The Adventuress of Henrietta Street was the fifty-first novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Lawrence Miles. It featured the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor. This novel marks Sabbath's first "official" appearance in a novel.
Publisher's summary
On February 9, 1783, a funeral was held in the tunnels at the dead heart of London. It was the funeral of a warrior and a conjurer, a paladin and an oracle, the last of an ancient breed who'd once stood between the Earth and the bloodiest of its nightmares.
Her name was Scarlette. Part courtesan, part sorceress, this is her history: the part she played in the Siege of Henrietta Street, and the sacrifice she made in the defence of her world.
In the year leading up to that funeral, something raw and primal ate its way through human society, from the streets of pre-Revolutionary Paris to the slave-states of America. Something that only the eighteenth century could have summoned, and against which the only line of defence was a bordello in Covent Garden.
And then there was Scarlette's accomplice, the "elemental champion" who stood alongside her in the final battle. The one they called the Doctor.
Plot
to be added
Characters
- The Eighth Doctor
- Fitz Kreiner
- Anji Kapoor
- Scarlette
- Juliette Vierge
- Lisa-Beth Lachlan
- Katchka Nakhova
- Rebecca Macardle
- Tula Lui
- Sabbath
- Man with the Rosette
- Nie Who
- Anne-Belle Paley
- Charles Fox
- Charles Greville
- Emily Hart
- Émondeur
- King of Beasts
- Makandal
References
Biology
- Sabbath removes the Doctor's second heart.
Locations
- The Jonah is Sabbath's steam ship.
- People of Hartlepool are called "monkeydanglers".
Species
- The Babewyns originated in the Kingdom of Beasts.
Notes
- This novel departs from the "normal" novel style in that it is told as a non-fiction / historical novel.
- What is suggested as the remains of Gallifrey is seen in this novel.
- The novel saw Lawrence Miles' return to writing Doctor Who novels following a well-publicised online "resignation" in August 1999.[1] He claimed that he wrote it for money so he could buy new LEGO sets.[2]
- A hidden page on the Faction Paradox website listed several behind-the-scenes facts about Adventuress.[3]
- The novel begins in 1782, which saw the first printing of Les Liaisons dangereuses, a story about "a teenage girl's initiation into society while her destiny is manipulated by a scheming courtesan-queen and a dashing gentleman who seduces her in the name of society politics. Towards the end of the story, the gentleman finally asks the courtesan-queen to marry him. But then he dies horribly."
- Though thirteen groups were invited to the wedding, only twelve were ever named or mentioned, and one name on the list of invitations was illegible. The website notes that it obviously couldn't be Faction Paradox, which "doesn't exist in this version of the universe"; however, the comic Political Animals showed that the Faction did indeed survive the end of the War.
- Given the book's "reliance on the mythology of the Docotr's universe", the website says it seems odd that no vampire contingent is invited to the Doctor's wedding. However, the group from Russia is called the Ereticy, which is the name of a vampire sect from Eastern European folklore, and which was represented in the novel by Katya.
- The historical Lady Hamilton, who appears in the novel as Emily Hart, indeed has a significant gap in her life story around the time of this novel, and there has never been an explanation of why she changed her name from "Lyon" to "Hart".
- The Mozart premiere attended by the Eighth Doctor and Sabbath is the same one depicted in the film Amadeus.
- In AHistory, Lance Parkin acknowledges that Lawrence Miles intended the Man with the Rosette to be the Master. He is present at the Doctor's wedding; the Doctor's only family. He has no beard because the Doctor grows one, wears all black, apart from a blue and white rosette on his lapel and refuses to fight the Doctor on the grounds that there are only four Time Lords left in the Universe.
Continuity
- Sabbath continues to turn up in novels (though not always the main "villain") including PROSE: Anachrophobia, History 101, Time Zero, The Last Resort.
- The Man with the Rosette is next seen in The Gallifrey Chronicles.
- Mary Culver appears alongside Sabbath in AUDIO: Sabbath Dei and AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat.
- The Mayakai reappear alongside Sabbath in COMIC: Political Animals and COMIC: Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses.
- The Hellfire Club appears also in AUDIO: Minuet in Hell.
- The Doctor mentions the worlds of Ceres Alpha (PROSE: Dark Progeny) and one where faerie-tales come true. (PROSE: Grimm Reality)
- Fitz recovers a wheelchair from the TARDIS. (TV: Castrovalva)
- Thomas Jefferson's expedition for woolly mammoths in the American midwest is seen in PROSE: Grass.
- Scarlette mentions George III's mammoth. (PROSE: Grass, The Book of the War, COMIC: Political Animals, Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses)