rdfs:comment
| - It was notable for its unusual structure. At the beginning of the novel, the Doctor gives Benny a copy of All-Consuming Fire by Arthur Conan Doyle, which she duly reads. This sets up a "book-within-a-book", in which the reader is meant to believe that there's an Andy Lane-written prologue and epilogue wrapped around a Conan Doyle novel — itself written from the perspective of "John Watson". In the epilogue, Benny pronounces that Conan Doyle changed "a lot of the facts", meaning that Conan Doyle (or, possibly "Watson") is an unreliable narrator. The main characters seem to agree that Conan Doyle's version is basically true. However, Benny's revelation that she doesn't "remember half of these things happening" makes it difficult to know which details actually occurred within the Doctor Who u
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abstract
| - It was notable for its unusual structure. At the beginning of the novel, the Doctor gives Benny a copy of All-Consuming Fire by Arthur Conan Doyle, which she duly reads. This sets up a "book-within-a-book", in which the reader is meant to believe that there's an Andy Lane-written prologue and epilogue wrapped around a Conan Doyle novel — itself written from the perspective of "John Watson". In the epilogue, Benny pronounces that Conan Doyle changed "a lot of the facts", meaning that Conan Doyle (or, possibly "Watson") is an unreliable narrator. The main characters seem to agree that Conan Doyle's version is basically true. However, Benny's revelation that she doesn't "remember half of these things happening" makes it difficult to know which details actually occurred within the Doctor Who universe, and which are embellishments by Conan Doyle. Lane occasionally gives us other points of view, such as when he quotes from Benny's diary. These moments, too, are instances where limited perspective leads to unreliable narration. Indeed, it's not terribly clear whether these moments of taking from other diaries are meant to be Lane interjecting into the Conan Doyle book, or whether it's actually Conan Doyle himself mixing in a bit of Benny's voice into his book. In any event, All-Consuming Fire — quite unusually for a Doctor Who novel — features a book within a book, told mostly in the first person from the perspective of secondary characters.
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