Bel Tempest

For some reason, I always associate Jim Mortimore with novels that have a high body count. I really have no reason for this, except that the last Doctor Who book of his I read, the New Adventure "Eternity Weeps", seemed to be extraordinarily violent and also led to the death of a former major character. He does not disappoint here. Entire starships and populations and generations are wiped out with the stroke of a pen to the point where you start to lose all sense of scale and try to wrap your mind around a million people suddenly dying. It's like Olaf Stapleton was somehow possessing the body of a very irate George Lucas. A George Lucas who cares more about moving the plot the heck forward and not bothering with explaining things as they go. Those coming here looking for hand holding exposition might be advised to start looking elsewhere, because author Jim Mortimore does not believe in such things. Things happen and we can try to piece together why the heck it's happening but if we don't, hey the story keeps going and it's perfectly okay. And yet, I liked this. Don't ask me why. A lot of folks hate this book and I've come down on some other more well liked Who novels but . . . I enjoyed this. Maybe because it's unpredictable? It certainly is, almost to the point of being incomprehensible in parts but it's never outright bad. You get the sense that the author knows where this is going, even you haven't the slightest idea. But maybe I like it because Mortimore's got . . . verve? Spunk? I'm not sure what the word is. His prose is among the most distinctive I've seen in the BBC line so far, barring the deliberately ornate style of "The Scarlet Empress" . . . almost every description is off-kilter and strives toward poetry. At some points he starts messing with the page layouts, showing a certain willingness to experiment that's kind of encouraging. And the story? Oh, right. The story. A sun that was dying suddenly flares back up again thousands of years ago. Now everyone who lives around it are experiencing all kinds of gravitational problems. Enter the intrepid Doctor and Sam, just as all heck breaks loose. There's giant gas aliens and novas and gravity wells and starships and pacifists and refugees and everything starts blowing up and oh my. There's very few quiet moments. But I like his Doctor, who has a swagger that the other novelists haven't given him as much, an endearing childlike quality that doesn't forget he's a very old man and an alien. Even if he doesn't do a whole lot, he tends to command every scene that he's in. Sam fares a little better than in recent novels, driving a large amount of the action to a disturbing degree, being very proactive and threatening to steamroll everything in her path, not always for the best. Every other character doesn't make as much of an impression but by the time you want to care about them they're either dead or the plot has shifted to someone else. And does it shift. Mo

A good read, novel in its format. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to other Whovians. Obviously, the vast difference in opinions between myself and the other reviewer show that this novel has something--check it out and decide for yourself.