Dry Pilgrimage by: Paul Leonard and Nick Walters

Dry Pilgrimage is a title that seems almost too perfect for exploring Bernice Summerfield’s character.  It’s a title with multiple meanings of the term dry, the most obvious being a pilgrimage done without alcohol, Paul Leonard and Nick Walters using that as their major theme with Benny’s drinking being not so much a defining characteristic, but a constant presence in terms of how the character operates.  Benny usually finds kinship through sharing drinks and generally being jovial with people, and Dry Pilgrimage’s general premise of Benny taking a vacation on Dellah means that it doesn’t ever become a regular vacation.  The title’s use of pilgrimage is also important for the religious themes of the novel that Leonard employs, largely exploring the Saraani, a genderless species of religious refugees who are attempting to find their own home on Dellah.  This main thrust of the novel is particularly fascinating as Leonard and Walters explore incredibly well what this sort of exile is like, something that has at least a partial basis in history filtered through a science fiction lens.  It’s actually quite surprising to read Dry Pilgrimage because the authors don’t write a novel which preaches a religious theme: it remains fairly level headed on the truth and validity of religion and is more interested in exploring the social aspect of faith, life, and death.  The actual deaths of characters in the novel are in particular beautiful in how they are written, there is a Holy Transference which can move people’s minds yet the final death at the end of the novel is particularly tragic.

 

This is also a novel that contemplates the nature of life as a major thread involves biological constructs earning their philosophical right to life.  Now it’s an aspect of the novel that despite devoting quite a bit of time to exploring doesn’t come to an entirely satisfying conclusion, though that is perhaps to be expected when Paul Leonard is writing, I’ve often found his endings to never quite reach up to the potential they set out with.  A lot of the novel deals with the question of if a major supporting character, Professor of Comparative Religion Maeve Ruthven, has her mind surviving in a Saraani whom Benny has already created a connection with.  The fact that this novel ends in a tragedy for Maeve is perhaps the biggest stumbling block for what Leonard and Walters were achieving.  In terms of narrative it’s effectively tragic, but it does mean that the general questions at the heart of the novel in terms of themes go unanswered, something that Leonard has struggled with before.  It’s especially a shame because the friendship between Benny and Vilvian, a Saraani outsider who sneaks Benny’s alcohol back to her and provides much of the religious commentary, is one of the best character dynamics in the entire series.  The Saraani as a species are genuinely written as alien with their own cultural practices and I hope that Leonard and Walters at the very least have the chance to use them at some point in the future.

 

Overall, Dry Pilgrimage’s biggest flaw is that it is a novel written by Paul Leonard whose own struggle with endings is something that is going to affect pretty much everything he has written.  Leonard and Walters work incredibly well as collaborative partners and this is genuinely a compelling contemplation on religion and a character study for Bernice in particular, taking some of the themes Justin Richards established in The Medusa Effect without actually meaning to.  It’s just a great time that’s let down by an ending that’s either a brilliant tragedy or just a general letdown of the established themes.  8/10.