Virgin New Adventures #22 - "Conundrum" by Steve Lyons

People always judge the Virgin New Adventures by its worst moments. “It’s so edgy”, “it’s confusing”, “it’s oversexualised”: this is all true for the worst books but people never look past that. They never look at the good ones. And when you do, when you go looking for the quality hidden behind the Timewyrm: Genesyses and the The Pits, you find some of the best Doctor Who that’s ever been written. It’s taken a good few years, but I think I’ve finally found a worthy book to challenge Nightshade as my favourite Doctor Who novel. Steve Lyons is a writer I’m familiar with, but I’ve never seen him write like this before. We’re back in rural England for yet another win for the VNAs: or are we?

The town of Arandale is a strange place: with witches, visiting private investigators and a retired superhero making up but a fraction of the population. A fractured TARDIS team arrives in Arandale just in time to see events boil over, and with them a terrible secret that knows the Doctor of old.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

The first thing that jumped out to me about Conundrum was our main cast. From the moment they arrive, still hot blooded from the last few adventures, I knew I was in for something special. Let’s begin with the Doctor, because he hasn’t been this good since Love and War. That dark and brooding quality that kind of derailed his involvement in The Left-Handed Hummingbird is used fantastically here, this is how Seven should be written in every story he appears: brilliant, calculating, a little unstable even, he is pitch perfect from start to finish and Lyons captures his mannerisms incredibly throughout. But our real stars are our companions. 

I say the same thing about New Ace as I do the VNAs - people only look at her worst moments. New Ace, when written well, may just be my favourite companion ever. She is incredible here, her vulnerable side showing itself for the first time since Love and War and leading to some flawless scenes of character growth. One specific scene, just consisting of a conversation between her and Benny in a pub, may very well be my favourite scene from the VNAs so far. Whilst we’re on the subject, let's move onto Benny. I’ve been saying for the past few books that I haven’t really “got” Benny or that I’ve got her but I’m not really “loving” her the same way others do. And let me just say, to all the Benny fans in the world, I was wrong. The absolute perfect foil to Ace and a mature, unglamourised travelling companion I’ve been wanting the show to introduce for years. Her relationship with retired superhero Norman is an absolute highlight of the book.

And yes, I did say retired superhero; Conundrum gets weird sometimes. But that’s alright, all great art has to at least be a little weird. So, I unfortunately knew the twist going in and I was aware from the start that we were in the Land of Fiction. A little annoying, but it didn’t really hamper my enjoyment too much. Let me just start by saying this is an absolutely worthy continuation of The Mind Robber, that even surpasses it in a good few places. This is as experimental with its prose as The Mind Robber is with its visuals. The tricks Lyons pulls off here are incredible, especially in the climax: the Doctor rewriting the story, Ace turning into words and seeing other VNAs (like the actual books, I think Deceit shows up), the Master of the Land of Fiction trying desperately to capture the TARDIS in increasingly bizarre ways. I think it’s the most fun I’ve had reading a Doctor Who book.

And what’s great about Conundrum is that all this weirdness is cut with a biting sense of dry humour. Conundrum’s really funny, and what’s great is that most of the jokes are worked into the format. The narrator being the Master of the Land really helps with this, as his additions to the book are usually blindingly clever. Actually, The Master of the Land really makes for a brilliant antagonist; the idea of an over imaginative teenager gaining access to a realm of pure fiction is a brilliant continuation to The Mind Robber and is realised excellently. The ideas, the plot holes, him being tricked by childish egotism, he’s both incredibly threatening and incredibly pathetic in a way that works shockingly well.

But it’s the real meat of the book is where the real quality lies. This is an excellently placed plot that throws reveal after reveal at you without ever feeling stale. And that’s funny, because the plot we get is inside a second plot: everything’s a machination of the Master of the Land. The use of clichés and continuity errors to represent this are fantastic. Another thing that really aids the book is our sidecast, who all feel very purposefully eccentric and different. Despite all being written literally as one note characters, a lot hold a surprising amount of depth and it’s often very hard to let them go.

A final note I’d like to throw to this book is its use of continuity; the VNAs despite being a chronological series, has only really started to feel like it during the Alternate Time Cycle and only really bursts forth in this book. The references to previous adventures, the character arcs continuing on from The Left-Handed Hummingbird, the tease for No Future, I love everything like this because it really makes the books feel like a consecutive, satisfying story and is rewarding for somebody who sat through them all, even the crap ones.

However, very few pieces of art are without flaws and Conundrum has one glaring one in my opinion. There are a lot of things happening in this book - by design - and a lot of the time Lyons struggles to juggle them all. There are a good number of places in the book where a character or a plot thread has been completely sidelined for a while and it’s like whiplash when they suddenly come back. The most egregious example of this is in the third act; because nothing we’ve been sitting through has been real, characters and plot threads start to wrap up and are overshadowed by the Doctor’s fight against the Master of the Land. This is all intentional but it does work to undermine a lot of what we’ve just been reading and causes a number of characters to be unceremoniously killed off. But it’s not really too big a negative because it’s purposefully a weak ending and is replaced with a different, even more interesting conclusion.

I had forgotten what a really good Doctor Who book was like. That fiery sense of imagination, that enrapturing feeling of being thrown head first into some quality 90s sci-fi, the alien worlds, the new ideas. This is what the VNAs were made for and what some miserable f**ks choose to ignore. Not everything is Transit, guys, you can calm down now. Conundrum reminded me of why I love Doctor Who so much: it’s a mad, unique, creative thrill ride with some brilliant ideas and some all time great characters. And it’s absolutely worthy of its score.

10/10

Pros:

+ The Doctor is at his absolute best

+ Ace and Benny are brilliantly developed

+ Memorable side cast of purposefully quirky characters

+ Ingeniously experimental

+ Has a fantastic sense of humour

+ The villain is wonderfully characterised

+ Great use of continuity

Cons:

- Struggles to juggle all its plot threads

- A lot of the story is concluded rather abruptly