the Dazai, who willingly subsumes the evil shadow, allowing the other creature to lose its guilt, and lead the ship into a safer part of the cosmos, where the people of the village can resume their lives. |
| Review:- My initial misgiving for this book was it was another of those "title first, plot second" efforts, cf. The Stone Rose. Fortunately, it's not quite as bad as that, even if the title seems pretty arbitrary. The central mystery of the book is how the secondary world of the village can be connected to the drifting Castor. The explanation is workable but dull, and there are far better books than this that examine the nature of crime and punishment. The situation in the village is also pretty familiar, but nicely written for all that. Perhaps the single element of interest is that Saul's difficult relationship with his brother Petr is exacerbated when it turns out that Petr's son Thom is actually the son of Saul. Beyond this, the jungle setting, wise old woman, nasty monsters and forbidden island, all come across with little interest bar that accorded in any fair hearing. Perhaps the idea of the vanishing children is meant to create drama, but it totally fails to do so. The Doctor and Martha seem fairly detached from things, too. Whilst his concern for her possible fate is understandable, it doesn't really carry far, and once the explanations start to come in the final third, the drama slows correspondingly. This is best typified when the boat carrying Petr, Saul and Martha is attacked by numerous sea beasts, but takes pages to sink. The mild dread of a shadow creature thriving on evil might enliven another book, but is one more tired element in an uninspiring book. On the whole, there is little to say about a book where so much has been handled before, better. |
| Disclaimer: I've read the book. |