Retrospective: Rebecca Levene and Simon Winstone by John Seavey 29/11/03
It's a bit unfair to do a retrospective of Rebecca Levene and Simon Winstone based on their sole book for the New Adventures line, Where Angels Fear. Both of them made major contributions to the Doctor Who novels not as authors, but as editors, contributing in no small part to the classic "Virgin era" of the novels. However, unlike other former editors, they haven't written much for the novel lines since, leaving Where Angels Fear as the sole tangible evidence of their work for Whoniverse. It's an interesting novel when viewed as such, even if it does suffer a bit from the clear engine driving it, the editorial need to move the metaplot along.
Where Angels Fear is not a fun, whimsical novel. It's very grim, very direct, and very goal-oriented. The novel sets out with the clear intent of shattering Dellah and establishing the Gods as a clear and present threat to the universe as a whole. Almost nothing gets in the way of that story, and those few elements that aren't setting up future novels are tying up loose ends from previous novels (such as killing off the mysterious 'John', a character whose origins and nature remains one of the mysteries of the New Adventures.) There aren't even any jokes, save for the extremely humorous 'Church of the Grey' (one of the bright spots of the novel.)
However, that very directness proves to be Levene and Winstone's strength as well as their weakness. With no distracting elements, the serious nature of the situation becomes evident early on, and Levene and Winstone build an atmosphere not just of terror, but of that fundamental uncertainty that comes with seeing one's very world ripped away into chaos and confusion. Dellah had been the setting for all sixteen previous New Adventures, and seeing it transformed into a galactic quarantine affects the reader just as much as the characters involved.
As stated, neither Levene nor Winstone have written for any Doctor Who or spin-off line since (although Levene at one point had a novel in the works for the BBC line; unfortunately, time pressures forced her to back out.) It's difficult to say what kind of novel they'd write, either individually or collectively, if given the chance; Where Angels Fear is so clearly written to perform a job that not much of the authors' styles show through. However, that very fact means that it might be worth seeing another novel from either one or both of the two, simply to see what they could do when not having to act as a cog in a machine.