Grimm Reality is a Doctor Who novel that takes place on a world of fairy tales. It stars the Eighth Doctor, Fitz, and Anji, and has some wonderful scenes for all three of them. Bucher-Jones and Hale provide a science fiction explanation for the magical events on the planet, so any Who fans who don’t like magic in their Who and were upset with the previous novel (City of the Dead) can be assured that this one is “safe.”

The Doctor and his companions land on a planet and are very soon cut off from the TARDIS by forest that has grown instantly around the ship so they can’t get back in. They start exploring the world, and all three of them stumble into three different situations that look like fairy tales. Fitz gets involved in a quest with two princes, Anji gets trapped by a witch into a contract to be a servant to six spoiled young girls. Finally, the Doctor gets involved with trying to revive a sleeping princess. Things steamroll from there, getting more and more strange as different fairy tale aspects start mixing. Things start to make a bit more sense for the reader once the Doctor figures out what’s going on, but the ride up to that point is enjoyable as well.

Meanwhile, there is a starship with a crew consisting of three races, the Vuim, the Abanak, and humans, who are trying to establish mining rights for this world and the white singularity that’s around it. To be honest, the plot surrounding the Vuim grinds the story to a halt every time the book goes back to it, and it has to work hard to retrieve its momentum when the story shifts back to one of the other subplots. The other aspects of the crew, though, are much more interesting, and the humans do provide impetus for the other subplots involving the Doctor and crew. In fact, its hilarious watching the rivalry between Anji and Christina, the human ship captain, after Christina gets drawn into Anji’s plot.

The fairy tales that Bucher-Jones and Hale draw upon are not the nice, tidy ones that get read to children nowadays, but the ugly ones that were the original Grimm’s tales. It can be a rude awakening for the reader who wasn’t aware that Grimm’s tales are actually quite grim and is expecting something else. The authors make great use of the inspiration though, putting the characters through their paces with elegant prose, interesting situations, and “what the f---?” revelations.

The main revelation comes about 2/3 through the novel, and it results in the only drawback to this book. Once the tales are “explained,” the technobabble gets a bit thick. It’s nothing a science fiction fan isn’t used to, but it’s sad that it degenerates to that. Given the magical nature of City of the Dead (the previous book), it would have been nice to have a little more magic and a little less science in this one. I guess that would have offended the purists, though.

This book is not one to be raced through. It’s a book that should be devoured in chunks and savoured. The writing is wonderful, the plot is interesting, and the characters are marvelously portrayed. Something is done with each one of them, and this book is much more of an ensemble piece than the last couple of Eighth Doctor Adventures have been. It’s good to see that the line is continuing such good stories. This one makes three in a row now.


Recommended: Yes