Sword of Forever

I realise lots of people like the work of Jim Mortimore, such as Campaign and the BF audio, The Natural History of Fear, but I’m going to raise my hand and admit that, for me, he is my least favourite writer of Doctor Who fiction – his prose and I just don’t get on. I’ve read a number of his books such as Campaign and Eye of Heaven and they share similarities with The Sword of Forever – specifically a non-linear narrative.

I coped with this structure when reading Eye of Heaven and, looking back at my review for that novel, seemed to quite enjoy it. That can’t be said for Campaign which, despite flashes of brilliance, I found a very frustrating book. The Sword of Forever though just fell apart for me to the point where I literally had no idea what was happening by the end. Reading some online and print synopses afterwards, I found myself thinking ‘Eh? When did that happen?’ and ‘Oh, is that what was going on in that bit…’. Maybe I’m doing Mortimore a bit of a disservice, though. I tend to read before going to sleep and often I’m quite tired and so tend to drift off mid-page. As a consequence, a book like this is going to be even more difficult to follow.

However, there are other issues I had with the book. The characterisation of Bernice doesn’t really seem right and there’s stuff she does which doesn’t really feel right, such as marrying the man who owns London and sacrificing herself to religious artefacts. I didn’t find any of the characters particularly endearing and that isn’t helped by the chopping and changing between timelines, places and situations meaning it was very hard to get a handle on each character.

One character, in particular, didn’t really work for me. Patience, the velociraptor. There’s some quite nice stuff back in prehistoric times where we see life on Earth from Patience’s point of view. It’s quite well-written. However, when Patience is brought, somehow, into Bernice’s company, it all gets a bit odd. At this point, the character doesn’t really evolve from the initial gimmick of Bernice hanging out with a dinosaur.

As a Christian, it was actually quite intriguing to have Bernice hunting down relics of that religion but I get the impression Mortimore is trying to be controversial by including such iconic items and by having the book climax with Benny being crucified. Having read a fair bit of Mortimore’s work, all it did was kind of make me mentally roll my eyes whilst clinging to the plot by my fingernails.

I love Bernice Summerfield and her spin-off ranges in print and audio are the only ones I ensure I have in physical media. The Sword of Forever is a bit of a marker in her journey away from the Doctor because it’s the last book to retain the cover-style of the Doctor Who New Adventures before they become generic sci-fi style covers from the next release – Another Girl Another Planet. The Sword of Forever feels like a book making a range pull as far away from it’s ‘source material’ as is humanly possible. It’s odd because the last two novels, The Medusa Effect and Dry Pilgrimage, felt like more traditional Bernice/Doctor Who adventures. I think though, that from here on in, the novels pull further and further away from Doctor Who and into setting up their own distinct universe (and there’s Lawrence Miles’ ‘bottle universe’ story Dead Romance which I think will be the pinnacle of that).

Not great.