Beltempest (novel)

Publisher’s Summary
The people of Bellania II see their sun, Bel, shrouded in night for a month following an impossible triple eclipse. When Bel is returned to them a younger, brighter, hotter star, it is the beginning of the end for the entire solar system...

100,000 years later, the Doctor and Sam arrive on Bellania IV, where the population is under threat as disaster looms -- immense gravitational and dimensional disturbances are surging through this area of space.

While the time travellers attempt to help the survivors and ease the devastation, a religious suicide-cult leader is determined to spread a new religion through Bel’s system -- and his word may prove even more dangerous than the terrible forces brought into being by the catastrophic changes in the sun...

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * The Doctor mentions "'I was in my early nineties before I could bring myself to admit that I still liked to play with my perigosto stick.'".
 * Likes chocolates with soft centres.
 * Has degrees in psychology and the social dynamics of machine intelligence.


 * Samantha Jones
 * Says she'd like to have children.
 * Sam doesn't like ham because her mum packed her lunches with it until she was eight (which may be when she became a vegetarian).
 * Takes (drug) speed.
 * Gets infected with nanotech and (she believes in some ways) 'dies'.


 * Surgeon Major Alesis Conaway
 * Likes opera.


 * Father Alexis Denadi
 * Is a priest.


 * Eldred Saketh
 * Has nanotech in his body, making it seem he can't die.


 * Captain Bellis
 * Aellini
 * Smoot

Continuity

 * The Doctor wonder's if the TARDIS is taking them to planets with odd suns. The previous book EDA: The Janus Conjunction also featured an odd sun.
 * Sam wonders to herself what decompression would be like, despite having gone through it three times in EDA: Dreamstone Moon.
 * Sam recalls the events of EDA: Placebo Effect.
 * Movies: Dr. Who and the Daleks has Ian sit on a box of 'soft centres' at the beginning. In this novel the Doctor seems to have an odd obsession with soft centres.


 * Similar nanotechnology also appears in DW: The Doctor Dances.

Timeline

 * This story takes place after EDA: The Janus Conjunction
 * This story takes place before EDA: The Face-Eater