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annathepiperThe Empire of Glass, by Andy Lane, is another of the free ebooks of classic Doctor Who novels available for downloading on the Doctor Who site. This one's First Doctor, with Steven and Vicki as his Companions, and turned out to be a lighter read than I was expecting for a First Doctor story--perhaps because of having my expectations set by The Eleventh Tiger. Yet, it stands up pretty well overall, and upholds what I'm coming to expect as a common trait of a Doctor Who novel: throwing you several seemingly disparate plot elements in one big initial burst, and then spending the rest of the novel tying it all together.
This one's got a whole bunch of seemingly very disparate elements, as well as a plethora of historical personages: the mystery of the vanishing Roanoke colonists in the New World, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the political situation going on in 16th-century Venice. The presence of Shakespeare in particular was kind of amusing and weird, given that ol' Will shows up in a Tenth Doctor episode--and this novel references an encounter he had with the Fourth Doctor as well. It does make me begin to wonder how many times the Doctor has shown up to hassle any given historical personage, and when any of them start to keep track. ;)
Companion-wise, I think I like Ian and Barbara and Susan better for First Doctor stories so far; Vicki still remains mostly a non-entity to me, and at least in the first part of this book, so does Stephen. He gets a little more interesting as he develops a strong bond with Christopher Marlowe towards the end, as well as a change in his relationship with the Doctor... but I suspect I'd need to see more of his episodes before I'd really have a feel for him. (I did, however, grin as Marlowe shamelessly hit on Steven right and left. Hee.) As for the Doctor himself, he's pretty typically portrayed in this story. But there's one interesting bit where he opens up to Vicki a bit about missing Susan, which really does rather resonate with that Seventh Doctor episode I'd read earlier this year, when he was still missing Susan.
I didn't particularly get much out of the farcical subplot involving Cardinal Bellarmine (yet another historical personage in the story, apparently) being mistaken for the Doctor. But I did like the major other mover and shaker in the plot being another Time Lord, a character the author borrowed from another Doctor Who writer; it was neat to see a plot involving another Time Lord who wasn't actually a villain. All in all, three stars.
This one's got a whole bunch of seemingly very disparate elements, as well as a plethora of historical personages: the mystery of the vanishing Roanoke colonists in the New World, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the political situation going on in 16th-century Venice. The presence of Shakespeare in particular was kind of amusing and weird, given that ol' Will shows up in a Tenth Doctor episode--and this novel references an encounter he had with the Fourth Doctor as well. It does make me begin to wonder how many times the Doctor has shown up to hassle any given historical personage, and when any of them start to keep track. ;)
Companion-wise, I think I like Ian and Barbara and Susan better for First Doctor stories so far; Vicki still remains mostly a non-entity to me, and at least in the first part of this book, so does Stephen. He gets a little more interesting as he develops a strong bond with Christopher Marlowe towards the end, as well as a change in his relationship with the Doctor... but I suspect I'd need to see more of his episodes before I'd really have a feel for him. (I did, however, grin as Marlowe shamelessly hit on Steven right and left. Hee.) As for the Doctor himself, he's pretty typically portrayed in this story. But there's one interesting bit where he opens up to Vicki a bit about missing Susan, which really does rather resonate with that Seventh Doctor episode I'd read earlier this year, when he was still missing Susan.
I didn't particularly get much out of the farcical subplot involving Cardinal Bellarmine (yet another historical personage in the story, apparently) being mistaken for the Doctor. But I did like the major other mover and shaker in the plot being another Time Lord, a character the author borrowed from another Doctor Who writer; it was neat to see a plot involving another Time Lord who wasn't actually a villain. All in all, three stars.