#13
Dry Pilgrimage
By Paul Leonard and Nick Walters
New writer alert! And, just sayin’, 13 books into the even newer New Adventures, a fresh face feels a wee bit overdue. (The previous new novelist was Matt Jones with Bad Therapy, back when all this was Doctor Who. He’s had a second book out since then!)
The funny thing about trying to make an initial assessment of Nick Walters, who shares the writer credit here with Paul Leonard (who reportedly just edited the book) is that Dry Pilgrimage feels so much like a Paul Leonard book. There are ideas that hew close enough to Leonard’s Venusian Lullaby in particular to feel like Paul’s really pushing his luck. But if it’s actually Nick then we can perhaps put that down to the latter being a fan of the former, and then putting his own spin on it – or just happening to be a similar sort of writer. Dry Pilgrimage doesn’t feel rippy-offy at all, it just seems to ride similar trains of thought to the ones in Lullaby, Dancing The Code, Toy Soldiers and Speed Of Flight. Or maybe I’m just projecting because I saw “Paul Leonard” on the cover. Either way, it’s a nice problem to have since it makes for interesting books.
Okay, let’s be more specific: it seems like a very Leonard thing to show not just alien characters, but characters whose life cycles are completely alien. Lullaby and Flight go to great pains to show different ways of living and evolving; the short lifespan of Dry Pilgrimage’s Saraani (10 years) is certainly memorable, and the passing down of memories to their young via “holy transference” is a lot like Venusian “remembering,” only minus the cannibalism. They don’t have different sexes (although they are all gendered as “he/him” which seems odd) and they all reproduce without, you know, help. They’re a striking bunch.
But further down the sounds-a-bit-like-Leonard-but-let’s-just-call-it-interesting rabbit hole we go: it’s not just about weird aliens, it’s about people within the same groups having different perspectives. This goes back, Doctor Who-wise, to Malcolm Hulke and the Silurians, with good ones and bad ones all trying their best for their people. (It probably goes back earlier too but that’s a good example.) The Saraani are slavish about their religion, but a schism on their home-world has turned them into refugees, with the “Renaissants” wanting to ditch the old ways. One of their number, Mirrium, is a staunch traditionalist, but the dubious actions of their leader cause him to rethink the whole Saraani way of life. Said leader, the Khulayn, is working with outsiders on a decidedly dodgy project, but he believes he’s doing the right thing. Vilbian, a Saraani befriended by Bernice, has different allegiances altogether and doesn’t know where he fits in. None of these are even Renaissants, although one of those is squirrelled away too. Bottom line, there’s enough here to suggest a race with more ups and downs than the average funny-forehead gang in Star Trek.
And then there are the more recognisable “people”. The Saraani have booked the cruise ship Lady Of Lorelai to take them to some islands on Dellah, hoping to find a new home; on board to study all of this are Bernice and other professors, including Maeve Ruthven, a religious fundamentalist who went against her faith to marry Brion, a geneticist, with whom she has fallen out but who is on board as well. And Brion has his own tortured allegiances. Of the other assorted academics, Professor Smith has a dispassionate anthropological interest in stirring up trouble and observing the results: he feels like a perverse reflection of the author(s), trying to see things from all sides and remain objective. Smith is, of course, no such thing, as shown in a very funny scene where his temper gets the better of him: “He picked up his cup of coffee, spilling it all over his papers. His hands were shaking. Interesting.” Smith, like any good character, thaws as the story goes along.
This it does at a gentle pace, at least to begin with, as Bernice acclimatises to what should be a nice time on a cruise ship. Yeah, right: anyone who’s ever encountered Doctor Who media knows that even for a moment thinking you’re on holiday means you’re about to have a more than usually dangerous time, but the writing of these early chapters is as enjoyable as putting your feet up on deck. Bernice, it turns out, gets terribly seasick, which brings into sharp relief the fact that somehow this is the first Benny New Adventure set on yer actual seafaring boat. (We’ve already had two “cruise ships in space” and a train going across a dangerous planet. Along with Dry Pilgrimage’s best-days-are-behind-her cruise ship, these all essentially occupy the “murders on holiday” genre.) It’s also the first book to stick with Dellah, where Bernice works, as a location. It seems crazy to me that we haven’t explored the planet more, so I’m all for that.
It can’t all be a lovely holiday, of course, and there’s plenty of darkness in Dry Pilgrimage, beginning with the apparent murder of a student at St. Oscar’s. We start off in his perspective as he tries to chat up Bernice, which makes for an interestingly offbeat way to introduce her to the narrative. The dead don’t always stay dead, it seems, and poor Theo finds himself reincarnated – sort of – as a murderous android. Someone else suffers the same fate later, and we get a lot of pathos out of the horrors of being forced to do things in another body. This also leads to Bernice sustaining a significant injury that bothers her for the rest of the novel.
Because, oh yes, Bernice has a horrible time in this. She makes friends and then loses them (sometimes without knowing it, as with Theo), and her grief often takes a while to hit, which rings truer than always bursting into tears on cue. She tries to do the right thing and rescue people, even when it seems hopeless and in the short term might actually endanger her. I think at times this can be a little much – there are quite a few cliff-hangers where she only survives because someone obligingly saves her – but the overall effect is one of humanising her.
Walters and/or Leonard still keeps track of Bernice’s lighter side, or it wouldn’t be much fun to read. Whilst trying to blend in with some bad guys she takes stock of “the eternal still point within her that was forever Bernice: tea. Interesting people. Cats. Fine wine. Vinyl records. Tennis. Justice. Frocks.” Moments later, “however hard she tried, she couldn’t keep time with the military step. This pleased her in a very fundamental way.” She’s hilarious, in that thankfully understated way that the better Bernice writers get, and at one point when needing to say something about a daunting spacecraft, the best she can manage is “Big, isn’t it?” (Whether that’s a deliberate callback to Walking To Babylon I don’t know, but it’s perfectly on brand.) She’s never so amusing that she’s a caricature, or so distraught that this feels like punishment. It reminds me of certain earlier New Adventures that really got the Doctor right. It should be noted when it happens.
I’ve rhapsodised about it so far. Any niggles? Well, as often happens – Lucifer Rising comes to mind – you’ve got all sorts of depth and interesting stuff going on but then the bad guys show up and it gets a bit bland. The villain (“Violaine,” which even looks like “villain”) at least puts some effort into her megalomania – with an outfit that would have had your eye out if they’d put it on the front cover – but her commitment to fnar fnar evilness is still disappointing in amongst all those shades of grey. Then again, her evil plan to create hordes of killing machines requires elderly volunteers who genuinely think this all sounds smashing, and they’re sort of interesting. But then again again, her actual soldiery workforce are as bog standard unpleasant as they come. Still though. If we’re honest, some people are, aren’t they?
By that point I think Nick Walters and Paul Leonard (in that order) have generated enough goodwill for us to remember the hits more than the misses. Dry Pilgrimage just feels substantial in a way that more New Adventures should. Not bad for a first timer doing another dusty old Murder On A Cruise Ship.
8/10
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