Really enjoyed this book. Steve Cole did a fantastic job with his portrayal of the 13th Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz.

I love it when the Doctor goes back into Earth ( )

I really loved the mix of history and weird alien twist.
Great read for all Doctor who fans. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3190596.html

The two best episodes of last year's Doctor Who series were the two historical settings which are up for the Hugo this year; here, Steve Cole takes the Tardis crew to a less well known historical moment, the conflict between Attila the Hun and the Roman general Flavius Ætius which culminated in the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451, near what is now Troyes in France. As it turns out, there are aliens involved as well as human factions; the Tardis crew get split up four ways - to facilitate the plot of course, but it also gives Cole a chance to show off his grasp of detail in the setting and the characterisation. Cole is one of the most prolific Who writers, and I felt he was well on form. ( )

Steve Cole’s Doctor Who: Combat Magicks is the first of the novels featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Yasmin, Ryan, and Graham to feature a story in which the foursome travel to Earth’s past. In this story, the Doctor and her companions arrive in Gaul in 451 AD, finding themselves caught between the massing armies of Attila the Hun and the declining Western Roman Empire. A group of witches called the Tenctrama offer their magicks to Attila to help ensure his victory, though the Doctor and her companions find that the witches are playing both sides against each other for their own gain.

The group finds themselves separated, with the Doctor and Yaz in the camp of Attila, which allows Cole both to tell the history of Attila’s rise to power and to explore the nature of the Tenctrama. The witches have been moving throughout ancient history, offering their magick for battle while sowing the seeds of power that they can harvest in the resulting battles. To ensure a proper combat, the Tenctrama have created armies of the dead on both the Roman and the Hun sides. Meanwhile, Ryan and Graham encounter the Roman Legion of Smoke, who operate as a classical Men in Black, collecting alien artifacts and storing them to prevent their use as weapons. Graham, more up on his Roman history, spends time with Flavius Aetius, commander of the Roman forces and one of the last generals of the Western Roman Empire.

The Legion of Smoke is one of Cole’s best additions to the story, as one of the Legionnaires tells Ryan of the Doctor’s previous visits to Rome, at the time of Nero in the 1965 episode, “The Romans,” starring William Hartnell as the First Doctor (pg. 95), and in Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the 2008 episode, “The Fires of Pompeii,” starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor (pg. 96). Cole also works in a reference to the Sibylline Sisterhood, who likewise played a role in “The Fires of Pompeii” (pg. 97). In a recurring motif, the Doctor demonstrates a rapport with Attila’s horse, Bittenmane, later revealing that she’s “fluent in several equine dialects” (pg. 181), a callback to the 2012 episode, “A Town Called Mercy,” starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor. These add a nice touch to the story by working it into established continuity and showing the Doctor’s impact on history as well as how all the historic alien invasions were kept out of written histories.

Demonstrating the political savvy of the current Doctor Who, Cole portrays Aetius refusing the evidence of the marauding dead as “fake news” (pg. 106). This reflects the current scholarly view of Aetius, particularly in the work of Ian Hughes and Peter Heather, that Aetius left the Empire significantly weaker at the time of his death. The overall effect of the story is a great Doctor Who adventure, involving time travel, history, and some great, scary villains. ( )