There is 1 review so far. To add a review of your own for this item, visit the voting page.
| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
|
| Date: | Saturday 29 March 2025 |
|
| Rating: |   7 |
David A. McIntee's Sanctuary presents itself as a pure historical story, a rarity for Doctor 7. There are no aliens, no time paradoxes, no lost extraterrestrial devices. Instead, the story proceeds much like the Hartnell era historicals. Thus, the plot runs mostly this way: something strange happens to the TARDIS, forcing the TARDIS crew to abandon the TARDIS. They find themselves in southwestern France, Landuedoc (or Langue d'Oc), in the early 1200s, just in time for the most horrific parts of the Albigensian Crusades. Doctor and companion get separated, and the first half plus of the story involves them trying to get back together. Once they do, the plot changes to part The Name of the Rose and part Ivanhoe. Bernice falls in love with a disgraced Templar Knight, Guy de Carnac, which of course prepares the reader for the tragic ending. Although McIntee has apparently done quite a bit of research about the period and its historical events, he ends up playing Shakespeare with history, creating characters as standins for one and sometimes two real historical figures, condensing events that cross years into a couple of weeks, and conflating events into single scenes.
Some problematic areas for me are the overly long descriptions of combat, especially dwelling on the physical details of death, the lack of a clear plot, and the telegraphing of the ending from very early in the story. The detailed descriptions of death really put me off. In each case, we have to be told exactly which limbs were hacked off, which body parts were gauged out, which weapon caused each death, how much blood one could see, and on and on and on. I don't know why McIntee insists on devoting so many pages to gore, other than that it acts as padding to swell an otherwise rather slim story.
So, this book is entertaining in that we get plenty of Medieval fighting (all very exciting), a love story that is at least believable enough (de Carnac being very much like Bernice), dastardly nobles stabbing each other in the backs (or hiring someone to do it), and a Doctor 7 who for the first time in a long time seems to be actually doing something.
