Molly! ┌| ∵ |┘♪

★★★★⯪ – A would-be masterpiece with an unfortunate aftertaste.

This review contains spoilers for the ending of the book.

Read Human Nature. Do it! It’s a resounding success of a novel that, contrary to the associations of the phrase “tie-in media”, is in the same weight class as some of the best stand-alone sci-fi novels you’ve read. It’s riveting, it’s brave, its characters are written with incredible feeling, and it contains a stupefying example of how to write a satisfying romance in appallingly few scenes. The book is, in this case, a hundred times better than the movie. That said, what I’m interested in exploring in this review is something I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere: how the ending of Human Nature falls on its face.

A recurring theme in Doctor Who, and especially the New Adventures, and especially especially Paul Cornell’s work, is the tension between the epic and the everyday; between grand, unfathomable science fiction and the little things in life. When an effort is made to emphasize this contrast, the author du jour typically comes down on the side of the latter – sometimes unsuccessfully (the Fifth Doctor’s “well-prepared meal” speech in Earthshock [1982], an episode in which the evil robots with big guns arguably win, comes to mind), and sometimes, as is generally the case in Paul Cornell’s oeuvre, powerfully. Take his earlier novel for this line, Love and War, in which the winning hands include calling somebody by their chosen name and telling a story about a road trip passionately enough. Cornell seems to me an eminently media-literate man – he writes, I get the impression, with a watchful eye fixed on his message: Choosing to send your students to war as child soldiers conspicuously yields no positive results whatsoever, and despite the military making an appearance rather early, they’re never allowed to step in to provide any solutions. It is jarring, then, when the novel not only shoots itself in the foot, but does so shortly after explicitly proclaiming that “I shall not shoot myself in the foot”.

Hanging over the plot – in which the Doctor has turned into John Smith, a human, losing his memories and superhuman powers – is the possibility for the true Doctor to make a return in order to, as the deus he is, save the day ex machina. This would, of course, beyond being deeply unsatisfying (plenty of Doctor Who plots follow the structure “the Doctor is tied up somewhere, so everyone else’s agency is limited to waiting for him to show up and fix things”), run counter to the larger message of the book: If true triumph is to be found in the everyday, why should the solution be “we need the inscrutable Time Lord from faraway Gallifrey to work his sci-fi magic”? Indeed, the novel recognizes this, and – as if to reassure the reader – contains this line:

He sat down beside her. ‘John Smith is the real me. And it’s because of all this, not despite it. You don’t know what you really want in life until it’s taken from you.’

‘You mean Joan?’

‘Yes. […] I have to save her. And I have to do it as me.’

Unfortunately, in a move I can only describe as inexplicable, the novel then promptly turns around and has becoming the Doctor be the solution. Hey, is that the machina? Well, the deus has just come ex it, and he saves the day by way of technobabble. How Cornell managed to lay out a plan for the reader so concretely and yet summarily fail to execute on it, I do not know – but there is a possible explanation, though I described it as “inexplicable”. Quote the endnotes of the 2002 e-book version:

[N]obody had ever really done mythologist Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’ for the Doctor, the plot that’s most commonly recognised in popular culture as that of Superman II, where the hero gives everything up to discover what normal humanity is like. Fertile ground, I thought.

The particular stage of the Hero’s Journey Cornell refers to here is the apotheosis, in which the hero gains enlightenment. And, sure, the apotheosis can be applied to the novel as a whole; that enlightenment being found in humanity (that is to say, human nature). Apply the whole Hero’s Journey to the story, however, and the apotheotic moment within the book is… when John Smith sacrifices himself and becomes the Doctor. Here, “enlightenment” is becoming an inscrutable Time Lord from faraway Gallifrey. If Cornell did indeed choose this development as part of the Hero’s Journey, it’s a shame, and if not, it is inexplicable – either way, a tone-deaf moment in an otherwise pitch-perfect book. (As an aside – and this is hardly a critique, as it isn’t fair to ask that an author should’ve come up with the exact same idea – I can’t help but feel Cornell missed the opportunity to let John Smith live out the fifty or so remaining years of his life with Joan, something that would have been possible thanks to the unique setup of the Doctor as a character.)

