Ghosts of India

Mark Morris

2008

This book is set in the final days of the British Raj.

You'd have though that there was enough to be worrying about already; the British trying to pass control over to the incoming native governments; millions of people moving from one part of the sub continent to the other as they come to terms with the ethnic split between Hindu dominated India and the Moslem dominated Pakistan, itself split into West and East; Hindu slaughtering Moslem, Moslem slaughtering Hindu and the colonial government pulling back to defend the British people who still remained. The Doctor and Donna find themselves in the middle of this tinderbox, but there's something even more alien in the background.

After Donna expresses a desire for a simple curry, the Doctor takes her to Calcutta in what he thought was 1937. Unfortunately, the TARDIS's circuits were playing up again and it materialised a decade later, right in the middle of the chaos leading up to independence. Escaping from a riot that erupts on the Calcutta streets the Doctor and Donna find their way to the local Resident Commissioner where they find themselves being attacked by the ghosts - creatures that suddenly appear and disappear, usually taking someone with them. The Doctor realises that this phenomenon is of extra-terrestrial origin rather than a supernatural experience and as he tracks down the source, he is helped and hindered by various people.

Mark Morris has clearly researched this period of the Raj and it come through quite strongly, though I would rather have wished he'd made more of the British characters more sympathetic but these were tense times and, though one can't disagree that Ghandi was a special person, I do feel that Morris does over-sentimentalise him.

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