Theatre of War (New Doctor Who Adventures) [Paperback]

The outline for this story must have been very detailed indeed. The book is very much driven by its plot, and the twists and turns are all quite welcome. Some of the directions I anticipated, but many of them took me completely by surprise. I love plot twists that are surprising but logical, and THEATRE OF WAR definitely delivers those.

Not only is the plot exciting and captivating, but there are loads of small little things that combine to make this a special book. I loved all of the extracts from made-up references books. I adored the clever play within a play passages with their meta-textual jokes about various Doctor Who stories, existent and missing. And seeing Benny in archeology mode was fantastic and something that had been lacking in previous books. It seems strange to think that it took this long to get a book that made such perfect use of Benny's diary, her background in archeology and her past in general.

The story makes good use of its many characters and settings. The archeological dig was a great place for Benny to develop and yet again she has the ability to drive a story forward all by herself. The secondary characters aren't terribly deep, but they all have a quality of believability. It's only near the end that one or two of them turn stereotypical, and by that point it's a forgivable sin.

There was only one real problem that I had with the plot. While the majority of the hints to the central mystery are carefully hidden, there is a huge clue in the introduction that is so massive that it reveals the way the plot is going to unfold over the next two hundred pages. Now, to be fair to the book, given some of themes that had been running through the story, this was no doubt done on purpose with the hope that the reader wouldn't really pick up on the clue. And even with the mystery somewhat deflated, I was still enthralled watching Benny and the Doctor work their way to the "how" and "why", even if I had already figured out the "what".

THEATRE OF WAR introduces several things that would later play larger roles in the NA universe, Irving Braxiatel and his collection included. However, this also works as a carefully written and enjoyable standalone novel. Its action-adventure status is enhanced by both its close attention to detail and Justin Richards' ability to keep a book filled with surprises. If you want to know why the New Adventures were so popular and why they attracted such a loyal and devoted following, then you merely have to read this book to discover what thousands of other Doctor Who fans were enjoying every month.

(On the subject of the cover. If the DECEIT cover featured giant rocks about to sneeze, then the THEATRE OF WAR cover shows what happens when giant rocks forget to pack their tissues. Eww.)

Justin Richards tries to write an epic here, setting up a war between two empires: the Heletians, whose culture revolves around live theatre, and the enigmatic Rippereans. At first, only Benny Summerfield gets involved when she joins a Heletian archeological expedition. Eventually, murderous mud statues attack the group, forcing Benny to hit the panic button (literally) to summon the Doctor and Ace. From here, the trio tackle the mystery of the dig and its ties to the impending Ripperean attack on Heletia.

The first problem I had with this book is that Richards kept the Doctor out of the action for almost a third of the book. The Doctor and Ace don't even make an appearance until page 50. For fans of the show, it would be unthinkable for a six-part story to delay the title character's appearance until part 3. Richards' original characters simply aren't very interesting and couldn't hold my attention, making the Doctorless portion of the story difficult to get through.

This leads to my other problem with this novel: wooden characters. The Doctor, Ace, and Benny are serviceable but the supporting cast seem to exist for the purpose of getting killed or saying a few lines to move along the plot. This may describe the majority of the characters who appeared in the TV series but Richards is not writing a TV story. He has written one of the longer New Adventures (300+ pages) but simply used the bulk of the allotted page count on plot rather than characterization.

This is not to say that I found nothing appealing in this book. I quite enjoyed the source documents that Richards inserts before each chapter and the climax of the play within the story really worked for me. Unfortunately, these points are not enough for me to recommend this novel. If you want to read a good book by this author, try "The Burning."