In fact, at no point after returning to Doctorhood does the Doctor ever make a decision differently in light of his experiences as a human – he gets a chance, in the form of deciding whether to be empathetic enough to say goodbye to his paramour (as opposed to pulling an Irish goodbye for the ages)… but comes down on the side of “no”, and has to be convinced by his companion. (In the first draft of the book, he actually does disappear without a trace, a choice Cornell rightly recognized as a mistake.) Ultimately, there’s never any sign of the Doctor having learned anything from his ordeal, save for a scene at the very end, in which the Doctor cries – a lovely moment, given that it isn’t something the Doctor is given to doing, but underwhelming as the sole result of becoming human for a time.

Human Nature does succeed in its messaging in other areas – for one, it makes a stand for pacifism and conscientious objectors (something Cornell walks back in the TV adaptation, apparently having lost his pacifist streak along the way). As a work of character writing, it’s flawless – I didn’t even mention Bernice Summerfield’s role in the book, but it’s one of her most essential novels; her thoughtscape laid out beautifully before the reader. Take this review as one long – and, admittedly, significant – asterisk next to my central sentiment: “It’s amazing.*”

★★★☆☆ – Good!

You know that feeling you sometimes get from academic literature – the feeling that the author, at some point, realized that the book is their soapbox? “This is my book – I can write anything I want in it!” This book gives off that feeling, for better and for worse (but also for better!).

If you, like me, are a 21ˢᵗ-century trans woman, the history contained in this book will, for the most part, not pertain to you directly. My gender identity is not an ethnoreligious phenomenon, I’ve never been a sex worker, and I was but a glint in my grandfather’s eye in the ’60s. Nevertheless, the history detailed in this book is eminently interesting, and offers a perspective on transfemininity (and its interaction with mainstream society) that may be illuminating and useful – it certainly made me question some of my basal assumptions.

It is my view that in order to create something truly special, one must be “radically different” for some value of that phrase. And if you are as “out there” as is required to create something special, I believe, you will necessarily not only make decisions that resonate with your audience as something special, but some decisions that will simply go down as “mad” as well. A necessity of making something great is to make something questionable. This book is a prime example: For every part that makes you question your place in society, there’s a part where the author recounts an entire music video, or goes on about nothing for six paragraphs. The final chapter of the book might make you – it certainly made me – feel like you’re being inducted into a sex-radical female-supremacist cult. The very final sentence – “Will you demand it all?” – struck me as particularly discombobulating. Because overall, it isn’t that kind of book.

When you read a book on gender theory – especially one written by a marginalized author – there’s always a risk that it’ll be angry, isn’t there? Righteously so, but nevertheless the sort of book you shouldn’t read if you aren’t at the top of your mental game; the sort of book that’s upsetting even if it’s right. The sort of book that induces angst in the vulnerable. A Short History is not that kind of book. It’s mixed in its digestibility, sure, and the coherence of its arguments isn’t always readily apparent (as in, I wasn’t always sure what arguments it tried to make) – but it’s level-headed and informative (if more than a bit florid and high-falutin’). You certainly don’t risk anything by giving it a try.

★★★☆☆ – Alright!

Oh, It’s a Comedy…!

And of course it is – it’s a Jacqueline Rayner book! Why did I expect any different?

If you, like me, have done your time skulking around the wiki; if you’ve read anything about this book, you probably know one thing about it. The one thing this book is famous for (to the degree that this book is famous, which it isn’t particularly). If you don’t, your proficiency in spoiler avoidance is of impressive caliber, but in case you think you do, let’s say it on three: One… Two… Three! It’s the book in which Bernice Summerfield gets nonconsensually pregnant with a wolfman baby while a villain is possessing her body.

Let’s dig into that a bit. Bernice Summerfield, of course, has had an active fiction line since 1992 – thirty-three years, at the time of writing. With the last Virgin New Adventures book being published in 1999, twenty-five of those years have been spent in the care of Big Finish. Despite this, I get the impression – and I cannot say how true it is, as I haven’t read enough of them to be sure – that Big Finish’s Bernice Summerfield novels are considerably fluffier fare than the New Adventures, in both senses: less dark, and perhaps of less substance.

Benny’s Virgin outings live in the collective cultural consciousness to this day – you hear extolment not only of heavy Doctor Who hitters such as Love and War and Just War (no love in that one), but even occasionally of her Doctor-less adventures like Down. Meanwhile, her Big Finish novels are not only not extolled, but… hardly ever mentioned, in my limited experience. With the Virgin novels both better remembered and known for their emphasis on continuity, then, it’s odd to think that most of Bernice Summerfield today – her personality; her continuity – is built on that Big Finish output that’s hardly ever discussed. Paul Cornell’s Bernice “I like a drink” Summerfield is who she was; Big Finish’s Bernice “I need a drink…” Summerfield is not altogether different – but certainly noticeably so.

