TYPE: New Series
FEATURING: Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones
AUTHOR: Justin Richards
PAGE COUNT: 244
SYNOPSIS:
Castle Extremis - whoever holds it can control the provinces either side that have been at war for centuries. Now the castle is about to play host to the signing of a peace treaty. But as the Doctor and Martha find out, not everyone wants the war to end.
Who is the strange little girl who haunts the castle? What is the secret of the book the Doctor finds, it's pages made from thin, brittle glass? Who is the hooded figure that watches from the shadows? And what is the secret of the legendary Mortal Mirror?
The Doctor and Martha don't have long to find the answers - an army is on the march, and the castle will soon be under siege once more...
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
REVIEW:
When the Doctor decides to take Martha to Castle Extremis, he expects to arrive in the time when the fortress is a theme park. As usual things don't quite work out, and instead the TARDIS arrives during a pivotal point in the castle's history. The time travelers pass themselves off as Galactic Alliance observers, but just when it seems the negotiations are about to be concluded, a murder throws everything into chaos.
It's been a long time since I last picked up a Doctor Who book (which seems rather incredible to me). I have to say though, compared to the two previous books reviewed here, Martha In The Mirror is a welcome change. Rather than an ancient evil sleeping under a cozy town waiting to awaken, this is set in the future in a fortress in the middle of a war. This could have fallen into the classic 'base under siege' plotline that quite a few Doctor Who stories have followed, but fortunately the siege portion was held off until the very end, and the siege itself was done in a very unique way.
There aren't many characters that truly stand out in this book with the exception of Janna, a young orphan who lives in the castle and believes she is haunted by the ghost of her dead sister who was killed in a land min explosion. But is she really being haunted? And is she even Janna, or she actually Tylda, the sister? Janna/Tylda's part in the story is one of the more interesting and mysterious elements. The only other characters that stand out are the maintenance droids, Bill and Bott. They act as a bit of comic relief, a robotic Laurel and Hardy, and while they seem to be inconsequential at first, they are very significant to the story by the end.
The most significant element of the story is the Mortal Mirror. While a mirror that is more than it seem is not a new concept in Doctor Who, this one is handled in a wonderfully unique way. Imagine a mirror that is actually a door to a pocket universe. What if you could step through the mirror? But there's a problem: this mirror is a trap, one you can never escape from even if you came out again, because as soon as someone sees you in it, because a reflection is the effect of light bouncing off the mirror you are also converted into nothing more than a glass image based on light. This is what is unique about the Mortal Mirror, that once someone's reflection is observed, they come out of the mirror made of glass themselves. It really makes me wish this story had been one of the TV episodes, because I would have loved to see the battle scene at the end acted out and the special effects of the glass Zerugians from the mirror shattering. It is one of the more interesting battles I've seen or read in Doctor Who.
I do have one minor criticism, and that is the title of the book. Martha In The Mirror makes it sound as if at some point Martha would get trapped inside the mirror and possibly replaced by a fake Martha, an idea that in enforced by the cover art. And while Martha does go through the mirror at one point, it only takes a few pages for her to get out again, so that potential never materializes. It doesn't detract from the story, but it can lead the reader to the same assumption.
The plot also seems to bear some superficial resemblance to one of Justin Richards' prior Doctor Who novels, Dreams Of Empire, but I never did read the whole thing so I'd have to go back and see how much is actually the same between the two stories.
In conclusion, this was a very good book to read, and a nice change from both Wishing Well and Forever Autumn. Earthbound stories are good, but I've always been more partial to stories set in the future and on alien worlds, so this one delivers the goods and some clever concepts with it.
