The novel “The Dreamer’s Lament” by Benjamin Burford-Jones was published for the first time in 2017.
For Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, receiving a phone call offers a chance to interrupt a conversation with his mother about his private life. The fact that reporter Harold Chorley is calling doesn’t make him feel much better, but a missing train might be the kind of case he should investigate. When the two men go to investigate the situation near the village of Keynsham, they end up back in the past, in 1815.
When their commander fails to return to duty at the beginning of the week, Lethbridge-Stewart’s men try to piece together his whereabouts. Anne Travers also gets involved in trying to understand the strange phenomena found in the so-called Keynsham Triangle, where people have been disappearing for a long time. The scientist’s task is made more difficult by the problems related to her family.
The Lethbridge-Stewart series tells the adventures of the character who became famous in the “Doctor Who” TV show when he works without the Doctor. The stories start from the period immediately following the debut of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart in the TV show and then extend the period covered. These stories include some characters that appeared in the TV show, some invented for other productions connected to it, and others that were created specifically for these novels.
In this series of novels, there has been a notable development in Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart’s personal history but there are developments about the Travers family as well. This led to the creation of stories that contain increasingly important references to earlier novels and short stories. It’s still possible to read “The Dreamer’s Lament” without knowing this series because the main plot is autonomous but many references will be difficult to fully understand.
The mystery faced by Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart and his men, assisted by Anne Travers in her role as a scientific advisor, concerns an area where several people have disappeared. It seems to expand over time, to the point of hitting a railway line in the area.
Harold Chorley is another of the fictional characters created for the classic serial “The Web of Fear” and has become a recurring character in this series of novels. The reporter’s relationship with Lethbridge-Stewart is complicated and this is noticeable in “The Dreamer’s Lament” as the two end up having to collaborate.
“The Dreamer’s Lament” has rather dark tones, with death as the central theme. It’s a theme linked in various ways to the protagonists, who have to face it in different ways. The subplot about Anne Travers is the one that offers some introspection into the subject. There’s also a horror flavor with corpses, human and otherwise, reanimated and sent to attack the inhabitants of Keynsham and the involuntary time travelers. Part of the plot consists of the protagonists’ investigation to find out who or what is behind them.
The novel contains strong themes because evil isn’t only the alien one. Lethbridge-Stewart and Chorley end up in 1815, where they also clash with the racial problem. It’s a time when the slave trade was banned in the UK but slave ownership was not. Stedman is an overall rational man, who admits that racial prejudice has no justification but it suits him to have slaves. It’s the pettiness of evil, in this case, based on Stedman’s advantage.
The various elements of “The Dreamer’s Lament” seem to me well mixed in an adventure between past and present that also offers some food for thought. It can give problems to readers who are sensitive to horror stories, otherwise, I recommend reading it.
