DOCTOR WHO:

THE CROOKED WORLD

The people of the Crooked World lead an idyllic existence.

Take Streaky Bacon, for example. This jovial farmer wants nothing more from life than a huge blunderbuss, with which he can blast away at his crop-stealing nemesis. And then there’s Angel Falls, a racing driver with a string of victories to her name. Sure, her trusted guardian might occasionally put on a mask and menace her for her prize money, but that’s just life, right? And for Jasper the cat, nothing could be more pleasant than a nice, long nap in his kitchen - so long as that darn mouse doesn’t jam his tail into the plug socket again.

But somebody is about to shatter all those lives. Somebody is about to change everything - and it’s possible that no one on the Crooked World will ever be happy again.

The Doctor’s TARDIS is about to arrive. And when it does... That’s all folks!

 

 

 

 

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The Crooked World is a fantastical, often comedic, novel about a world populated by cartoon animals. Nevertheless, the emphasis is still on characterisation, as the toons find their worldview thrown into question by the arrival of the Doctor and his current companions, Fitz and Anji. In this chapter, events are beginning to spiral out of control, and what began as a fun deconstruction of the norms of the cartoon genre is turning into something a little more serious...

 

 

 

The Crooked World discovers the adult in the child through its joyous mismatch of tone and invented world, as all-too-human and all-too-grown-up questions of responsibility and self-determination are posed for and through a world of kids’ cartoon characters. Lyons’s tenth Doctor Who novel ... opens out into a sharply drawn meditation on social justice and individual guilt, as well as dealing with the cultural transmission of ideas. The turmoil depicted is less Calvin and Hobbes and more Thomas Hobbesian. And no, I’m not overdignifying this book: anyone enjoying science fiction’s potential for defamiliarization will appreciate the eye for detail and deconstruction that is evident in Lyons’s cartoon society.

- Matt Hills, Interzone

Sex, infanticide and the nature of justice are all central to a story that is primarily concerned with growing up. And so the perpetually sunny, carefree world of Zanytown gradually falls under the shadow of adult concerns like sex and death. The latter features particularly prominently, with two of the most shocking deaths in all of Doctor Who. Lyons invests each individual demise with such a degree of repulsive horror that we forget that we are reading about cartoon animals ... Like the cartoons it evokes, The Crooked World is thoroughly engaging and entertaining. However, it also succeeds on a deeper level. Lyons takes the most anarchic and violent form of entertainment and turns it into a parable of adolescence. Strangely, this tale of cartoon characters is one of the most mature, three-dimensional novels in the range

- Matt Michael, Doctor Who Magazine

With all the fun inherent in the situation, Lyons has written a clever story that doesn’t shy away from the real consequences of violence. There are two major deaths in the book that are horrifying, probably more so than any other death in anything related to Doctor Who ... by taking something fake, the cartoon characters, and making them real, Lyons highlights just how inured we’ve become. A truly stunning book which I can’t recommend enough. 10

- Neil Corry, TV Zone

‘Pleasantville: The Animated Series’ you might think, and you’d be right, but The Crooked World takes the idea much further, and as the presence of the TARDIS crew spreads the notions of free will, murder, remorse and suicide - not to mention sex, swearing and super-weapons in volcanoes, courtesy of companion Fitz Kreiner - like a virus, you come to care deeply about the thinly disguised versions of Tom and Jerry, Penelope Pitstop and even - God help us - Scrappy-Doo running around. This is a book which captures the real essence of Doctor Who at its best - childish, weird and funny, and also scary, slightly wise and not the slightest bit self-important.

- Edwin Taylor, Starburst