Death and Diplomacy by: Dave Stone: Doctor This is My Fiance, Try Not to Kill Him

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good rant about something I haven’t liked as the bad Doctor Who stuff has been really boring.  Yes The Man in the Velvet Mask had some things that could be yelled at, but the last story I’ve gotten really properly angry at was Nekromanteia. That has changed as we get a novel written by Dave Stone.  This is Stone’s second novel and forms the second part of a trilogy that began in Sky Pirates!  Here we go.  Stone is arrogant in the purest sense of the word.  He wrote Sky Pirates! a thick novel with very little substance and a lot of hit or miss comedy that really doesn’t work well.  I gave that novel a 43/100 which of course defines it as a bad story.  It was by no means the worst story, but Stone starts his next novel Death and Diplomacy with a preface subtly coming right out and saying that the readers of Sky Pirates! are idiots because they didn’t get his deep and complex storyline and you are all meanies guys.  I put Death and Diplomacy down after reading this for a little bit so I could clear my head a bit before letting disdain for the author to infringe on my enjoyment of the novel.  Stone should not have been allowed to have this novel published and it should have been replaced with something else.  You do not insult your readers like that if you are an author and this could easily have been skipped as for the month of April 1996 Virgin Books had Missing Adventure The Eye of the Giant and spin off novel Who Killed Kennedy? And just moved on with Happy Endings instead.

 

Then I got angrier after I read Death and Diplomacy as while it is nowhere near perfect.  I mean the supporting characters are rather boring as the plot is really meant to be character drama for Benny, and the three plots aren’t well integrated with each other, but Stone actually pulls of creating compelling character drama and a good lead in to the fiftieth Virgin New Adventure.  The plot involves the TARDIS splitting the crew up into three groups while in a different galaxy some wars are being fought as part of a mysterious figure’s master plan, Benny meets and develops lustful feelings for space pirate Jason Kane and Chris and Roz get up to something that might be important to the plot.  Yeah when I said that this story was a character study, I wasn’t kidding as a lot of the plot is just about the characters.  The opening scenes of three warring factions meeting in a ballroom is great and so are the scenes with the extradimensional beings are good enough for a lot of the novel, the plot with the Doctor is really boring until he is reunited with Benny.  It is good however so we see a master plan that of course isn’t the Doctor.  We know this because Chris and Roz note that nothing has gone wrong with the plan.  It’s a lovely analysis of the character which really works for the novel.  Speaking of Chris and Roz their plot doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it does make a lot of fun to read as Stone has this fascination with how humanity has evolved by the thirtieth century.  Roz of course has a lot of things going for her in the novel.

 

Benny and Jason are really the two characters who shine in this novel as the story is about how they have fallen almost in love with each other.  Jason was abducted by aliens and for fifteen years has been acting as a space pirate trying to survive.  Imagine his shock when he sees Benny, a human whom he latches on to immediately.  Of course he tries to pull it off that he isn’t in love with her, but she misinterprets a lot of what has been going on in Jason’s mind and actions as love.  The epilogue actually sees them engaged and Happy Endings will concern their wedding.  They’re an interesting match as Benny of course acts very much like Benny always acts and Jason is a pervert pure and simple. The villains are actually evil hamsters so that adds to a lot of the humor in this book.

 

To summarize, Death and Diplomacy is an oddity as second time is the charm for Dave Stone after a failure writing Sky Pirates!  The book has a lot going for it as the plot is extremely weak even if the twist that the villains are evil hamsters and it’s of course nice to see the Doctor not part of a master plan for once, but the book is really nothing to write home about.  It serves its purpose and nothing more.  70/100