We journey all the way back to 2014 for the second War Doctor story ever written, I say second cos only a month prior the War Doctor featured in a short story in The Shakespeare Notebooks, so that’s a bit of a dampener on what ideally should’ve been his first. Engines of War depicts the War Doctor’s final adventure leading into Day of the Doctor as after a failed assault on the Dalek fleet massing near the Eye of Tantalus, the TARDIS crashes on the planet Moldox where the Doctor rescues a local resistance fighter named Cinder. Curious as to what the Daleks are up to, the Doctor and Cinder infiltrate their base and what the Doctor will find will truly be a horrific discovery, but more horrifying still is that once he brings this news to the Time Lords, events will unfold that will change the way he sees his people forever.

As a story meant to bring the War Doctor to life, this one's a massive success, a lot of people forget but this is one of the first written works to truly dive into the Time War, we get our first proper look at how the Time War has ravaged the universe and affected those involved. With some nods to references made in Modern Who but also throwing in a lot of its own creativity. We get our first look at the Time Lords and the war has altered their views on other life forms and how far they're prepared to go to survive. Although this is where some of the issues start to creep up. For one thing the story doesn't do a good job lining up with the War Doctor's decision to wipe out the Time Lords, admittedly it wasn't mentioned in Day of the Doctor either but the whole reason the Doctor was forced to kill his own people was because they were threatening to destroy the universe with "the final sanction". The Doctor in this story decides to commit double genocide because of what the Time Lords planned to do to stop the Daleks at the Eye of Tantalus and the collateral damage. Which is fine in the context of reading this in 2014, but here we are years later with well over a hundred more stories set in the Time War that have shown the Time Lords to do things just as terrible if not worse which begs the question why now did the Doctor decide to take action against his people. And the story itself even shows some Time Lords to still have redeemable qualities, I just didn't feel the story did a good job justifying the Doctor deciding to destroy his own world. We also get a side villain named Karlax who the story indicates has some history with the Doctor but we never actually know what that history is, and his reveal of being a clear antagonist just felt a bit sporadic, considering how it wasn't even him who suggested using the Tear of Isha, instead it's given to a different character who's later shown to be more cowardly and then helps the Doctor to escape. Just felt like the writing for Karlax and the Castellan was a bit back to front and Karlax's motivations and hatred for the Doctor wasn't well developed.

Aside from that, it is still a great read, it does the job of giving the War Doctor his own spotlight and marking the beginning of further work to be done with the character.