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

22 - Conundrum

Doctor Who thrives on change and experimentation, even if it doesn’t always work out.  Fortunately, when Conundrum swings for the fences, the ball doesn’t land for 250 glorious pages.  Many of the earlier books in this range benefited from the new format, but this story was the first that only works as a novel and nothing else.

The Doctor, Ace, and Benny land in a sleepy English village, which seems to be populated entirely by pulp cliches. There’s the retired superhero Norman Power, the Hardy Boys-esque Adventure Kids, a witch named Rosemary Chambers and a priest hunting her down, a serial killer on the loose, a film-noir private detective from the States, and a psychic investigating the strange happenings of the town.  It’s a bizarre, nostalgic collage of characters that seem haphazardly thrown together, and before long it becomes clear why…  The Doctor is trapped in the Land of Fiction once again!

Steve Lyons seizes the opportunity to weave a self-referential, tongue-in-cheek narrative that proves itself to be a worthy successor to The Mind Robber.  The third-person omniscient narrator begins making remarks to the audience, and before long we realize that the Master of the Land himself is talking to us as he writes the book in real time.  Several of the plot points rely on the relationship between the “writer” and “characters;” for instance, the Doctor makes up technobabble to explain Norman’s powers, and when the Master (no relation) uses this plot point later, it’s revealed that the Doctor tricked him by lying about the properties of a real force, effectively building a backdoor for himself.  As in any good mystery novel, perceptive readers can also pick up on earlier details to guess at the reveals.  Norman Power is the only character given any significant amount of depth (his scenes with Benny are some of the most heartfelt sections of the book), and we soon learn that’s because he’s a real person, unlike all of the cliched works of fiction around him!  It’s all of the little things that make Conundrum such a treat, and I could go on and on about it.  The Master’s little remarks verge into Douglas Adams territory sometimes, and it’s so fun to see him write himself out of corners, memory-wiping Ace or cutting to a different scene when the narrative is in trouble.  It’s a glorious story that just wouldn’t work on TV, given how reliant it is on the prose.

This alternate universe cycle has produced three of the best books in the series so far, and I’m loving the momentum.  Especially if you liked The Mind Robber, you’ll love Conundrum!

“'It's only the same as your TARDIS!

'How do you know about that?'

Mel thought for a moment. 'Sorry,' he said finally. 'Continuity error. You never did tell me that, did you?' This is getting just a little out of hand, I think.

Best to end it all now.”

This novel was fantastic, I love the style in which it’s told, through the master of the land of fiction, the prose and creative use of narration in this book make it one of the most enjoyable intriguing NAs so far, arguably the most fun I’ve had reading a virgin new adventure, when the twist was finally hit that the crew were in the land of fiction I was genuinely shocked! The meta stuff was great, I’m not sure how to explain what I mean by that but take one look at the quote above and you can kind of tell, this story was crazy and when they do meta stuff well it just works , and Steve Lyons gets it, I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself but the plot and the medium through which the plot is told is just brilliant , it’s not a super emotional book, there are some good character moments (and some bad but we’ll get into that in a minute) but you’re more so reading this book for a whacky mystery novel that’s quite brutal at times. The bad parts however come from the characterization of ace, I think there are some good scenes between her, Benny and the doctor (together and separately) however at times ace just acts extra cruel for no reason and kind of out of character, though I like how we really get to see into the relationship between her and the doctor, as well as Benny and the doctor, I’m ready for them to start healing their relationships than their relationships constantly being shattered over and over, and I hope no future as I’ve been told by others starts to let them heal and make them feel like friends or at least pals again. Overall great book! Can’t wait for Lyons next novel and sequel, Head Games!