The Book of the War (novel)

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***The Book of the War*** was the book which launched the Faction Paradox series. It was the only book to be precede the initial audio stories.

## Publisher's summary

**The Great Houses**

Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.

**The Enemy**

Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.

**Faction Paradox**

Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage... assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.

**The War**

A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect."

Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past...

## Notes

* Although purporting to be an encyclopaedia of the first fifty years of the War in Heaven, *The Book of the War* offers mostly original information rather than summaries of established events. It should be understood as a work of fiction in its own right, somewhere between an anthology and a collaborative novel.

* Its narrator is unreliable, at times unaware of details from other sources which might cast a different light on the events related. Information offered as 'fact' in the book should not be uncritically accepted as such.

* Lance Parkin submitted an entry for the book which would have told the story of Mr Saldaamir, a character who appeared in several *Doctor Who* novels written by Parkin. Miles removed this section from the final draft of the book, leaving only an apology sentence in the first pages of the book.

## References

* Anvil Stars
* Beshielach
* Ghost clusters
* Grandfather Halfling
* Gravity spider
* House Military
* Redemption Cult
* War King
* Yssgaroth
* Umbaste
* Entarodora
* Carmen Yeh
* Cwejen
* Charles Babbage created the Clockwork Ouroboros.
* Father Timon
* Unkindnesses

## Continuity

* Although Faction Paradox eventually developed a strong identity of its own apart from its roots in the *Doctor Who* Eighth Doctor Adventures, in this book the roots, narrative background and indeed characters are so close that it reads very much as a guide to the Second War in Heaven (as it would have been if not for the events of *The Ancestor Cell*. The hunt for Compassion and the Celestis are described in near-identical terms, but with BBC-copyrighted names changed. Thus the Time Lords became the Great Houses, TARDISes become timeships and so forth. Also the War King is strongly implied to be the Master.

## External links

* ***The Book of the War*** at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
* Reading guide to *how* to read **The Book of the War** and which order to read entries (via Internet Archive: Wayback Machine)

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