Oblivion by: Dave Stone

 

When Dave Stone wrote Sky Pirates! and Death and Diplomacy he began a trilogy that the majority of Doctor Who fans would actually not find themselves finishing said trilogy.  While Stone clearly had plans for a third Doctor Who New Adventure to finish the trilogy dealing with Benny, Chris, Roz, and Jason Kane.  And then the New Adventures had the Doctor Who license revoked and I genuinely thought that Dave Stone wouldn’t complete the trilogy, but apparently I was wrong.  Oblivion is the eleventh New Adventures novel with Bernice Summerfield as protagonist, the second of four to be written by Dave Stone, and the one in which the trilogy is completed and the story is moved forward.  Now this plot, being a Dave Stone plot, is perhaps best described as madcap and insane, bringing back the characters from Sky Pirates! including those on the Schirron Dream which is essentially the main setting of this novel.  The plot involves the universe cracking and several alternate timelines coming into being which with Stone’s brand of humor means that the book is intentionally convoluted and difficult to follow in places but is punctuated with some brilliant pieces of character work.  The oblivion of the title is the destruction of reality itself with Sgloomi Po the Sloathe returning and being integral to a lot of the novel.  Sgloomi’s brand of humor due to the fish out of water nature of the character is something that keeps Oblivion moving through what is a really slow first third or so.  The first third doesn’t actually feel like setup outside of the two prologues, until Jason actually shows up soon after Chris enters the plot.  It almost feels as if Benny’s beginning is what had the most rewriting done to accommodate the absence of the Doctor and honestly it feels quite a bit like this would be a Doctor-lite story anyway so this is the only place it becomes noticeable.

 

Benny, Chris, and Jason are the only characters who remain sane throughout Oblivion until the very end when the timelines actually splinter and there is a lengthy sequence which serves as the conclusion.  This sequence is a brilliant look into each of the characters’ minds to see just where they’ve grown since this new era of New Adventures has begun.  Chris especially is still not entirely recovering from the death of Roz Forrester: he is stable yes, but as soon as Roz is dragged into the plot at a point ten years before the events of Original Sin, Chris simply cannot cope.  This is one of the things that the villains of the book use to break the timelines meaning that Roz becomes an alternate version of herself which has to be restored at the end of the book.  The hardened alternate version of Roz is such a fascinating look at essentially what she could have become if she was corrupted by her situation in Original Sin, there already isn’t a relationship with Chris due to them not having met at this point in her timeline, and the idea is kind of that the betrayal in her debut never actually happened in one of these alternate timelines.  Chris also just has this sorrow having to look at the woman he loves knowing everything that is going to happen in her life to the moment of her death and Stone’s prose whenever the reader is in Chris’s perspective is beautiful.  It’s paralleled with the love between Jason and Benny, who are antagonistic throughout the novel, but this isn’t a problem as it’s clear that much of it is an act.  While Stone may not have had access to Walking to Babylon as it was the book immediately previous to Oblivion, he clearly knew what the characters feelings are at this point.  Partially due to being Jason’s creator, Stone is also the best at characterizing Jason who easily in the hands of a lesser writer, be incredibly obnoxious.

 

Overall, Oblivion is a novel that is a lot.  The plot is all over the place like most of Stone’s novel plots, but it makes it work really well in the final third where everything is pulled together.  There is also a genuine issue with the non-returning characters not really having a presence, especially the villain who you really don’t get enough of.  It is still a great read almost because of how the obtuse plot is used to explore characters that readers genuinely love and that character work is what shines through making Oblivion worth it.  8/10.