A Comedy with Non-Comedy Consequences

With two decades of hindsight, this novel feels mind-boggingly odd. The reason? It’s a genre work where the genre trappings have consequences far removed from its genre.

In this book, the villain sleeps with a wolfman while in Bernice’s body and (as is only revealed in a later book) gets her pregnant with the baby of this man for whom she has absolutely no affinity. This is played for laughs, which in all fairness – despite being a writing choice that one could imagine would be avoided today – works just fine in the context of the novel… but then they ran with it. “She’s running sex-crazedly and decadently amok with your body!” works as an amusing circumstance – “You’re saddled with the baby of a man you do not love, conceived against your will while you were practically unconscious” does not. It’s an emotionally immaterial setup to a heavy story arc – a scene borne of comedy, its result deferred tragedy. The sort of genre-subversive whiplash that’s worthy of, say, The Boys, but it seems to have come about accidentally. Of course, when the fallout is eventually handled in The Glass Prison, it still doesn’t feel all that heavy – that is, after all, also a Jacqueline Rayner novel – but it’s the sort of thing that’s impossible to read a synopsis of (or even stop and think about in the shower) without it coming off as profoundly terrifying.

Coming from later releases, this serves to somewhat weaken the house of cards that is Bernice Summerfield’s continuity. When you hear about her past it sounds enticing and rich – so when it’s revealed to rest on a joke, that richness is made a tad poorer. It might serve the series better to experience it in order – going from “haha” to “oh” is decidedly a stronger experience than from “whoa” to “pfft” – but with the two decades of content released after this novel, that’s not necessarily the natural approach. Bernice Summerfield has, in a way, hurt its own structural integrity as a series by being as long-lived and successful as it is.

The Scent of Butter

On its own merits, The Squire’s Crystal is classic Rayner: It’s popcorn literature. It never makes any particularly daring story decisions, and all psychological exploration of the premise – the classic “gender swap” being famously ripe for a panoply of angles – is deftly dodged in service of being an effective, digestible vessel for comedy and a high pace. No palpable angst results from the body swap (Benny is portrayed as experiencing angst, but I can’t in good conscience say the book is written in an angsty tone), and gender roles are only explored from the perspective of genre tropes (“now that I’m a man I can’t use my feminine wiles!”). In a particularly funny moment, the book displays that it’s written by a cis woman a smidge too prominently: It’s apparently vexing that Benny’s new male body’s bits constantly “bounce around”. While wearing tight leather pants. In case you’re not familiar, I’ll tell you here and now: Such is not the penile experience.

This review undeniably sounds like damning with faint praise (mixed in with a helping of regular damning), but if I’m to be honest, as a trans woman currently battling a particularly lengthy bout of debilitating dysphoria, I was dearly hoping not to have to confront the intricacies of sex and gender today. There’s a time and place for popcorn literature, and mine – listening to an audiobook while moving – was certainly it. I suppose one could’ve wished for a few twists and turns to help the book skirt around being quite so “by the numbers”, but alas.

For once, we have a story that’s infinitely stranger in context than on its own.

★★★☆☆ – Good!

The Glass Prison is a Jacqueline Rayner novel, through and through. It has a light touch (despite its heavy subject matter), it’s eminently funny, and it’s decidedly more about its characters than its concepts. Make no mistake – despite an eponymous location that smacks of “high concept” as much as a “glass prison”, the ramifications of this odd setting aren’t explored so much as used as a source of emotional turmoil for the characters: Characters which, thanks to Rayner’s effortlessly human style,* are always immediately relatable; never impenetrable.

Exploring Bernice Summerfield’s pregnancy and labor, you would expect this novel to be a profoundly angst-inducing affair – and it does seem like something Rayner aims for! But she isn’t an author who writes spiraling psychological narratives: She writes fast-paced, (non-derogatorily) digestible, intuitive stories. When Bernice Summerfield worries whether her baby is truly hers or not (it’s some science fiction mumbo and/or jumbo), you never wonder on which side she’ll come down in the end – though that meshes with the tone of the rest of the book.

