Doctor Who: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (Doctor Who S.) [Mass Market Paperback]

With Lawrence Miles new novel, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Doctor Who fiction has been delivered the Miles book long promised through the midwife of series editor, Justin Richards. This is a new start for the series, and coming after an impressive series of novels including Loyd Rose's City of the Dead, Kate Orman's The Year of Intelligent Tigers, and Simon Bucher-Jones and Kelly Hale's Grimm Reality, suggests a bright future for the series.

It is difficult to write too much about this novel without giving away key plot elements. However, to attempt. The Doctor is sick, stranded in eighteenth century London in a brothel run by Scarlette, the eponymous heroine. Without his TARDIS, and initially without his companions, the Doctor is sick. Strange demon apes (babewyns) roam London's streets. They kill and devour those in their way. And a bulky character, Sabbath, appears in a metal ship crewed by trained babewyns, pledged to defend time. This novel deals with the loose ends left hanging by the big bang from The Ancestor Cell, and throws up enough plot strands to suggest a bright future for the series.

The novel reintroduces an old friend (although they are never named), and features two controversial elements that will keep the Doctor Who fanbase arguing for years to come.

Aside from the controversy, though, the novel merits the description in the title - the finest Eighth Doctor adventure. Appreciating that Doctor Who lies on the page, Miles (along with Paul Magrs one of the more sophisticated writers of the series), turns in a stylistic tour de force. Reminding this reader of William Boyd's fake biography Nat Tate, Miles writes a history. Freed from the obligation on an author to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, Miles writes a history based on testimonies. Whether or not events occurred are couched with doubts and questions. Referring to many sources - from Scarlette, Sabbath, the Doctor, masonic records, secret service records, and the tesimonies of various prostitutes - strands are pulled together. The plot is never overwhelmed by style. But the halting nature of the historical narrative leaves loose ends, uncertainties. This is what the series needed. This is a novel that bears rereading, but also suggests a new way forward. The Doctor, in assuming the mantle of Earth's champion, and Sabbath, there to protect time, sets fair for a new conflict in the series.

This was a most enjoyable read. And as well as the big picture Miles puts in some jokes (I enjoyed the conflict between the prostitutes in Manchester, where the southerners wear red and black, the locals, blue and white rosettes.) One hopes that Miles returns to the series again very soon; and, also, that his ambition extends beyond Who. Here is a novelist that - in fantasy or science fiction - could play with ideas, and write big important novels.

If you enjoyed this read Alien Bodies or Interference, Miles' last two series defining volumes.

Henrietta Street is a worryingly complex book, and Miles' absorption in historical narrative is apparent not only in the detail, but the length of this book (the text size is miniscule, indicating his anxiousness to have the unedited story published.

The book totally defies conventional criticism, since it is by no means a conventional work. Lawrence Miles has created a tortuous world, which blends the hard-edged realism of the 18th Century prostitution scene with surreal and expressionistic intervals in the world of the Apes.

It would be easy to dismiss this book as being a cynical exploitation of current film phenomena: specifically Moulin Rouge and Planet of the Apes. Clearly if you subscribe to this point of view, you have failed to appreciate the depth of Miles' prose. His historical-narrative style is punctuated with revitalizing anecdotal asides that leaven the palpably ominous tone of the book. The barbarity of the Apes, along with the cloak-and-dagger mysticism of the multiple factions in the novel, makes for often harrowing reading.

Although the book is undoubtedly an experience, it could never be mistaken for an enjoyable one. Henrietta Street is simply so unconventional and so blatantly radical that it will never be recognized as a Doctor Who story as such. In the short months since its release, it has the kind of die-hard following that is associated only with books that are loathed by the majority of their readership. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street is nothing if not esoteric.

In fact, it is rather a pity it was a Doctor Who story at all, since it suffers from comparison to more traditional outings. Any such comparison is futile, however. Henrietta Street is as comparable to its close cousins as chalk is to cheese.

Lawrence Miles' magnum opus was destined from its inception to languish in the awkward 'love it or hate it' category. This is probably just as well: there is a faintly perverse buzz one gets from being in a derided minority.