A review by nwhyte
Bernice Summerfield: Dead Romance by Lawrence Miles
4.0
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2694932.html
I don't quite get the immense reverence shown to Lawrence Miles and the Faction Paradox concept by the more literary end of Whovian fandom; on the other hand I thoroughly enjoyed this, even though it is a book in the series of Bernice Summerfield novels where she doesn't appear at all except as a personality of the far future, the Doctor appears only in distorted form, and the one continuity character is Chris Cwej. Paradoxically, this makes it a rare case of a Who book that one can readily recommend to non-Whovian readers because it is so very detached from the main narrative - indeed, Miles stresses that it should be considered as taking place in a pocket universe detached from the main timeline of the Whoniverse.
That's all beside the most important point, which is that it's a really good read. Christine Summerfield, the slightly reliable narrator, fills up numerous notebooks writing about how the world ended in October 1970; there are many many references to the pop culture of the late 1960s, in a slightly different timeline to our own; the Time Lords are restored to their original position of dubious god-like beings, manipulating the physical forms of their allies (that's a new one) and much else; the whole universe is a grim place, and yet I found myself immersed in it. It's a rare example of a diary-format novel where the narrator actually survives; but to what end? I found it a complex, multi-layered story, but one that did at least keep me reading with satisfaction to the final page.
I don't quite get the immense reverence shown to Lawrence Miles and the Faction Paradox concept by the more literary end of Whovian fandom; on the other hand I thoroughly enjoyed this, even though it is a book in the series of Bernice Summerfield novels where she doesn't appear at all except as a personality of the far future, the Doctor appears only in distorted form, and the one continuity character is Chris Cwej. Paradoxically, this makes it a rare case of a Who book that one can readily recommend to non-Whovian readers because it is so very detached from the main narrative - indeed, Miles stresses that it should be considered as taking place in a pocket universe detached from the main timeline of the Whoniverse.
That's all beside the most important point, which is that it's a really good read. Christine Summerfield, the slightly reliable narrator, fills up numerous notebooks writing about how the world ended in October 1970; there are many many references to the pop culture of the late 1960s, in a slightly different timeline to our own; the Time Lords are restored to their original position of dubious god-like beings, manipulating the physical forms of their allies (that's a new one) and much else; the whole universe is a grim place, and yet I found myself immersed in it. It's a rare example of a diary-format novel where the narrator actually survives; but to what end? I found it a complex, multi-layered story, but one that did at least keep me reading with satisfaction to the final page.