I thought it was a nice change from the usual sci-fi fare.One of the stronger points was the accurate portrayal of the Gnostic centered theology of the Albigensians,along with the way
that the more orthodox Catholics persecuted them.
I wonder if McIntee read Foxe's Book Of Martyrs
before writing his story as a lot of the stuff about the Catholics massacring the Albigensians
did happen in the actual Crusades that the Catholic Church had against the heretics.

If the Doctor was so determined from the get-go not to interfere in this era, why didn't he and Benny just spend two weeks lounging inside the Jade Pagoda until the TARDIS reappeared? There was nothing in the story that indicated they HAD to leave the JP, and it did have supplies for them to survive for a week.

I cannot believe Benny's actions at the end of the book. Let's say that, instead of Guy, it was Ace fighting off the soldiers. Do you honestly think Benny and the Doctor would have avoided looking for her, just to save themselves the disappointment of finding her dead body? Both Benny and the Doctor have survived enough brushes with death that they should have been open to the idea that Guy, who has been shown to be an extraordinary fighter, might have survived.

After reading Guy's adventures, I'm even more disinclined to believe that Benny could ever have fallen in love with a loser like Jason Kane.

Well, the Doctor certainly avoided returning to, um, whatever that planet was where Peri supposedly died. He had no reason to believe anything the Matrix said, so he might at least have checked up on her. (Especially as Bad Therapy proves she didn't want to marry Ycranos at all.) But on the whole I agree, bloody s t u p i d thing to do, leaving poor Guy in the lurch like that. If Benny couldn't face seeing his corpse, the Doctor ought at least to have gone and seen for himself. He didn't need to tell her if it was bad news, and if she asked and he DID tell her, well she still didn't have to believe it, owing to the Seventh Doctor's habit of being a lying manipulative git.

The Doctor wouldn't be the Doctor if he was happy to spend two weeks in a hut, sorry, Pagoda, instead of poking around a fascinating era of history. I mean, he managed to do that tons of times in the Hartnell era without messing anything up.

You leave poor Jason alone!

Kate (in New Series: Season Six: Almost People thread): Butler wrote three novels including the important proto-sf 'Erewohn', but the best known is called 'The Way of All Flesh'.

(He was also one of those people who argued that Homer was female, and so is tangentially relevant to David McIntee's 'Sanctuary'.)

Oh-kay. One of those 'explanation' things, please...

DWM: 'Many Virgin authors have a fondness for including Star Trek continuity.' - Who are they and WHERE DO THEY LIVE? 'It can provide a brief titter for those in the know' - what kind of self-respecting Whovian would be 'in the know'? 'But in Sanctuary David has gone too far with "Romulan ale" and "Mount Seleya"' - blimey, even I've heard the word 'Romulan'! I KNEW this was a bad, BAD book!

McIntee in DWM: 'It's a pure historical story - I've always wanted to write one...and why not? The TARDIS is a time machine, and I've always found it odd that whenever the Doctor goes back in time, there's always another bunch of aliens lurking about' - alright, aren't we forgetting a) THE ENTIRE HARTNELL ERA and b) the fact Sexy ALWAYS TAKES HIM WHERE HE NEEDS TO GO??

(Not that I've got anything against pure historicals. Wish New Who would have the guts to give us ONE of 'em.)

'Read Sanctuary, and at the end you'll want to stick your head in the oven!' - trust me, Sunshine, I'm wanting to stick my head in the oven loooooooooong before the END of this book...

McIntee in DWM: 'You vary your style depending on the settting and the characters. Sanctuary has the most "over-writing", it has very long sentences - I wanted to get that impression of a time where we didn't have so many abbreviations and colloquialisms. Also, if a story is set in a time where things are very different to how they are now, I like to describe more. So in the case of Sanctuary...with a scene set in a castle, readers might tend to think of a castle as we see them now, stone walls and so on - but castles weren't like that, of course, they had plaster on the walls, with murals and hunting scenes painted on' - OK, I suppose this goes SOME way towards explaining why Sanctuary is so excruciatingly boring...

Bookwyrm:

'The murder mystery, sadly, collapses in upon itself. Jeanne: "I did not intend to kill Girard. I had hoped only to extract the hiding place of the skull from him, but he threw himself on to my dagger rather than tell me." However...'The Doctor calculates who the murderer is by working out how far they could have run between the time of Girard's scream and the time of Bernice's arrival at Girard's room. This leaves precisely no additional time for Jeanne to have a) panicked, b) thought up the "locked room" mystery, c) moved the table and the poker into position, d) balanced the door on her hurriedly constructed contraption and e) slammed it hard.' Oops.

'This is the first pure historical of the NAs... so naturally the opening features a black star creating relativistic effects... given the sheer amount of nonsense technobabble in these few early pages ("a probability matrix having a relativistic effect caused by a black star made of quasi-baryonic dark matter with a semi-tachyonic nature"), McIntee could have just put it in there so that the reader responds favourably to the subsequent historical setting out of pure gratitude that he's not writing science fiction' - excellent point. (Though I STILL didn't respond favourably to the historical setting. There's a REASON we've had Fifteen Glorious Years And Counting of New Who with sod-all pure historicals.)

