I was surprised and delighted when I read Dave Stone's second Doctor Who novel, "Death And Diplomacy". Dave had turned everything that was wrong with his first foray, "Sky Pirates!" to his advantage and produced an entertaining piece of writing as a result. Unfortunately, "Burning Heart" relapses closer to "Sky Pirates!" in quality, and while BH is marginally better, it is still highly unsatisfying.

There are two key problems with "Burning Heart". First is Dave's approach to the narrative in general. Like "Sky Pirates!", Dave's prose is frequently overlong, rambling, and even incoherent, or at least difficult to decipher. While the same could frequently be said of "Death And Diplomacy" as well, there it at least contributed grandly to that novel's mood and humor. In "Burning Heart", it's just distracting, given the book an amateurish feel. It also strongly discourages attentive reading of the text, as too much seems irrelevant and tedious -- it becomes difficult to discern exactly what is important to read, and so the book becomes something of a blur as the reader skips from sentence to sentence searching for substance rather than style.

Perhaps even more dismal, though, is the complete lack of likeable, interesting characters in "Burning Heart", the main consequence of which is that it becomes very difficult to care about the novel's outcome. Having much of the cast shuffle off this mortal coil wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing! In a way, I guess, this is a good thing for the two main bad guys -- Jelks and Garon -- but it also results in them seeming very shallow and predictable bad guys indeed. Jelks, in particular, is supposed to be a smooth-talking charismatic charmer, but it is difficult to recognise this role with the smarmy, crazed portrayal Stone offers. Meanwhile, even those characters (narrowly) on the side of the angels are hard to like. Kane never encourages any confidence at all regardless of the role he's currently playing, and Craator is a walking, talking cliche: the tough veteran cop who's above the corruption plaguing the system. The best of a bad lot are the aliens the Doctor is locked up with by the Adjudicators, but they see little development and some -- Queegvogel in particular -- really start to grate on the nerves as the book progresses.

This phenomenon, sadly, is not isolated to the guest cast. Peri, in particular, is a bland and lifeless character in "Burning Heart", more akin to her whiny "Twin Dilemma" characterisation than, say, the far more palatable "Mysterious Planet" approach. Peri is weak and ineffective throughout, always playing second fiddle to someone else, be it the Doctor or Kane or one of the White Fire bunch. The Doctor is the best character in the novel, especially since Dave's confidence in handling this particular incarnation appears to increase gradually as things progress. If "Burning Heart" accomplishes one thing with particular aplomb, it is that -- as in "Millennial Rites" -- the Sixth Doctor is portrayed in a way no different than on television except that the readers are finally acquainted with the methods behind his madness. The most enjoyable aspect of "Burning Heart" is seeing the Doctor act in the arrogant, irrational manner this incarnation often behaved on-screen, and then having it pointed out exactly what inspired this behavior. This leads to a far better understanding of the character, continuing a process Missing Adventure authors have apparently worked diligently on to cast a better light on Colin Baker's version of the Time Lord without simply abandoning his televised personality.

I haven't mentioned the plot yet, and there's a good reason for this: while it's not a particularly bad part of the novel, it doesn't really provoke much of a positive reaction, either. A bit underdeveloped and certainly nothing we haven't seen several times before, the story underlying "Burning Heart" almost seems to have been forgotten by the author; certainly, Stone doesn't do much at all with it over the course of two hundred and fifty pages.

Like "Killing Ground", "Burning Heart" is one of the poorer Sixth Doctor entries into the MA range, exhibiting too little of merit and too much of Dave Stone's excesses. Hopefully, "Ship Of Fools" will see a return to an approach more akin to "Death And Diplomacy".

4/10.

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