Wednesday 4 April 2018

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #68 – Warchild by Andrew Cartmel

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#47
Warchild
By Andrew Cartmel

Good heavens, is that a rainbow?  The birds are singing, I can hear people bursting into song too, and – yes!  Now it’s raining gumdrops!  This can only be a novel by Andrew Cartmel, full of his characteristic vim and cheer!

Oh all right, fine.  Despite his knack for clever prose that keeps you reading at a quick pace, Cartmel is narratively known for crossing his arms and huffing until the party comes to an awkward halt.  Warhead was the first really dark New Adventure, followed by Warlock which was even more determined to leave a mark – preferably a bruise.  Cartmel’s world contains wonders and traumas, and he favours the latter.  He likes to keep the Doctor and co. in the wings, just in case you were getting too comfortable, and that has never been more apparent than in Warchild, where they barely guest star in the action.  The War Trilogy has long since gathered a principal cast of its own and they’re the ones who push the story forward.  When it deigns to move.

I’m at odds with some readers on this one, and apparently Cartmel himself.  Going by this illuminating interview from NZDWFC he wasn’t impressed with Warhead, feeling that the plot wasn’t really there and was too fragmented.  He thought Warlock was better in general, more focussed and story-driven.  It’s been almost three years since I read it (!), but I remember Warhead’s pieces falling nicely into place, whereas Warlock moved a couple of chess pieces very slowly and not far.  It also made its moral points with the finesse of a frustrated dog owner coming home to a puddle.  Warchild is mostly concerned with the middle instalment, and quite frankly, if you haven’t read it then this is not for you.  Cartmel’s second and third books seem to occupy not only the House at Allen Road, but also the odd assumption that these are the only books in the New Adventures series.  (Indeed, he’s completely forgotten the futuristic setting of Warhead, which was relatively decades ago.  Maybe all the effort to fix the environment, which was then almost beyond repair, led to them ditching hover-cars and the like?  Let’s go with that.)

Following the harrowing events of Warlock, Justine and Creed have raised three children including her son from her first husband, the psychically-empowered Vincent.  Creed still works for a shadowy government agency and while at the office he fends off his attraction to a co-worker, Amy.  Back at home he isn’t getting along with Ricky, his stepson.  Ricky is developing strange talents as he moves from school to school and is desperate to stay out of trouble.  Shadowy forces would rather he fell right into it.  Meanwhile a mysterious plague of violent dogs is tearing London apart, and Mrs Woodcott – the strange figure who showed up intermittently in Warlock, I’m still not sure who she is – “recruits” people to fight them, i.e. plucks them out of an airport if they remotely look like they can deal with the situation.  Roz is one such recruit, Creed soon joins her.  At the House in Allen Road the Doctor seems to be growing a dead(ish) Warlock character in a test tube while Bernice looks on.

I believe we were saying something about plots being too fragmented?  Warchild pulls its threads together, but even then it’s difficult to shake the randomness of a dog revolution, despite its roots being established in Warlock.  (One of the characters, Jack, literally lost his mind and it ended up in a dog.)  Cartmel takes the no-watershed-no-problem approach of the New Adventures to extremes with Roz and her new colleagues battling a never-ending onslaught of bloodthirsty animals.  It’s a curious follow-up to the intensely animal rights driven Warlock, killing as many dogs as possible; I wondered if it was meant to signal some kind of tragic retribution for how they’ve been treated, but it’s really all to get the Doctor’s attention, or it’s part of an evil scheme.  (Not massively clear which.)  And it feeds the book’s central idea of using influence to control crowds, specifically with alphas, which is Ricky’s special power.

Sure, it’s themed, but things in Dog-Land get thoroughly weird as they’re all driven by one ancient dog who occasionally stands like a person; a few others fool a motion sensor by standing on top of one another, Muppet-man-style, except with more bloodied footholds.  I’m not making this up.  Roz and her crew keep circling back to the house of a devastated flight attendant whose fiancé has been mauled, and it becomes their de facto base.  Considering this is a state of emergency it doesn’t seem to affect more than a few square miles of London, which makes Mrs Woodcott’s “conscriptions” seem even weirder.  I wanted the action to spread out a bit, but much of it takes place virtually in real time.  But then, does it, with Creed having time to do all his stuff, then get over here from the US?

