I once had a routine for how to choose the books I would read.  I alternated between an EDA, a PDA, a New Series book and a Bernice Summerfield New Adventure (this was after I had completed the New Adventure and Missing Adventures many moons ago).   I actually had to look online to check which book came before Frontier Worlds in the order (The Taking of Planet 5) because I couldn’t remember the last one I had read.  So picking up Frontier Worlds was a slightly strange experience as, unlike with the Past Doctor novels, there are running themes and character arcs which are developed across the various novels.  The principal one of the run of books Frontier Worlds is part of is all about Compassion.  Fortunately, as I’m reading this book in isolation, the themes are not too strong and it doesn’t lead to a confusing read.

The Doctor, Fitz and Compassion arrive on the planet Drebnar and become embroiled in scientific experiments and company politics stemming from an alien plant called a Raab.  It has landed on the planet and is stranded.  The locals are exploiting the plant and using it to improve crops, defeat the competition and ultimately change their own DNA.  Fitz and Compassion manage to infiltrate one of the main companies, Frontier Worlds, whilst the Doctor flits between them and their rivals, Reddenblak, working behind the scenes to expose the truth.

I found Frontier Worlds to be a bit of a slog.  It isn’t badly written, far from it, and there are some good authorial choices and exciting set pieces, but I found I was taking a long time to finish the book and my lasting impression was one of drabness and a little lack of vitality.  I think part of the issue may be with the character of Compassion.  She is, in contrast to her name, so dispassionate about events that I found it difficult to care.  Fitz, on the other hand, is a character I have liked in many of his previous novels.  He has some fun in this book, working under the pseudonym Frank Sinatra, but ultimately he spends a little too much of the book reacting to Compassion and trying to understand her, which is a fairly fruitless task.  When he isn’t doing this, he is agonising over his relationship with a local woman, who is then murdered, which leads to him agonising over her death instead.  The Doctor is very much in the background of the book and, as I rather like the novel 8th Doctor, this was a little frustrating.

There are some great set pieces though: Compassion and Fitz’s trek through the jungle; the Doctor crashing a flyer into the corporation building’s foyer and then confronting the villain of the piece whilst the employees look on aghast; Compassion’s virtual rifle through the company’s files; the Doctor’s various encounters with a robot defending a weather control platform.

I also liked the conceit of Fitz recounting the story.  Initially it just seems to be Anghelides choice to write in the first person which is fine, and not unusual in these novels, particularly for the character of Fitz for whom we often get an internal monologue.  But here, Anghelides gives it a little twist when, in the last third of the book, we find that all the first person point of view from Fitz is him recounting to the Doctor what has happened whilst the Doctor has been away doing his bit to solve the mystery.  It’s a clever conceit and did make me smile.

The parallels between this story and The Seeds of Doom are quite apparent, possibly too much so, but Anghelides doesn’t dwell too much on the body horror aspect of humans becoming like plants, and spends more time on the internal and external company politics.  Maybe this is another reason why I find it all a little uninvolving as politics, of any kind, tends to leave me cold.

Not the greatest of the books I’ve read but a solid adventure with enough happening to hold the interest.  I’ll be interested to see how Compassion’s character is developed (I know what is coming) but as a character I still find her distance and lack of empathy a little irritating and frustrating.