#42
Toy Soldiers
By Paul Leonard
War. Hmm. On second thoughts, shall we give it a miss?
Books about war tend to make that point, as do poems about war, movies about war, and any dishcloths about war you might come across. It’s a worthy point to make, but there comes a point where I just don’t feel the need to hear it again. A glance at Toy Soldiers suggests I am yet again to be told that war is, on balance, not a gay romp through a bouncy fairground. But it’s by Paul Leonard, whose last two books showed he was a real find for Virgin Books; he can even take a ropey setup like a Pertwee actioner and give it some class. A War Is Bad story is just as much glittering potential in his hands.
Right from the start he’s taking familiar things and making them special. We begin at the end of the First World War, in a dug-out where the Tommies either can’t quite process that it’s over, or what’s been happening to them at all, or – in the case of CO Charles Sutton – simply don’t want the burden of caring any more. War stories are always in the thick of it, or in the dreadful shell-shocked years that follow; rarely do we see the moment of transition. And then it all starts up again, with the ghostly appearance of man-sized teddy-bears.
If you’re reading these in order, you’d be forgiven for thinking back to Invasion Of The Cat-People. But whereas Gary Russell wrote a book that featured space mercenaries that happened to look like cats, tossing in a couple of lame kitty litter gags to make something of it, Leonard fully grasps the weird incongruity of this bizarre sight. And soon it’s apparent why he’s chosen bears: they’re here to steal children, and what animal does every child trust? The otherworldly creepiness of a giant bear arriving on a steam-train or an airplane, chosen to appeal to the youngster they’re here to abduct, and somehow stopping time in the process, gives us a series of very striking moments early in the book. You’ve seen alien abductions, but not like this.
And there’s an emotional element, as each child is at a time in their life when escape would be desirable. Josef, a young Jew in post-war Germany (another unusual note) is desperate to feed his family, but also weary of the responsibility; Gabrielle has lost her father, but is a child through-and-through so just wants to escape the rigmarole of a family wedding, plus the incessant attention and grief of her mother. Grief haunts these children and their families in different ways. Mrs Sutton has lost her husband and her son, Charles; she has taken to consulting a medium, even though she is not convinced. Gabrielle’s mother dotes (perhaps too much) on her daughter. Josef’s mother can barely cope as her remaining child slips further into illness.
It’s at these critical moments when the main characters pop up, and in another refreshing move, we find them mid-investigation. My favourite New Who episodes are generally the ones where we arrive in the midst of things, as there are only so many ways to land the TARDIS and inveigle the crew in local matters. That’s all gone and we get right on with what’s happening to these children, where they’re going, and how to stop it. The subject matter is obviously emotive – not just abductees, but children – leading to a very emotionally charged first third of the novel. And Leonard absolutely shines here.
Toy Soldiers is his first New Adventure, but he “gets” all the main characters, and shows them off one by one. Roz and Chris are in the French town of Septangy, comforting Gabrielle’s mother and piecing together clues; they must overcome local prejudices (as Roz, she begins to realise, falls afoul of racism herself) and investigate local connections, making great use of their Adjudicator past. (I get a geeky rush from having actual policemen in the Doctor’s police box.) The Doctor meets Josef’s fragile mother with the intention of just gathering information, but before long he’s offering up medicine for her daughter and food for them both, as well as their first bit of hope. He almost fights against this, knowing he has a bigger picture to address, but caves instantly. It’s a beautiful vignette, and very him. Bernice meets the Suttons, and the séance she attends is filled with rich, knowing silences between her and Mrs Sutton – both are sceptical, but they must indulge the others. There’s a desperate pragmatism to those left behind which, like the Doctor and co. being mid-flow, allows the story to move briskly: when the time comes to talk about alien abductions, they won’t have to endure the usual accusations and red tape. (Or not as much.) Leonard still manages to pepper it with character and meaning. The prose is thoughtful and wonderful, throwing out neat little phrases like a grieving house having a “clean white silence”, and not being remotely afraid to stick with a situation through multiple paragraph breaks. After many books that can’t resist switching scenes, this kind of attention span is a relief.
Nonetheless, we do zoom off elsewhere, and not just between the desperate austerity of Germany and the quaint, deceptively lovely France – where tragedies take place in vineyards and toyshop owners commit atrocities for a greater good. (Hats off to the level of richness we get in all these places.) There is also an unnamed world where the children have gone, where war is afoot and more worryingly, the children are okay with that.
A seasoned Doctor Who fan might put up a bit of resistance here, as we’re encroaching on The War Games – another story where people are stolen from different places and put in a pointless war. It’s hard to shake the suspicion that all of this is ultimately for nothing, as the kids are clearly placed on opposite sides of a conflict that holds no more specifics than there being another side that need wiping out, with each side defined only by a couple of colours. It’s not the same story as The War Games, but that suspicion proves correct. Writing war as a literally pointless endeavour is quite low hanging fruit, especially for at least the second time in Doctor Who.
