The Scarlet Empress [PROSE/1998.9.7]

★★★★★

  One of my favourite Dr. Who writers penning a fairytale, Journey to the West-like adventure chronicle with a bunch of fantasy creatures and stories, all under the title of one of Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg's best films -- to say my expectations were high when I first approached the book would be an understatement, and after all these years, the amount of ingenuity and joy and love that this novel holds is still undeniable. You have one of the most vivid worlds imagined within the confines of Dr. Who's vast world, Hyspero, a world of djinns and sentient spiders, a ragtag bunch of ex-vigilantes with individual powers and a jealous empress trapped in honey(or something of that effect), you have such vivid characters inhabiting every page, and you have excellent characterisations for both the Doctor and Sam -- a space-and-time traveller who renounced his manipulative ways (further explorations of the Eighth Doctor would dispute this notion, but whatever floats Magrs' boat), and a young woman who has more or less matured into an entity of her own, striking out and fending for herself quite nicely. Then you have one of my favourite characters from the Dr. Who mythos, Magrs original character Iris Wildthyme, who immediately leaps from the pages of her sophomore Dr. Who outing as a fully-fledged, wonderful embodiment of Dr. Who references and mature emotions. The subtle and yet deep relationship between the Doctor and Iris is the backbone of the entire book, and it just so happens that this backbone is incredibly firm.

  What about the structure, then? I have scarecely witnessed a Dr. Who writer more willing to play around with prose structures, incorporating first-person narrations from characters (even the Doctor -- love it when stuff like this happens) and descriptions of camcorder footage taken by Iris herself. It almost feels like Magrs wrote this primarily as an imaginary concept screenplay for a Dr. Who film, all the while utilising the unique strengths of the prose medium to their limit; the result is positively spectacular. Each chapter, each paragraph can be read with such ease, and I hardly registered the passing of time while reading the book. It is that good, and even more miraculous when taking into account how many insane ideas are thrown into the mix. Magrs wears his influences on his sleeves, and it's so obvious (and even more so after finding out he outright stated as much) that this was written like it was his first and only stab at writing proper Dr. Who -- this is a labour of love, a once-in-a-lifetime sort of event where passion meets ingenuity and charm and creates this perfect work of art. Featuring robot spiders, calf-headed turtles, winding streets of a sun-drenched city and pirate ships, and laden with a sense of melancholy and sweet remembrance that fits incredibly well with (spoiler alert) the oncoming death and regeneration of this Beryl Reid/Katy Manning (depends on who you ask, really) incarnation of Iris. I love The Scarlet Empress to bits, and it's undoubtedly one of the highlights of the early Eighth Doctor Adventures novels.

  (P.S., here's a link for more insight and information about the development of The Scarlet Empress, in the words of Paul Magrs himself.)