#7
Kursaal
By Peter Anghelides
New writer alert!
Oh all right, new novelist then. Peter Anghelides (it’s pronounced ann-ja-LEE-deez) had by this point written two short stories for the Decalogs. I loved his first one and didn’t think the second one worked at all, so I had no idea what I’d make of Kursaal — a novel that, on the whole, no one talks about. Maybe that’s ominous, but I don’t care. I love not knowing what’s about to happen.
Famous last words, I suppose, as Kursaal is not what you’d call a mystery novel. We open on an archaeological dig (which immediately triggered my Bernice Summerfield sensor — alas, no sparkling archaeologist in this one) and we are promptly confronted with a series of strange animal attacks. What could be happening there, then? And, I mean… what with the front cover, it’s probably werewolves, isn’t it? Knowing that is not exactly a mark against the book — I’m guessing the cover design was not the author’s edict, see also The Bodysnatchers, and anyway it’s a very nice cover design — but it’s perhaps an unfortunate choice when it takes around 100 pages for the reader to get to the moon-howlin’ monsters.
Still, there is something to be said for delayed gratification. And there I was saying how nice it was to be surprised: it’s surprising that Kursaal is for a large part more concerned with the development of, and environmentalist activism in defence of the planet Saturnia Regna, which will eventually host the theme park/world of the book’s title. It is admittedly a little awkward that the Doctor has come here on purpose, albeit a few years early, as that straight away tells us that the environmentalists will not stop it being developed. But nobody joins those dots, so hey ho. (I suppose it would just have made things uselessly awkward.) Kursaal, as it’s probably easier to call this planet, is somewhat interesting to behold, with its giant terrifying bulldozers moving it all into shape, and its occasional vertical walls of water. You do however get the impression that it will be more interesting when it’s finished.
The Doctor and Sam quickly find themselves impersonating police pathologists, which earns the suspicion and enmity of chief of police Kadijk. Sam then unwittingly falls in with the “eco-terrorists” (as per the blurb), who it turns out aren’t as bad as all that. The grizzled, zero-tempered policeman seems irritatingly cocksure about the Doctor being the terrorists’ leader; we frequently seem to be in his orbit hearing about that. The book mines more tension from Kadijk pushing back against these guys than it does from what happened to those distinctly dog-eared corpses, at least at first.
But the penny eventually drops: lo and behold, it’s werewolves. Or rather it’s the Jax, a species who procreate by infecting other life and turning it into them. Strangely most of their converts start off dead. (Are the converted Jax now properly alive, or is there a shelf-life? If they need converts then what’s with the crazed killer instinct? Too much damage to the body means no new Jax, surely.) Once that’s out there Kursaal becomes a fairly blood-soaked affair, which to be fair is often the assignment for a good horror story. But this one has surprisingly little to say for itself beyond that.
The Jax are mostly mute; they only seem to get one “I was converted and all I got was this lousy flesh wound” spokesman at a time, which leads to a lot of grandstanding baddie dialogue when there’s anything to say. So the Jax are baddies, then: the Doctor calls them “vile” and seems keen to rescue their converts. That makes things a little bleak for our eco-terrorists, perhaps (trying not to psychoanalyse) saying something about the misguided motives of such individuals? But then the cops who are out to stop them are so heavy handed that lives are lost in the process, so I dunno if any of this is anything. It feels to me like if you’re going to do a story about indigenous werewolves, it is legitimately a take to go somewhere other than “it’s important to respect nature”, but in execution it’s quite hollow. The Jax themselves are literally drones; copy and paste horrors. By their nature they skip what is generally agreed to be The Good Bit of a werewolf story, the fear of your own actions, the horror at your own transformation. What a shame. Even the talky ones are just full on Bad Guys, giving it the old “how can you stop me now, Doctor?”
Once our heroes/that bloody policeman track down and deal with the head Jax, the story takes another surprising turn, this one really quite massively surprising with bells on: with a hundred pages still to go, the Doctor and Sam (having barely escaped with their lives) bugger off in the TARDIS. Yes, they do that in every story, but the dust hasn’t even begun to settle on this one when the duo catapults fifteen years ahead to enjoy Kursaal at its most (or, at all) relaxing. Canny readers might twirl their moustaches at all the remaining pages, and sure enough something is afoot that you might have spotted glinting in Sam’s eyes. And if you spotted it, pat yourself on the back, because at least someone did. (Looking at you, Doctor.)
