All Flesh is Grass

"Only fools decided when other people died."

Writer: Una McCormack

Format: Novel

Released: December 2020

Series: Time Lord Victorious #2

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Ninth Doctor, Eighth Doctor 

Synopsis

Even a Time Lord can't change the past. A wasteland. A dead world...

No, there is a biodome rising from the ashes. Here, life teems and flourishes, with strange, lush plant and many-winged insects with bright carapaces – and one solitary sentient creature who spends its days talking to the insects and tending this lonely garden. This is Inyit, the Last of the Koturruh. 

In All Flesh is Grass we are transported back to The Dark Times. The Tenth Doctor has sworn to stop the Kotturuh, ending death and bringing life to the universe. But his plan is unravelling – instead of bringing life, nothing has changed and all around him people are dying. Death is everywhere. Now he must confront his former selves – one in league with their greatest nemesis and the other manning a ship of the undead.

Verdict 

All Flesh is Grass was an excellent conclusion to the Time Lord Victorious story arc! It tied everything up nicely and whilst things were not released in story order, this ensured a clear understanding of the different routes for each Doctor on their voyages to the Dark Times as well as ensuring that the Dalek Time Squad story all closed off as well. With so much riding on it and I know we still have Echoes of Extinction to come, but this felt like a fitting finale and bringing the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors together in a novel was just wonderful. I think it's quite incredible that it has taken this long to get the New Series Adventures to put together a multi-Doctor adventure but better late than never! I really liked how this pretty much continued where The Knight, the Fool and the Dead concluded and it was nice to just have some continuation between modern era novels. I'd love more of that. The Eighth Doctor arriving with the Daleks was terrific and followed on nicely from The Enemy of My Enemy whereas the Ninth Doctor was alongside Vampires amidst the events of Monstrous Beauty. Everything came together really nicely and I loved that this book was one big action piece. There was always so much going on and with three Doctors, the Daleks and even an Ood assassin to go alongside the Dark Times and the last Kotturuh, there didn't feel like there was too much to follow which is credit to Una McCormack's writing. Her prose was delightful and I found it humorous how she was really driving home the itchiness of the Tenth Doctor's ceremonial Time Lord collar. The image of all three incarnations of the Doctor in their robes towards the end of the novel was quite something as well. I thought the use of each incarnation of the Doctor was fantastic and the mental conversation between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors after their arrival to confront their future self concerning who they were accompanied by was magnificent. The Doctor interaction here was excellent from start to finish, and there probably ought to have been more if it wasn't for the mental state of the Tenth Doctor. His desire to take on death and wipe out the Kotturuh was incredibly powerful and showed the strain of what he'd endured in recent memory. The reactions of his predecessors when Mordeela was blown up was superb. This wasn't the Doctor they knew themselves to be which was a fantastic concept to play with. I thought the focus on Birinji was very good and it tied in so well with The Dawn of the Kotturuh in going back there as the first place where the Kotturuh past judgement and assigned lifespans. The source of their power deriving from Mordeela connected things nicely and I thought this was a really fitting end to the overall arc. The Daleks having their own agenda in the Dark Times other than stopping the ripple effects of the Tenth Doctor's actions was fantastic and I liked how they were attempting to collect species and ended up capturing a Great Vampire. Their ability to harness that being and create their own undead Daleks as the Symbiot was very good indeed. It was fascinating. Inyit as the last of the Kotturuh was a brilliant character and her not wholly agreeing with the way of her people was excellent. The warning of the Gates of the Dead opening when the last Kotturuh perished was good, although the payoff was perhaps the only let down of the novel. Ikalla was a really good character as well and I particularly enjoyed her relationship with the Ninth Doctor. They got on well which you wouldn't quite expect from a Time Lord and a Vampire! I thought the action throughout was really exciting and this was an ease to read in a single day. It flowed so well with such an enjoyable pace. I liked how things ended with Inyit passing her final judgement on the undead Daleks and that meant the Dalek Time Squad could go scurrying with the Eighth Doctor back out of the Dark Times and into the events of Mutually Assured Destruction which was great. The Ninth and Tenth Doctors pondering over Gallifrey at the end was such a lovely moment for them to share, getting one last look at the planet they thought lost. The Dalek efforts to destroy Gallifrey before the Time Lords were even established was a brilliant plan. Overall, this was a terrific novel that tied the overall arc up very nicely! 

Rating: 9/10