Festival of Death

"A graveyard of ships in space..."

Writer: Jonathan Morris

Format: Novel

Released: March 2013

Series: 50th Anniversary Collection 04

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Romana II, K9

Synopsis

The Beautiful Death is the ultimate theme-park ride: a sightseeing tour of the afterlife. But something has gone wrong, and when the Fourth Doctor arrives in the aftermath of the disaster, he is congratulated for saving the population from destruction - something he hasn't actually done yet. He has no choice but to travel back in time and discover how he became a hero.

And then he finds out. He did it by sacrificing his life.

Verdict 

Festival of Death was an excellent read and finally, after 764 blog entries, saw me read an original Fourth Doctor novel! I have of course read Heart of TARDIS and The Eight Doctors in which the Fourth Doctor appears heavily, and I've also read numerous of this incarnation's Target novelisations, but there's just something different about an original novel. I guess it's different for me with Target novelisations because the first one I read was well after I had finished my marathon of every story so there's a degree of familiarity to pretty much every story. I try and avoid that where possible but it can be difficult now. That's where the beauty of the original novels come in and I was thrilled to finally get a Fourth Doctor one on the list. It seemed rather lengthy but when the story is brilliant like this was then it's no problem. I was reading the reprint version that I've actually owned since around the time of the anniversary but for whatever reason I just haven't gotten round to doing it. That changed though and it looks like I've missed a treat all this time. The plot was incredibly timey-wimey but that's part of why it was so fantastically good. When I was reading and things were jumping all over the place, I didn't experience any problems or confusion which was really positive because in a story as complex as this it could be easy fi lose track of what was going on. However, things were done with such clarity and precision that ensured there were no issues with the timey-wimey nature of the plot. It was superb. I must say how good the characterisation of both the Fourth Doctor and Romana II was and I think it was the best capturing of a TARDIS team's relationship that I've probably ever read. It really was that good. The likeness of both Tom Baker and Lalla Ward was presented with absolute ease and I think that's why the book was a huge success. I really liked Jonathan Morris's introduction, which I read after completing the novel to avoid spoilers, and it's nice to see a writer be so pleased with what they have written. And after reading the story, he had every write to be. It wasn't quite perfect but it was definitely close to receiving a rating that would suggest that. The Doctor and Romana arriving on the Cerebrus ship after everything was all well and good was terrific and we knew right from the start that things were going to end well, yet the read that followed was still tremendous. We wanted to know how everything was going to be okay and that involved a lot of hopping back in time for the Doctor and Romana which provided considerable humour on more than one occasion. Every time they met new people, they were already known. I liked how towards the end of the book that was really starting to annoy the Doctor. There was a wonderful City of Death in the novel and there were also a number of characters in the story that I loved. I thought ERIC was excellent and the way we felt sympathy for the computer throughout the novel was great. Hoopy was barmy which ess brilliant and I thought Harkan Batt was really good with his documentary. The concept of the Beautiful Death was rather strange but it was the secret of the Aboretrans that really struck me. Their ability to relive their lives after death, putting right the wrongs, and eventually living on the Path of Perfection was an envious life cycle. So much so that Paddox nearly wiped out the entire species. Gallura being the last of the race and helping the Doctor defeat the Repulsion was brilliant but I thought the ending was incredibly harsh even for a villain who attempted genocide. He would have to watch his life over and over, without being able to change. The revelation that he was Koel was magnificent. I thought Evadne was a good character and her role in freeing the earliest Doctor and Romana was terrific. Metcalfe and Jeremy were also good characters and creating good characters certainly adds a lot to the story. Despite these characters, it was the plot that stood out and although I think it went a little haywire towards the middle, it was excellent. Overall, a fantastic novel!

Rating: 9/10