To The Slaughter

Review: Cunning caper about radical redecoration.

Solar Feng Shui? Stephen Cole's To the Slaughter is a romp. An unashamed, aren't-we-having-fun romp. Even the normally routine entrance of the TARDIS crew is done with humour, style and vigour.

The Doctor, Fitz and Trix have grown into a really strong team over a very good run of books since Cole's last, Timeless, back in 2003 and Cole has grown with them. Gone are all traces of the dry style which gave us stuff like Vanishing Point.

This is a confident writer who's edited too many of these books to put a foot wrong. He has a light touch but powers the story along with barely a pause. The whole novel verges on farce with its comedic tone and entertaining running-up-and-down-corridors but it still retains the edge of drama essential to make the conclusion actually exciting.

We meet a staggeringly large cast, all introduced rapidly but with such clarity that they remain distinct and consistent throughout the novel. You care about many of them, you love quite a few of them, and one you'll hiss every time his spotty bald patch is mentioned.

Blissfully, with the sheer quantity of leapfrogged locations and subplots, no one turns into a faceless cipher, everyone has a purpose, and at no point do you go, "No, hang on, who's this again?"

Cole waits until the afterword to admit that the whole exercise was driven by a desire to plug one of those thousands of factual errors that crept into TV Doctor Who. How refreshing that he doesn't do this during the book, in a big, clever-me fashion surounded by lazy plotting and the return of a load of characters no-one can quite remember.

This time it results in a novel that is fun, vibrant, silly, and incredibly entertaining twaddle. I loved it.

Joe Ford
The penultimate eighth Doctor adventure is an entertaining mixture of the very cool and the bloody weird. It is one of those books that is hard to pin down because it switches genre with alarming frequency…is it a comedy, science fiction, a political thriller, a horror…at times To The Slaughter is all of these and the shift in mood is one of things that will keep you on your toes. Which other Doctor Who book could present you with a Changing Rooms style spring clean for the solar system and evolve into a 28 Days later massacre?

What impressed me most (besides the number of gosh wow moments) was the amount of intimacy between the regulars. When either of the eighth Doctor editors dips into the range their books seem to capture the Doctor and his companions better than any other writer and To The Slaughter offers some real development for the regulars. It was especially noticeable because of the heavy tension between the three of them in recent tales but to see Trix cuddle up to Fitz, the Doctor kiss his hand and the three of them snuggle up together at the end is far from being as unbearably sugary as it sounds. It is a natural progression of their relationship that strikes a chord because we all want the Doctor and his companions to get on in the end, don’t we?

When the Doctor comments that Trix is coming on nicely he mirrored my thoughts precisely. Admittedly we still don’t know what her dark and disturbing past is (although the blurb from The Gallifrey Chronicles suggests we soon will) but I have really warmed to her devious, manipulative and somewhat heartless approach to their adventures because (and it is made abundantly clear here) that underneath that cold exterior she is a warm, caring person who really wants to help. What I will say though is that this book should have come far sooner in her short run and people might have warmed to her a lot quicker.

Trix actually gets to do most of the best stuff in To The Slaughter, dealing with all the exciting action (she seems to spend the whole book almost being killed…Finn Clark will be in his element…except she survives!) whilst the Doctor confronts the main players in the conspiracy. It’s hard to know which set piece to praise more; almost being burnt alive by rocket fuel, almost having a roof crush her to death, almost being slaughtered by rampaging animals or almost being roasted alive in a centifuge…its that she manages to survive the damn book that is so impressive!

It is at this point that I should mention that Stephen Cole is never better than when he is writing scenes from Trix or Fitz’s point of view. This is where he can plant himself in the book and make some hilarious observations using some ingenious pop culture references. He seems totally relaxed with these two characters, swearing, laughing at the action and using the most jarring remarks during stressful moments (I’m talking about big knickers, Cathy Gale, the Incredible Hulk and Stars in their Eyes here!).

The first thirty pages of the book are hugely misleading, coming across as a comedy silent movie from the days of black and white. The Doctor, Fitz and Trix spend ages running about chasing each others tails and I was wondering when all the Doctor Who stereotypes would end and the plot would begin but don’t be taken in by Cole’s deception…the plot hinges on information in those first thirty pages. He’s just a sneaky b*****, that’s all.

The plot is much more complicated than it might appear at first but stick with it, despite some confusing moments (around the middle of the book when everybody seems to have an agenda at odds with everyone else) the book polishes up very nicely, exploding with some nice twists, good motivations for everyone involved and a climax that will impress those who like a good spectacle. The web of intruige that this book spins is worthy of the great Robert Holmes with so many characters who aren’t quite what they appear to be but their plans all meet about 200 pages in with horrific consequences. What does confuse is why Cole chooses to deliberately i

Paul Tapner
Rather disappointing after the superb previous two eighth doctor stories. I really couldn't get into it till the last seventy pages, and even then it felt very over familiar. Great use of Trix. Fitz has been here before too often. Mind you, I might have enjoyed this more if I hadn't known that the end is nigh....

Lewis Brunton
I found this book an entertaining read, and the comedic style refreshing compared to some of the other eighth doctor books of late. It is quite fast paced, but not enough so that you lose the plot. I too was looking forward to a slow round up to the eighth doctors tenure in this book and the next, and found that the 'time to leave' hints were not as subtle as they could have been.

fishy phil
This was a hugely disapointing book that felt like it was retreading many previous eighth Doctor plots. I had hoped that as we enter the final lap of the eighth Doctor's life we would have had some setting up for the big finale. Instead, we got a hint in the final chapter about certain people thinking there time is up. Hugely disapointing novel, and I had expected far more from a very talented writer.

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