Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible

Summary: 7.5 /10 The Doctor and Ace end up in the distant past, and encounter Gallifreyans right before they become Time Lords. Can Wilby get us to the Future? One of the more bizzare entries in the series by Ghost Light author Marc Platt.

It's difficult to evaluate Time's Crucible -- due to a busy schedule, it took me a month or so to get through the book, and as it is, like Ghost Light before it, one of the more confusing and surreal works of the Doctor Who world, having it spread over a number of weeks perhaps makes me rate it a little bit lower.

It's obvious from the start that this is from the same pen as Ghost Light -- we have all sorts of concepts that get to be capitalized, such as Processes, Futures, Beginnings...almost anything except others. This is a risky (and slightly pretentious) avenue to go down. Like Ghost Light, I imagine that Time's Crucible would improve with additional readings, and as such I feel my rating is even more tenative than it usually would be. It's a style that takes some time to get used to, and I think reading it over an extended period didn't really help here. However, there are a number of excellent lines in the book, ones that just roll off the page and are a joy to read.

The main reason I wanted to read this book was to see how it dealt with the Dark Time on Gallifrey. I'm not sure if messing with the Old Times is something that should be done, as I think it reveals too much. There's a bit too much of what I would call magic in this book, not just "sufficiently advanced technology", but something that really only makes sense as a magic based creature. I'm intreged that even though Gallifreyans aren't Time Lords at this point, it's clear that they still have a relationship with Time - books of Future Legends and the like

Time's Crucible is an ambitious book, and doesn't quite succeed. It's a book that I want to read again, when I have time to read it in fewer sittings, but it's one of the more average outings in the series. 7.5/10