The last act of Kursaal should get kudos for unexpectedly diving off to the side, but doing so creates a few problems. First, the unmistakable feeling that you have actually hit reset and moved on gives you, or me anyway, the feeling that after all that effort the first act doesn’t actually amount to very much. Most of the characters are dead and only one or two of them were likeable, whilst any plotty revelations not explicitly to do with the Jax already feel like optional footnotes. Second, the actual story choice being made here is not one I liked.
Spoilers, I guess.
…
Still here? Okay then: Sam is infected, and she’s still alive, so she’s going to be the new President of Running Around Savaging People Inc. The transformation happens almost entirely offscreen — again we’re shying away from The Good Bit Of A Werewolf Story, grr — and when it’s done, she’s a bad guy now. Not conflicted, not here’s-her-inner-monologue-trapped-inside, just our A-villain to ride out the novel. We know how Sam feels about killing; we are reminded twice of her guilt around the events of Genocide. So the casual fact that Jax-Sam must have killed a few people ought to be a loaded gun for storytelling. But no: when (probably not a spoiler!) Sam recovers she doesn’t remember any of it, and the Doctor doesn’t tell her. Is that one in the bank for a later book? Quite possibly. (Look at the use we’re still getting out of the Tractites.) But for all the good it does Kursaal, the actual book doing the actual work here, Sam might as well have body-swapped with someone else for all of that. Loaded gun? With blanks, maybe.
Third (remember we’re counting off here), the Doctor. I know good characterisation is partly subjective, but I mean… he should have figured this out, right? That just feels right to me. He takes Sam away so suddenly to keep an eye on her, surely. But… no, he really just oopsied there, and his decision to visit Kursaal a decade and a bit later results in more deaths, just as his decision to leave Kursaal in relative disarray a decade and a bit earlier will have done. So what’s all that about?
Sadly, I’m not convinced the Doctor in this has great depths. When we meet our two heroes they’re pretty much on autopilot, Sam griping and moaning like a committed Tegan Jovanka cosplayer, the Doctor blandly not noticing or minding any of that. I’m fairly certain this is not the first EDA to go with this kind of default Doctor-companion dynamic, but I still hate it. (Especially the grumbling companion. You’re in space! And the previous book established that you are preternaturally disposed to want to do this sort of thing!) When it comes to the Jax, the Doctor can’t stop most of the carnage; when Sam goes bad, he is totally unable to spot it and then, for a bit, unwilling; by the end, despite half-heartedly floating the idea of rescuing untold numbers of semi-converted Jax, he’s thwarted in that too. He does not cut an impressive figure, and worst of all, he runs a genuine risk of not brightening up a scene when he appears in it.
Kursaal’s final surprise is more a sense of disbelief. You get about five pages to decompress, with Sam barely needing that much thanks to some memory hokey-cokey. The last chance to really say something is given over to a monster epilogue. (Curiously, after the acknowledgements.) I have no idea if Kursaal will warrant Genocide-esque follow-ups in later books. I suppose it works out so that it doesn’t need to, but then, why write this stuff for these characters in the first place if it’s not for a purpose?
It’s not what I’d call a bad book. I can’t say the writing really bowled me over one way or the other; the only tic I noticed was how the dialogue and narrative seem strangely keen to avoid swear words, with an awful lot of “Jeez!”, a guy who says “Oh, poo” all the time, and Sam apologising for the bad language just because she exclaimed “Gordon Christ!” a second time. (This was apparently an editorial decision from BBC Books and not Anghelides, which makes sense given how jarring it is. It sort of makes sense not to want these things getting all sweary since they’re aimed at kids. On the other hand though, Kursaal is still a werewolf novel with blood, body parts and sick everywhere. Make it make sense.) As a story it’s the kind of gruesome yarn you might want, or at least expect from Doctor Who tie-in books that exist outside the watershed, and I can’t fault it on readability, or its occasional genuinely unusual choices. But there were opportunities here to underline what’s happening and speak to the characters, and these passed by unnoticed, so Kursaal will likely end up doing much the same in my memories.
5/10
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