Death and Diplomacy (Paperback)

One can see from the beginning that this is not exactly going to be a tightly plotted and intricately detailed story. The regulars are so clumsily separated, one wonders if this is supposed to be some hilarious meta-textual joke; if it is, it fails. In any case, Benny, Roz and Chris fall out of the TARDIS and become embroiled in subplots of their own. The Roz and Chris story is so clichéd and unoriginal that it scary bears discussing; let's just say that it puts the "bog" in "bog-standard" and we'll not speak of it again.

The Doctor's story actually appears to be relatively interesting for a while. Not because it's an engaging or witty narrative, but because there is a hint of some fascinating world-building going on. The Doctor finds himself in a portion of the galaxy inhabited by three different war-like space-faring races. The three are perfectly balanced as far as position and weaponry is concerned. So naturally, the Doctor shows up just as they are being ordered by their mysterious Hollow Gods to engage in a peace summit.

Unfortunately, this subplot eventually devolves into bland people walking quickly through corridors while Discussing Important Things. There are a few surprises to be had here, but by the time they're sprung I had gone beyond the point of caring. At one point, a character who belongs to one of those three races realizes that after spending time with his enemies he has begun thinking of them as people rather than faceless monsters. I wish I could have said the same thing. For the most part, all of the characters are as flat as the page they're printed on. The story takes the lazy road of telling us that these are three-dimensional characters without showing us anything to back up its own statements.

Now, the real meat of the book is contained in the passages involving Benny and her soon-to-be fiancé. I actually kind of enjoyed these sections, though they certainly feel superficial. Jason comes across as a standard pulp character, not too much depth apart from that which is applied with all the subtlety of a thrown brick. He's a relatively fun character, though I'm not sure he exactly works as a romantic foil for Benny.

Overall, well, this is a very mixed bag, ultimately with more negatives to its name than I would like. Sure, I laughed at a handful of the jokes, but I rolled my eyes at others. And that, is pretty much my summing up of this novel. It's slightly clever in one or two places, but never gets anywhere near to being as funny or as smart as it thinks it is.

The book opens with a rather defensive note from the author where he haughtily suggests (more or less) that there's a lot more going on in his books than people realize and that, damnit, people ought to appreciate it. My own comment to future authors out there is that this is a terrible way to start a novel. A novel should stand or fall on its own merits, so if you're going to blind us all with your brilliance, make sure you write a better book than DEATH AND DIPLOMACY.