Let’s not beat around the bush here. Some Doctor Who full length novels and audiobooks miss the mark. Some are fine. Some are fun. And then, just occasionally, you get one that truly gets the nature of the show as it is or was during the time in the Doctor’s long life that it’s representing.

Eden Rebellion is in that last category. 

Let’s also not beat around the bush – Caged, by Una McCormack, is in that last category too, and probably delivers a more fun experience. But Eden Rebellion scores higher in terms of worldbuilding that feels almost uniquely right for the Fifteenth Doctor’s style of adventuring.

There’s a vibrancy to the worldbuilding in Abi Falase’s story that feels synonymous with this period in the show’s history. On the world of Yewa, we experience the Gardens of Kubuntu, and the vivid creation story of the planet and its twin sister world, Bia. 

There’s a line between indigenous people and incomers, given the use that is made of Yewa as an ultimate tourist destination. And, given Bia’s relative prosperity, underneath all the singing and dancing and celebration, there’s a rich vein of interplanetary conflict. 

What we have in Yewa and Bia is a scenario that has Doctor Who storytelling running through its blood. It’s the story of oppression, discontent, and eventually the rebellion of the title, all served up beneath a fixed smile of corporate hospitality. Think of the underlying stories of Timelash or The Macra Terror and you’re in the right area. Then turn left and throw in some Armageddon Factor towards the end.

In case you don’t have fond memories of those stories though, it’s worth pointing out that Falase has delivered a book that never fails to spark continual interest. A crystalline planet on which when people die, they themselves dissolve into crystals and feed the world – a much more instantaneous take on a life cycle than, for instance, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. 

The people of the planet have highly individual tattoos, which change and glow depending on their mood. There’s probably, if you get right down to it, no reason for people in a Doctor Who story to have those, but we love that they do, because it all adds to the internal coherence of the planet and its people.

To tell you much about the guardians who keep the peace in a particularly Dementor fashion would take us down a rabbit hole, but suffice it to say, they’re an element of ominous threat that eventually tell us much more about what’s really going on than we realise until Falase decides the time is right.

There’s some solid Doctor Who protocol at work here, too – the Doctor and Ruby get separated early, and Ruby’s duly threatened by potential terrorists who shouldn’t be able to do what they do. That of course is crucial, in that how they do it helps to unravel the many, many layers of the worldbuilding here and eventually strips away everything but the core of the story.

The Armageddon Factor? Yes, inasmuch as nothing is entirely what it seems, and there are two sides to the story that seem implacably driven towards an inevitable, cataclysmic conflict. But also yes inasmuch as the Doctor has to figure out the presence and action of a third force, hinted at but never clearly seen until the end.

That force, when we discover it, not only makes sense of the overall conflict that runs throughout Eden Rebellion, but also all the elements of the storytelling along the way that have stood out by their intense lack of sense as we encounter them.

What that means is that Eden Rebellion is a story that drenches your senses in local customs and colour and deeply built mythos, but also a story that eventually makes a satisfying sort of sense, while delivering an unconventional and only half-guessed love story in which you can invest at the end.

It’s a book that’s ultimately dripping with joy, which is probably why it feels so entirely vibey with the Fifteenth Doctor. But it’s a story that does all its Doctor Who due diligence, builds a more complex miniature universe than many writers dare to attempt, and invites you in on both the sensual and the intellectual levels. 

Genesis Lynea sounds entirely at home with all this complexity and layering, and delivers a long-form Doctor Who reading that sings with all the ambition of both the new era of the show, and of Falase’s take on the kinds of adventure we can have in that era. There’s lots of complication here, but Lynea guides us through it easily. 

Yes, there are things that when we encounter them, make no sense. But that’s inherent in the writing. Those things are signals that all is not well beneath the surface of the world on which we’re standing in this story. Lynea doesn’t over-signal these things – there’s no audio equivalent of an eyebrow-raise or a sly wink. But they’re there to help us understand the complexities of the world in which the Doctor and Ruby find themselves.

In short, Eden Rebellion is a hell of a trip, and an audiobook that stands largely apart from the rest of the Fifteenth Doctor field right now. Yes, Caged is as good, and probably more fun. But for pure Fifteenth Doctor-style storytelling and resolution, Eden Rebellion is the way to go. Tony Fyler

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