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Citadel of Dreams
MARCH 2002
The second novella from
Telos is designed as a reflection of the first; bound in inverted colours
and set just after the end of the original series, as Time and Relative was set just before it began. Andrew Cartmel, script editor of the series
at its close, provides an introduction, lending it a feel that it belongs
at that part of the Doctor Who canon. But, is it any good? Does it reach the
standards set by its predecessor?
Well,
personally, I enjoyed it. Nevertheless, Dave Stone is an author that
really divides fans. Some, like me, love his thick, purple prose; others
can’t stand it. I have always enjoyed his books – I loved Sky Pirates,
Heart of TARDIS, even the much-maligned Slow Empire. His prose
style, with its complex, twisty similes and fruity vocabulary appeals to
me. However, Citadel of Dreams has prose even thicker than usual, and it
is wearing at times. Thankfully, the novella format makes it an easier
story to work through – and yes, it is like work at times. It’s not just
the prose, it’s the structure of the story. Told mainly from the
perspective of Joey Quine, a young man on the streets of the city of
Hokesh, it can be rather baffling, as he’s an alien character describing
an alien environment. This does have the benefit of keeping the
peculiarities of the Hokesh society, clear in hindsight (well, relatively
clear), hidden until later in the book, when the viewpoint slowly shifts
to Ace. Still, the constant changing of time frames is tricky, not because
that is a confusing narrative method in itself, but because it reflects
that time in Hokesh, on a planet orbiting the singularity at the centre of
the Galaxy, suffers from disruptions in time.
The Doctor and Ace barely
appear for much of the story – the Doctor hardly shows up at
all, mostly operating from the sidelines. I love Stone’s des-cription of his arrival in Hokesh:
“Had
any erstwhile passers-by so much as noticed [the TARDIS], they might have
found
themselves wondering just
what might have emerged. In the event, and not, it must be
said, without a certain
degree of anticlimax, it turned out to be a man of smallish frame
and what might have seemed
a rather fussy demeanour, despite the careless rumples
of the pale suit he wore.”
Lovely
stuff, but that’s all we see of him for about eighty pages.
Ace comes off
better, a right sarky cow who’ll take no nonsense
from Joey, even if the
Doctor has told her to watch over him. The
thing that troubling Joey
is that he’s suddenly developed powerful
psychic abilities. Although
these are a boon to start with, allowing
him to affect people’s
minds to make them help get him off the
streets, soon he finds
himself taken under control by the ‘Thing’
inside him, acting far
against his nature.
Hokesh is richly depicted
as slowly the weirdness of it becomes
apparent. Apart from the
slug-like Dracori that roam the streets,
the humans here don’t
exactly eat, the sewers carry clean water,
mindless police drones
enforce the peace, and there are strange
mutterings of a child
coming…
However, once the truth of
this strange world is explained, it’s easy to feel as if you have missed
something. I found myself going over a few passages more than once.
Everything
is explained, but you have to really pay attention to
take it all in, and make sense of how the Doctor’s final exposition
relates to the world of Hokesh. It’s easy to feel that there’s been an
awful lot of talk, but that it’s passed you by without your quite paying
attention. There’s a lot
to enjoy here, but you
really have
to work for it.
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