TITLE

Emotional Chemistry

AUTHOR

Simon A Forward

PREVIOUS FORM

for the defence: Apparently he wrote Drift for the PDA range, and The Sandman for BF. But I haven't read or heard either of those, so... He was born in Penzance though, which makes him Cornish like me, so I'm inclined to think he's probably a very, very nice man indeed.

for the prosecution: Nothing. Although I don't think The Sandman was terribly popular - some critics said it kept putting them to sleep...

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT ALFIE?

The TARDIS crew are grief-stricken now that Anji has left them, but struggle on as best they can... Hah! As if! The hard-hearted b******s don't even mention their erstwhile fellow traveller. Anyway, the story is about a celestial being split into two separate entities, which are imprisoned in separate timezones (a bit like City of Death but without the Mona Lisas or the Dudley Simpson score). It's also about the hunt for a mysterious locket...

Quite a change of pace from the past few books, this one isn't centred around Sabbath or parallel universes. It's not exactly a fast-paced book, and the switching between the three different timezones takes a bit of getting used to, but it's well-written, very competently structured, and the main characters come over well. At times it's as much a character piece as anything else, but that's not to say it's dull, and the plot keeps enough twists in it to hold the attention, without becoming too bogged down in its own complexity, unlike others of late. Solid, engaging, worth reading.

The locket which most of the characters spend most of the book chasing around after is, we have to assume, the same one that Chloe wore in Timeless. At the end of that previous book we learn that she has lost it, although we never discover why the Doctor decides to find it by breaking into the Kremlin's Museum in 2024 where it is one of the exhibits, rather than just, say, asking Chloe where she thinks she dropped it and going for a look.

As it turns out, it isn't the locket they're after, so much as the diamond it contains. Obtaining the diamond (as they do at the end of the story) allows the following book, Sometime Never..., to bring the Sabbath arc towards its overdue conclusion. I hope...

One of the book's settings is Russia in the year 5000, and specifically a warzone being fought by the Icelandic Alliance. This organisation was mentioned in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and this book neatly elaborates on the casual references there, but without being slaved to them. Magnus Greel ("the infamous butcher of Brisbane") gets a name-check several times, although thankfully we don't get involved with any advancing on Rekjavik - saving the eighth Doctor from bumping into one of his previous selves! Greel's Zygma beam is also used on several occasions, although since the people using it tend to end up dead I think "a glorious success" may be over-selling it, Magnus. Sorry old chap.

A serious contender for oddest continuity nod ever, is the acronym O.G.R.O.N. Apparently it stands for Operativnaya Gruppa Rasvedkoy Obyedinyonnih Natsiy, which is the Russian version of U.N.I.T. Ye-es...

Perhaps oddly for the penultimate story in Sabbath's Arc, the man himself doesn't appear. Maybe this was a deliberate trick - there are a lot of big men in greatcoats during this book, particularly during those sections set during Napoleon's advance on, and retreat, from Moscow; and since Sabbath's clothing of choice is a greatcoat, the reader is perhaps intended to expect one of them to turn out to be the man himself. Thankfully nobody does, and neither the book nor this reader misses him!

There are some interesting notes to the Doctor's character here, reminders of his current status, perhaps in preparation for events reaching some kind of resolution soon. His amnesia is highlighted by the fact that many of the guest characters know him, albeit not necessarily in his eighth form. Colonel Bugayev, in 2024, met one of the Doctors some fifty years ago - this is never particularly elaborated on, although we do learn that whatever the event was, it ended with Bugayev exposed to temporal radiation, with the result that he expects to live a very long life.

The celestial being, whose split personality straddles the 1812 and the 5000 settings, was sentenced to this fate for having a child. Not, however, before undergoing a trial at which the Doctor spoke in their defence. Again, it is not specified which Doctor this was, but again it serves to highlight his amnesia in respect of his past lives...

...and also, his ignorance of certain Time Lord traits. "I think you might be an alien capable of changing his features and form" opines Bugayev late in the book, and the Doctor takes it as a serious suggestion, noncommitally agreeing that it may well be the case.

This Book: £2.23 brand new from Amazon - hooray!!! Postage charge an additional £2.75 - boo!!! Still a saving of £1.01 though.

Running Score: £105.81 saved against RRP to date.