Burning Heart - 2/10

"Kane mouthed something that sounded like 'offer ducks snake!'"

I found Burning Heart a really difficult read. Author Dave stone is clearly brimming with ideas, however this book does not have much of substance going on within it.

Positives

The 6th Doctor: ol sixie is written quite well here I'd say. He is an obnoxious arse to Peri near the beginning but in a charming, getting too carried away with himself  kinda way rather than genuinely cruel. They also bring up the Doctor acting off due to his botched regeneration, however I would have much preferred this be only insinuated to affect him during the Twin Dilemma than basically all of his first season.

The location: The picture painted by this book with all the different aliens described is great. More doctor who locations should have a variety of different species inhabiting them.

Queeg: His speaking gimmick was some much needed levity in the otherwise drab prose throughout the rest of the book.

Negatives:

Pacing: It takes about 100 pages to get to the point the blurb describes. This would be fine if there was good characters and world building keeping me entertained instead. There wasn't.

Overstuffing: There are SO many different groups of characters and none of them get properly fleshed out. The only likeable side character is a comedy relief alien called Queeg as mentioned above. On top of this we spend so much time with these side characters without the doctor or peri in the first half of the book and there is really no reason to care about what is happening.

Peri: This is not Peri. Hates travelling with the Doctor and is taken in by a racist extremism group quite easily. Sure she is influenced by the 'node' to be the worst version of herself but this is no version of her I recognise.

The node: This story tackles how people can be influenced by racist extremism and radical religious groups thanks to their charismatic leaders under times of hardship. Oh wait no they were all just influenced because of the node. It takes away from the real horror and message by giving a technobabble reason the population were being so horrible.