It’s not a plot-heavy book, but it sure takes its time.  And that’s not to say it’s a slow read, as once again Cartmel’s prose is evocative but expedient, and the thing rollicks along.  We feel things when the characters do, including myriad unpleasant secrets, and moments of action (such as a stalled plane engine) come with absolute clarity.  It came as no surprise reading in that interview that Cartmel is a fan of Stephen King, as his writing has the same pulp pace and satisfying rush of detail, and sure enough, the same lopsidedly male-centric sexuality.  Years after rescuing Justine from a forced abortion and a life of sex slavery (“Hey kids, I got you that Doctor Who book you wanted!”), then immediately sleeping with her and ending her marriage, Creed can’t quite ignore his gorgeous co-worker or women in general.  (On a cranky parent at his son’s school: “the finest pair of firm tanned breasts that rich widowhood and elective surgery could provide.”)  His marriage is difficult – almost as if the whole thing started in the aftermath of a nightmarish ordeal when neither of them was thinking straight – but he still has time to admire Justine: “Even after all these years of snot, diapers, madness and children she still turned him on.  /  ...Creed deliberately dropping back for a moment so he could watch her sweet ass in those black culottes...  (The latter is followed by the slightly hmm observation that their older daughter now has the same walk.)  Even the narrative, Creed-less, takes a moment to admire a neighbour’s “spectacular breasts”.  It’s odd squaring all this with Andrew Cartmel, who has been fiercely interested in writing strong women, crafting Ace into someone with depth who can more than take care of herself.  Sex in these books is always a little conspicuous, but in Warlock and Warchild it’s frankly a bit creepy.

At least he doesn’t let anybody get away with the last-minute liaison in Warlock.  The wisdom of that decision has been in question ever since, at least somewhere in Creed’s mind, and it’s an instigator for the plot – in case you were wondering where Vincent has got to, he was devastated after those events and he’s the villain now, hoping to craft Ricky into a political weapon.  It’s not much more complicated than that, and neither is the writing, which reduces a once main character to a sneering spurned lover / bad guy stereotype, complete with monologue.  I already felt sorry for Vincent in Warlock, but the kid in Warhead deserved a more gradual finale.  In any case, it seems the jury is still out on random dangerous-situation hook ups after all, as the distraught stewardess is probably going to sleep with one of Roz’s crew, because “they’re both extremely vulnerable.  They need each other at this point and if they can help each other heal their wounds then that’s good.”  Full disclosure, her boyfriend was gored to death by the family pet, hours after proposing to her; the other guy peed himself, after what seemed like sheer pages of conversation about needing to go.  Yes, those things seem equal and this all makes sense.  Sex approved!

The book seems most centred when it’s following Ricky at school, where his bullies have the unmistakeable ring of Stephen King, complete with harrowing home lives.  (One of which comes to fruition courtesy of the ringleader’s deranged father.)  Those events are only tenuously related to the Doctor and co., with Chris posing as a Buddhist teacher and inciting trouble for Ricky just by being there, whilst also keeping an eye on him.  (This would seem a deliciously Doctorly contradiction if both those things were entirely the Doctor’s idea.)  The book builds and builds to something involving Ricky, but he’s so determined to avoid his destiny that he almost succeeds.  A scene at a train station makes creative use of his powers, as he tries to flee to a new life, relaxes for the first time in ages and sends everybody in the surrounding area to sleep.  A tense stand-off between Roz and one of Creed’s co-workers, which more or less gives us the arresting front cover, comes and goes without a lot of fuss.  The final confrontation with Vincent is left so late, and is so hasty in general, it’s like Cartmel considered not including it at all.  Things end, need you ask, with very few happy campers.

The overall feeling is that Cartmel has this cast of characters who need to progress to the next stage in their story, and oh all right, if you absolutely insist, the Doctor can be in it as well.  The Doctor claims a degree of responsibility for how it all plays out – the dog situation is about him by proxy, but then some of it’s Vincent? – but he spends a fair amount of time just pottering about in Allen Road.  Roz’s ease with violence can be said to follow her behaviour in Just War, but then it’s pretty much indistinguishable from post-Deceit Ace.  Chris hides in plain sight for much of the novel, and after two books Bernice somehow continues to evade Cartmel’s interest altogether.

It’s not an especially enjoyable experience for anybody involved, and I don’t want to sound like any sad or unpleasant story is an automatic fail with me; you can’t have light without dark.  But there’s predominantly one mood in Cartmel’s Doctor Who books – two if you include “make it as little to do with Doctor Who as possible”, or so it seems by now – and that’s grim.  This approach worked best for me the first time, when he had (for my money, if not everybody’s) a decent plot to ladle it over.  Warchild is more like a collection of surly new bits than a new story, and as such it doesn’t leave me with much to think about, or apparently to say.  It’s less of a drag than Warlock.  I’d rather read Warhead again.

6/10

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