Oh, and he's got Louis de Citeaux and Phillipe de Montfort repeatedly muddled up - up to and including when the Doctor's contemplating murdering, um, one of them. THIS is what these guys get paid the big bucks for! Who else would be still awake enough to notice?

'The Cathars themselves have a belief system that includes worshipping a skull, the belief that all matter and life was created by evil and one that considers abortion a appropriate route to purity. And we're being asked to side with them' - well, YEAH. OBVIOUSLY it makes a lot more sense that the world was created by evil rather than a loving beneficent God (if not as much sense as, y'know, EVOLUTION), and obviously it's grotesquely inappropriate to bring a child into said world, and obviously if it's the MIDDLE AGES and there's no contraception...

I'm only a few chapters in, so I won't give my full impressions yet. But I will say that I have discovered a great insult that I hope I have an opportunity of using at some point. The opening line of Chapter Four, "You worthless afterbirth of a rutting donkey!"

It will TOTALLY be Sanctuary's fault when you're beaten up by the insultee.

David McIntee can pay for any medical expenses.

There's no way a judge will award you damages once you confess to have voluntarily read a David A McIntee novel.

Ouch!

Finally finished this. No, it wasn't a chore to get through--I just happened to have temporarily increased working hours these past few weeks, which took away from my reading time. I had been led to believe I wouldn't like this one by a certain person in this forum (I won't mention her name lol), but other than being a bit slow getting started, I really liked this one!

That being said, I knew that it wasn't Bernice's final book and I knew that Guy would not become a Companion, so the romance clearly wasn't going to end well--the only question being would they agree that it wouldn't work out, or would it be a much more tragic ending. I was leaning towards the latter which turned out to be the case--or did it, since we don't actually know his ultimate fate?

I was going to comment on the "locked room mystery" that doesn't quite work, but Emily already quoted someone saying essntially the same thing.

Odd sentence. Page 8: "So far he had seen nothing out of the unusual." The "he" is the short-lived character Chretian. Were it not for the fact that he would shortly be killed, I would say he should be the focus of the novel! The sentence basically says nothing USUAL is ever seen by him!

A couple of apparent typos (very nitpicky I know, but what is the name of this website again?). Starting on the bottom of page 265 is the sentence, "Regardless of where he went, there was nowhere that his presence - or the hunters it would drawn - would not put Bernice in more danger than he was willing to allow." I suspect "Drawn" should be "Draw" but is there any way to make sense of the statement as written?"
And on page 272: "Still, it seemed that the sun was setting setting on Amor." I wasn't aware that the sun could set twice. Are there two suns as seen from France?

We need more historical-only novels in Doctor Who! I'm interested in the period myself, though I'm much more familiar with English history. In fact, I was wondering while I read this if Philippe de Montfort was supposed to be a relative of the Simon de Montfort who briefly managed to take the English crown from Henry III in the 1260s. But in my brief research, I have found no mention of a Philippe in his family history.

Interesting that Emily made no mention of the cat that briefly appears in this book. On page 212, "A scruffy ginger cat sleeping across a comfortable-looking sack opened one eye to see what the commotion was, and then went back to sleep." Two pages later, Berenice stops to briefly stroke it. Just a cameo of the feline persuasion, but surely a highlight of the book for Emily.

Finally finished this. No, it wasn't a chore to get through--I just happened to have temporarily increased working hours these past few weeks, which took away from my reading time

Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that...

I wasn't aware that the sun could set twice. Are there two suns as seen from France?

Look, if Gridlock can casually announce that GALLIFREY has two suns...

I was wondering while I read this if Philippe de Montfort was supposed to be a relative of the Simon de Montfort who briefly managed to take the English crown from Henry III in the 1260s. But in my brief research, I have found no mention of a Philippe in his family history.

His father Simon de Montfort was the Cathar-hating lunatic.

Just a cameo of the feline persuasion, but surely a highlight of the book for Emily

Are you CRAZY? Any mention of a feline in a Who Novel has me TOTALLY ON EDGE for the rest of said book just waiting for someone to HURT said Precious.

Well, as I said, Berenice does stroke him (assuming it's a "him"), and that the last we hear of him. So in this case, it was a positive experience for the cat.

"Warlock" was only three NAs ago and must have been horrific for you! (To be fair, I didn't like that aspect of it either)

"Warlock" was only three NAs ago and must have been horrific for you! (To be fair, I didn't like that aspect of it either)

Oddly enough, I survived it at the time cos it was such a powerful anti-vivisection message (and also probably because SO MANY Who books hurt cats, you almost get used to it) but now that I'm realising I'm gonna have to REREAD it at some point...I'm feeling very, very bad about it...even though some Lloyd Rose book did have Amnesiac Eight kidnap Chick pre-vivisection without realising WHY...