I’m still not sure if Leonard’s writing really puts a twist on “pointless war brainwashing”, but what he does is grimly interesting. The children believe utterly in what they’re doing, their past lives are forgotten and they enjoy their jobs; they’re convinced the opposition deserve what’s happening to them, and don’t give a second thought to eating their enemies afterwards. As Charles puts it – himself one of the few older soldiers, there to help with recruitment and equally brainwashed – “war is a permanent concern”. Concepts like peace are not just unfeasible to them, but unheard of. There is only war, and the scary possibility that they may never go back to “normal”, even when they’re “fixed”. When Bernice befriends and possibly begins to deprogram one of them, they offer to take Benny (her prisoner) to another camp: “‘They’ll kill me, Gabrielle.’ Gabrielle nodded. ‘At least I won’t have to do it.’”
I can’t stress enough how good most of this is. Those early scenes of grieving families and the TARDIS team working to put it right, and even the horrors of war exacerbated by a brainwashed determination to do this forever. Even when said brainwashing extends to the main characters, it’s just another way to highlight who they are: Bernice is changed with disturbing ease into a recruiter, but her personality blips through now and again. (“‘Not good enough,’ she muttered. ‘Must have a word with the costume department.’ Then she frowned, wondering why the remark seemed funny. What was a costume department?”) Her first sight of an atrocity on the battlefield brings the walls right down again, and another tragedy later on is even worse, as she loses a friend while unconscious, their killers no more upset than they would be about taking out the dirty laundry. But the story must ultimately answer its war riddle, and it’s here that Toy Soldiers finally lets something give.
The “Recruiter” is a machine, of course, and is locked in a thoughtlessly destructive loop for reasons that would fit Star Trek like a glove; on top of that, targeting Earth will finally allow it to complete its mission, at the predictable cost of all life on it. Lurching from the likes of “What’s it for? What could possibly be worth all this?” to “oh no, not the Earth!” is somewhat clumsy, and quite uncharacteristic for a novel as adept at emotion and character as this one. Ditto the Doctor’s (typically?) quick resolution. Frustratingly, all of Paul Leonard’s books so far have conceded and lost something; it’s usually the plot, when you get down to it at last. Perhaps that’s the moment where Leonard, apparently not a Doctor Who fan (although come on, what’s the difference at this point?), finally concedes that he’s not just writing a book, but a Doctor Who book. Despite a sudden inrush of tragedy right at the end, the fight seems to go out of Toy Soldiers just when it should be bringing it home. The (usual) point is made that you can never go home again even if you return, using a very minor character I’d all but missed earlier. Only one of the three “main” children gets a reunion. (I would prefer to see all the survivors reunited. Again, the “main” ones. So the other one as well, spoiler alert.) Then suddenly it’s over. I was hoping for a softer decline.
Also, as is customary at this point in the NAs, Leonard has four main characters to contend with, and that’s a little much for anybody. He puts enough effort into Roz and Chris’s investigations that they don’t feel irrelevant, even though ultimately their contribution is of the “coincidental help at a vital moment” variety. (I still don’t fully understand how they survived their apparent doom at the end of Chapter 15.) Roz shines here, doing her best to conduct a thorough investigation and save lives in amongst the petty racism of the time. (There is also an undercurrent of Roz failing to notice how this parallels her own mistrust of different species.) Chris… is also there and is very nice. I suspect the authors all felt the same as I do about the guy. You surely couldn’t hate Chris Cwej, but what does he have going for him, other than being the perennial “good cop” to Roz’s no-nonsense alternative? I don’t exactly blame Leonard for this one – Chris’s easy-going nature and quick acceptance among the locals gives Roz’s frustration a greater contrast – but I’m eager for someone at Virgin to take the leap and really justify Chris being here.
Once again I raced through a Paul Leonard novel wanting to shout about it from the rooftops, only to find myself oddly hesitant afterwards. Frankly, it’s spectacularly well-written: the kind of proverbial Good Stuff (like Lucifer Rising and Sky Pirates!) that you’d show to anyone even considering reading a Doctor Who novel. But it falls short of greatness in the end, suddenly absent the patience and consideration that made its earlier highs so evocative, and saddled with a conclusion that you’ll find a little too familiar. Heck, I’m not sure he fully explained the teddybears. But I’m not one to turn away a gift, and a Paul Leonard book, painting moments that stay with you even if there’s something off about the machinery beneath, is something to be recommended and savoured.
8/10
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