9️⃣🔽 → EXTREMELY GOOD!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: "LOVE AND WAR"

Love and War is a momentous piece of Doctor Who prose by Paul Cornell. Not only does it combine a romance story with an effective alien invasion plot, but it is also the introduction of time-travelling archaeologist Professor Bernice Summerfield. It is also a sequel to Frontier in Space of sorts, as it plays out in Heaven, a planet inhabited jointly by humans and Draconians after the war between the two races.

The state of Heaven and the alliance between humans and Draconians are touched upon, but the latter species never shows up properly, which is a pity. Other races, such as Sontarans and Daleks, are also mentioned.

There's good time devoted to exploring Heaven, the Travellers, the archaeological dig, and the Library, as well as the Puterspace and its strange visions.

One of my favourite moments is the first meeting between the Doctor and Benny; they hit it off right away. Another great moment is the one where it is revealed that Jan is a pyrokinetic; this made him instantly more interesting to me.

What's confusing is Ace's state here. She was coldly left on an alien planet all alone by the Doctor at the end of the previous novel, Nightshade, yet here she is travelling with him again as if nothing had happened. She spends a good chunk of the book together with the ragtag group of musicians and travellers and quickly falls in love with one of them, Jan. Their relationship brings a sweet romantic element to the story, but it sort of comes out of nowhere and ends as quickly as it begins. Her previous love interest, Robin, gets a fleeting mention.

I truly appreciate the time put into exploring Ace's past through her relationship with her mother and former love interest Julian. She also gets the opportunity to properly deal with the ghosts of her past.

Cornell writes with a mature, immensely readable style. He's not afraid to use mature language or explain graphic transformations but doesn't make things needlessly convoluted like he did with parts of Timewyrm: Revelation.

The Puterspace and the stuff going on inside of it are confusing at first, but once the Doctor enters for the first time, it begins making more sense, as well as bringing plenty of tension to the story. It functions as a pretty thinly veiled allegory for hallucinogenic drugs.

The fungoid creature featured here, the Hoothi (previously mentioned in The Brain of Morbius), formed of a hive mind from thousands of absorbed people, is a very traditional but very effective monster. And their plan to use corpses as an army is effectively creepy. Phaedrus is a pawn in their plans, first shown to be nothing but vile and calculated, but later revealed to have a very humane and tragic motivation behind his actions.

The Doctor is once again manipulative, to the point where he sacrifices Jan to save the entire planet. This is the second novel in the row where the Doctor directly prevents Ace from pursuing her romantic interests, and this time it leads to Ace's explosive exit from the TARDIS.

Cornell ties up the book nicely and takes on Benny as the new full-time companion. The last third of the novel is fast-paced but can turn somewhat muddled.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS: 

• Cool how fellow Doctor Who fan and writer Paul Magrs appears in the book as a minor supporting character.