#27
Speed Of Flight
By Paul Leonard
Oh good, it’s Paul Leonard. A bit
of a sleeper hit when it comes to Virgin’s Who
authors, Leonard has now written three quietly impressive books. Venusian Lullaby is the standard bearer for (very) alien life; Dancing The Code is a
characterful examination of violence in the Third Doctor era; and Toy Soldiers
has an evocative plot steeped in atmosphere and imagery. Now we have Speed Of Flight, another Lullaby-ish
deep dive into offworld life. All aboard.
He sets the tone right away with
a prologue following Xa, a simple-minded labourer on an expedition he doesn’t
understand. The language is all a bit vague, much like Xa, describing suns,
skies and lands in a way I can’t quite pin down. And Xa wants to fight – he
must fight, if he wants to be “promoted”. The life cycle on this planet demands
a mortal battle and to win means evolving wings and changing in other ways.
All of which is sort of
interesting, except we’re stuck in Xa’s head and he just goes on and on about
fighting while not understanding any of what’s happening around him. As a first
impression, it’s frustrating. Not to worry though, since the rest of the book
is (mostly) about other characters. But that sense of somewhat imaginative
vagueness never goes away regardless of the character we’re following, and I
struggled through more or less every page.
It’s hard to pin down the problem
here, as there are a lot of complex ideas at work. Nooma – only named in the
blurb unless I'm mistaken? – is an unusual setting with its seemingly
artificial sky and low gravity. (Just typing “artificial sky” recalls The Also People, and look at the bountiful rewards in that.) The life cycle of its
people has obviously been thought through in much the same way as “remembering”
in Venusian Lullaby. The villain of the piece, Epreto, isn’t a bad guy per se;
he just wants to break free from the strangely rigid evolution of his species,
and while he’s at it the world around him, which seems to be falling apart. I’m
all for moral ambiguity and a villain with only “good” motivations is a welcome
change. There are even ideas to spare, such as the Dead, a series of
pseudo-mechanical recreations of deceased people, and there are plenty of neat
visuals such as the ubiquitous steamships.
For some reason though, none of
this takes off. The world isn’t heavily explored: there is mention of temples
on the sky but we hardly see them, nor most of the people who live here;
roughly a quarter of the book seems to take place in one character’s house; the
lack of gravity never seems important (and is surely at odds with the overall
obsession with flight), and there are assorted characters of different
sub-species with varying job titles, such as “confessor”, who just refuse to
crystallise into relatable, breathing people. I never really understood what
the Dead were all about and, as much as Leonard has applied his characteristic
flair to the born>fight>evolve process on Nooma, the plot never
progresses much beyond it. Also characters yakking on about wanting to fight is
really not that interesting to me.
As it takes place after Dancing
The Code (with references to prove it), you’re probably expecting more
character work to bed in Jo’s imminent departure. That last book ended on a
note of defiance for Jo, after all: a fork in the road between her and the
Doctor where she was the one offering to help. Unfortunately, Speed Of Flight isn’t all that
interested. Hoping to visit Karfel (so we can tick off that all important
Timelash Easter Egg) the Doctor picks up Jo and Mike Yates, who have been
sent on a prank blind date. Jo promptly meets the Dead and spends most of the
novel not feeling like herself. (Towards the end there is a nod towards her
desire to move on, but that’s all it is.) Mike’s clumsy arrival gets a
sympathetic character killed, and he then spends a portion of the novel dead
himself. (An incident at the end hints towards his troubled loyalty in later
stories, but it’s a bit of a random link.) The Doctor figures out how this
planet’s life cycle began as well as Epreto’s plan, and is curiously
unsympathetic.
While his mannerisms are spot on
as ever – including a delightful bit where he claims “Eeny, Meany, Miny, Mo” is
a Venusian nursery rhyme – the Doctor’s attitude leaves something to be
desired. It ought to be significant that he spends most of the novel away from
Jo, but that feels incidental, as her out-of-it mind-set means she isn’t really
learning and growing from her experiences. Mike Yates was mostly a nothing
character on screen, and outside of The Eye Of The Giant (where he displayed
some military efficiency for once), he’s the same in print. The Doctor is
unfazed by his arrival and not especially knocked by the possibility of his
death. It’s an odd three-man unit (ahem) to base your book around.
Speed Of Flight has some of the mechanics that made Leonard’s
earlier books great, but it gets hung up on some details and doesn’t delve into
others. It’s a book desperately lacking in colour and feeling, soldiering on to
service an ultimately simple plot and finding no other rewards. It’s not a book
I hate, but it is thankless work. I wish he’d filled this particular gap with
Dancing The Code and then moved on.
4/10
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