Black Russia...

The dank Russian city of Kiev, in the year 1240. Just those few words in isolation make it clear that Martin Day's latest novel ain't going to be a barrel of laughs, and in this respect the book certainly doesn't dispel any preconceptions. In another way it does, though - perhaps I was more privileged than most readers in reading a proof copy of the book before seeing the back cover. I therefore spent three chapters thinking I was reading yet another purely historical Hartnell adventure. The brief, unheralded intrusions of jargonistic SF terminology after a few chapters was an enjoyable surprise, and it is rather a shame most readers will be oriented in advance, and won't get the chance to experience it. The subsequent multi-layered tale of conflict and intolerance - class, racial and religious - is, however, good enough to make up for this.

Viewed from a distance, there might seem little herein to provide much surprise for fans of historical Doctor Who; arguments about meddling with time and treatises on the futility of war are familiar, even hackneyed ideas. Bunker Soldiers works, though, both on the smaller, moment-by-moment level where the minutiae of the plot are enough to distract from the inevitability of imminent invasion - as must really be the case with any tale so rooted in established historical fact - and by the sparing superposition of science fiction. One particularly satisfying aspect is the acknowledgement and utilisation of the set of companions as an excellent representation of the two possible viewpoints of the reader - Dodo is passive, forming friendships and swept along by events; Steven is his usual argumentative self challenging the Doctor's decisions and motives at every turn. The latter is also used as narrator for his own strand of the book - and perhaps surprisingly, it doesn't become annoying that the author chooses to dip in and out of this first-person voice.

Bunker Soldiers is a nicely accomplished piece of work - although I suspect that for most readers, it will prove far easier to admire than to love.