As nestled in my heart, Jacqueline Rayner is a comfort author. You get a good story, you’re never bored, and you aren’t too challenged. It’s the ultimate refinement of the “popcorn literature” that you expect a licensed novel to be. That’s not to say that she can’t write in a higher register – but I wouldn’t imagine that’s the mission statement here. Rayner writes quintessential Bernice Summerfield – she has a pitch-perfect grasp on her sarcastic, messy character, while assiduously maintaining the reader’s emotional connection to her. Of course, by virtue of her being one of the few female writers who consistently get work in the Doctor Who extended universe, you suffer no risk of running into chauvinism in her writing, and as a bonus, this particular novel centers on a cast of nigh-exclusively female characters – a breath of fresh air.

An odd feature of this novel is the passive nature of its plot – Summerfield and her gang are profoundly reactive. You would think a prison break would be an obvious feature of a novel named The Glass Prison, but… it barely is! They seem perfectly content doggin’ it in there.

If you, like me, are interested in immersing yourself in Bernice Summerfield as a franchise, this novel is a key inflection point. It chronicles the birth of her son, who goes on to be an important character in his own right, it’s another step in Bernice’s perennial will-they-again-won’t-they-again relationship with her (ex-!!!)husband Jason Kane, and it features a new angle on Rayner’s own pet alien species, the fact-obsessed, tentacle-faced, and deeply tickling (as in amusing, not with their tentacles, I— oh, forget it) Grel. It may also offer you some consolation as to why Bernice Surprise Summerfield’s son has a name as exasperatingly prosaic as “Peter”.

The audiobook version adds the value of Lisa Bowerman’s brilliant performance – who knew she commanded such a range of voices?

* Have you listened to Doctor Who and the Pirates?

★★★☆☆ – “Hey, I had a good time tonight.”

A theme park ride of ideas.

Rose-Coloured Crosshairs is, in a sense, the Platonic idea of a Faction Paradox novel(la). When I say that, I don’t mean the Platonic ideal, mind – that being perfect, absolute, and eternal – but the Platonic idea: The most essential form; an embodiment that zeroes in on what “a Faction Paradox novel” is, free of extraneous features. And when I say “in a sense”, I do mean a specific sense: It manifests what I had heard Faction Paradox was like before I got into it. Quote Elizabeth Sandifer, in her essay on A Romance in Twelve Parts, Obverse Books’s first Faction Paradox publication:

[Faction Paradox] is a series and a mythology defined by setup and by the generation of ideas, as opposed to by their deep exploration and resolution.

Never has this been truer than in this book. Rose-Coloured Crosshairs is a guided tour of ideas; a safari of titillating notions; a theme park ride with concepts in place of animatronic characters. It never stops to explore these concepts in any depth, but they certainly get to strike their cool poses and put on their pyrotechnic displays as you ride past. Notably, the premise to which “rose-coloured crosshairs” refers –  a device placed on a planet in life’s infancy, which (over the course of the planet’s whole remaining multi-billion-year history!) brainwashes people into remembering a false past and “progress [thus] becomes impossible, as [nostalgia denies] any possibility of change” – smacks loudly of a message; of a point the author wants to make… but that point is never made, as the effects of the device never enter the story.

It’s difficult to be too disappointed by the lack of depth, however, because Rose-Coloured Crosshairs makes a good bid at compensating with quantity. I found myself lost and quite honestly bored for the first third of the book, which consists largely of meticulous, dry worldbuilding descriptions (as if out of a sourcebook for a tabletop role-playing game) and slightly too inscrutable exchanges between unfamiliar characters. Barring some hitches in the pacing, however – Bidmead likes frontloaded descriptions (though at least I always had a vivid image of the scene) – the rest of the book flew by: The Macy’s parade of ideas gets into the swing of it, and I’m sure I audibly let out an “ooh” and/or “ahh” on at least a few occasions.

Some of the concepts are a bit too fuzzily defined for my tastes (“vibes-based”, as they say, or sometimes “things just kind of happen”), but again, it’s not a great loss if a given idea doesn’t speak to you, since you’ll be on to the next but a few pages down the line. Unfortunately, the central plot of the book is characterized by this fuzziness as well; a general feeling of “what just happened and why?” In the end, I’m left feeling more as if I’ve read a single-author anthology than a novel(…la), but the inescapable fact of the matter is, I like an anthology. Do you?