Review — Eternity Weeps

First Published:
Sonic Screwdriver #101

Publish Date:
April 1997

Comments:
Is there a pro-Jason faction out there somewhere?

A book "written" by Benny Summerfield: sounds great. With co-writer husband Jason Kane: oh dear. Such is Jim Mortimore’s latest New Adventure. Everyone loves those extracts from Benny’s diary, so this one looked set, despite Jason, to be a winner — Jim Mortimore’s ideas combined with sheer readability. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work out that well.

This book is most certainly not a happy one. Several groups — both archaelogical and military — are searching for the fabled Noah’s Ark. It is Turkey in 2003, and to say the area is unstable would be a gross understatement… Benny and Jason are finding being married a stressful situation. And the Earth is about to suffer massive retribution from the far far past…

Mortimore says he went for a Tarantino approach to this book, and it shows. Don’t get too attached to any of the characters in the book — they probably won’t last long! It’s really just one disaster after another for those caught in the action, involving a long extinct race, Yet Another Mortimore Artifact™, and the return (for a bit…) of Liz Shaw. Thankfully, half the prose is really good. And that’s the real problem — the other half is courtesy Jason Kane’s pen.

Let’s face it, Jason is a real prat. He ain’t good enough for our Benny, and what’s more he’s lost all his character since he was introduced by Dave Stone. As far as I can tell, he’s now a Abslom Daak without attitude (and half the intelligence). He’s writing the diary to help get to his real feelings, but when you don’t have any it doesn’t really work! So I ended up finding half this book really annoying and worse, Benny was also going on and on about their problems together. When you couldn’t give a toss about one of those involved — and this being one of the main threads of the book — you’re off to a bad start.

Still, there’s stuff to like. The Astronomer Royal of 16 Alpha Leonis One is a fascinating character — well and truly fitting Jim’s habits of really big complex thingies — and Liz is good for the suprisingly small role she gets (you’ll see what I mean). There’s also a fascinating analogy with The Magician’s Nephew regards those time rings bestowed by the Doctor to Benny and Jason on their wedding day.

But guess what happens? Jason does the big jump into the thick of the plot with the Astronomer Royal, and then proceeds to stuff it up again. I mean, please!

Oh yeah, did I mention the Doctor and Chris? No? Well, that’s probably because Jim forgot to as well. While that’s not necessarily a problem, boy they could have helped in this book.

Sorry, Jim, but this one’s a dud.

End of Review

This page last updated by David J Richardson on Wed, 20 Apr 2005.