Wooden Heart
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BBC Books Wooden Heart |
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| Author | Martin Day |  |
| ISBN | 1 846 07226 3 | |
| Published | 2007 |
| Synopsis: Martha and the Doctor discover an apparently deserted starship, and soon, a village appears in the middle of the craft. As they try to work out the mystery of the village, and its connection to the ship, they find out that the village has other problems - fog and monsters surround them at every turn, and their children have been going missing. |
A Review by Joe Ford 30/1/08
Abbas stared at the blood that coursed down his finger, gripping the handle of the knife more tightly. Bolognaise? A peace offering? No, he had a better idea.
The New Series Adventures seems to have damaged the reputation of all of their contributors aside from Steven Lyons, Mike Tucker and Gareth Roberts. I was praying that Martin Day, one of my favourite Doctor Who authors, was going to deliver. I should have more faith...
Wooden Heart is, by several miles, the best NSA yet. Without sounding like a whacko in Tate Modern it works on so many levels with a mystery that is at the very heart of the novel and continues to throw out questions right until the climax. I have not had so much fun trying to guess the ending of a Doctor Who book since The Tomorrow Windows.
The biggest (and most important) strength I noticed was Martin Day's use of language. Whilst this is not the poetic historical prose of The Sleep of Reason, Wooden Heart is written evocatively and sensitively. Children will not have a hard time understanding the book but Day refuses to write in a way that talks down to them and as such this is a book that an adult can pick up and not even be aware it is geared at kids. His characters talk intelligently; the atmosphere is built up slowly and with disquieting descriptive prose, the relationships between the characters feel real and not at all contrived. For all intents and purposes this is the first NSA that I can genuinely say felt like one of the old paperbacks. That is a big strength. Never underestimate what children can take in. Whilst initially light on big scary monsters, Wooden Heart decides to scare with unseen things in the shadows and disquieting mysteries without answers. I don't mind admitting I did have a nightmare about a sequence in this book (when Martha and co head back to the fog-shrouded village).
The Doctor and Martha land on a giant spaceship that is drifting slowly through space. Clearly it was a prison ship but it is more like a tomb, desiccated bodies trapped inside their cells. Curious about a life reading in the centre of the ship they step through a door that should lead to the TARDIS and find themselves in a forest...
This is where all echoes to The Girl in the Fireplace end. It is a great mystery, what is a village doing slap bang in the middle of a spaceship? Why are the children disappearing from locked rooms? Why can't the villagers go any further than the forest? Why do the books write themselves? Every time I thought I had a handle on what was happening the book opened out another obscurity that kept me guessing. Needless to say I was wrong and the final answer is fascinating and beautifully crafted. I was very impressed.
Characterisation is top notch and the Doctor and Martha both get to prove how good they are. Teaming the Doctor and Jude up is a stroke of genius, not only because the Doctor always works magnificently against children but also because (and I did initially groan) it proves that children can be included in these books without them feeling like they have to be there for audience identification. Jude is fabulous, at times she talks like an adult ("'Oh,' said the Doctor, crestfallen. 'Used to think it was wonderful when I was a kid.' 'Then forgive me,' said Jude, 'but you must have been a bit, well, dense.'") and she is forever keeping the Doctor on his toes. I love her sense of curiosity and nosiness, poking her nose in where it is clearly not wanted. Martha gets to make a very brave decision; it initially seems quite brainless and ill-thought-out on her part but (brilliantly) turns out to be the reasons the village is saved. Well done Ms Jones. Martha is written with less energy than the series but her sombre mood and intelligent investigating is perfectly suited to the tone of the book. We can't be punching the air with the thrill of time travelling every week!
There are a number of twists that come appear from nowhere and enrich the book. Importantly, one of them is a character twist that slapped me around the face in an action sequence, hinted at earlier in the book but at the time flying right over my head. Chapter eleven is vital and the sudden shift of location is both jarring and refreshing, and on its own this chapter tells a disturbing little story of its own. When the Doctor and Martha finally discover the truth behind these events you realise with shocking clarity how selfish and abusive humanity can be. The village scenario suddenly makes sense and the exploration of the better side of humanity grounds the novel with a reflective side not many of these hardbacks could reach. Colour me impressed.
There really isn't much more to say about Wooden Heart. For once both the cover and title are atmospheric and the contents within are just as fantastic. Martin Day is slowly emerging as the best voice of Doctor Who in print, he has conquered the PDAs, EDAs and now the New Series Adventures as well. Easily the most evocative and thoughtful novel this range has offered.
A Review by John Seavey 10/3/08
I enjoyed this one, even as I couldn't help but feel like I'd heard some of this before. "A mysterious spaceship with a virtual-reality village inside it, whose inhabitants believe themselves to be real" feels like the starting point for every third New Adventure, and it continues to be a well-worn trope of the novels. Still, Martin Day gets bonus points for sincerity; he feels like he means it when he writes about the struggles of the virtual people to deal with the collapse of their world, and that always carries a book even when cleverness fails.
The characterization is good here, as it is in pretty much all the new series novels; Martha in particular is more palatable than she is in the TV series, even if she is a bit less recognizable as Martha Jones. This is because her most irritating trait is also her defining one, as far as the TV series goes; in the books, she spends much less of her time mooning over the Doctor like a lovesick schoolgirl, which makes her a more sympathetic character. (It's more than a little depressing that her defining trait in the TV show is "mooning over the Doctor like a lovesick schoolgirl." What a waste.)