Gods of the Underworld
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Big Finish Gods of the Underworld |
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| Author | Stephen Cole |  |
| ISBN | 1 903654 23 8 | |
| Published | 2001 |
| Synopsis: Benny is trapped on a dangerous planet, with jingoistic natives, two giant rats and Nishtubi heavies. And that's before the Gods of the Underworld wake up. |
Dogs of the Underworld by Robert Smith?
It seems that only editors and Dave Stone are allowed to write for the new Big Finish novels. I'm hoping for Peter Darvill-Evans and Nigel Robinson to be lured to Big Finish, but for now we'll have to make do with everybody's favourite whipping boy, Steve Cole. Vanishing Point (admittedly written after this) was quite good indeed, so I was hoping to see some of the talent that made that and his short stories work so well. Unfortunately, Gods doesn't shine in the same way, but on the bright side it's no Parallel 59 either.
The book opens rather fast, setting up Benny's expedition in six pages of infodump. This might have worked if the book's pace was that of a Justin Richards thriller, but the events on the planet are positively stately at times, so you wonder why the Basil Exposition -- I mean, Braxiatel -- section isn't allowed to develop a bit more naturally. There's a lot of background to set up in a short space of time, so it's a shame that it seems so rushed. (I'll refrain from making the obvious joke about the first line of the book being the question "Why?")
The characters on the planet are serviceable enough. Arko and Forno are kind of fun, although the whole "beasts" thing with Renad is set up but goes nowhere in particular. Shell is supposed to be Benny's rival or something, but the explanations come so thick and fast that it's hard to tell if this is true, since her illness means she gets no character at all. Starl should be a lot more fun than he is, but it's odd that comparisons to Jason aren't made. His eventual revelations are worthwhile, because we've actually seen him in operation. Han and Tinhar don't fare as well, since they're clearly suspicious from the start. Tinhar just whines the entire time and Han's conversion at the end is a little too contrived.
On the other hand, I really appreciate the restraint that the author shows with regards to killing off his main cast. The body count wasn't nearly as high as I feared and that's great to see. So many of these stories introduce hitherto unseen friends of Benny, give them some time together and then brutally kill them off for kicks. I really thought we were headed for that, so I'm very pleased that this was substituted for some attempted character development instead.
The natives seem a bit too formulaic, like they've been borrowed from the Star Trek set and it's a bit strange that Hoodath carried his history of the tribe around with him in just one easy-to-destroy volume, but such are the whims of plot contrivances.
The Nishtubi are fairly stock villains, although their leader has some promise for a while before being pointlessly killed when a different villain comes along to take his place. This is just plain lazy. Having the villains dispose of each other independently of our heroes just makes life way too easy. Where's the heroic overcoming of the odds? If Maddaska had split from the united villain front and pursued his own agenda, the sense of threat would only have been upped, but he's killed for no reason other than convenience, as best I can tell. This is symptomatic of the problems with this book. We should be entering living hell, with monsters, gangs, heavies, natives etc all over the place. There's no way off the planet, so our heroes should be going through hell - actual Ghost Devices-style hell, not the sitcom version we get here - but instead it's just yet more capture-escape-capture stuff. Steve Cole has been watching Frontier in Space too many times and it shows.
The threat strikes me as a little convoluted, too - if you were going to infect a population with something only you had the cure to, surely there are easier ways to do this than making the 'disease' a creature that hatches out of people and then goes on the rampage? Something that kept you alive but in pain so you'd reconsider your decision to not pay up would surely be more effective? (Maybe I'll throw in this reviewing lark and join organised crime instead...) This strikes me as the novel being more interested in creating set pieces than justifying them in plot terms. Another draft might have made this more plausible, though.
The novel takes an odd turn when we discover just who the Gods are. It comes a little out of left field, after so long spent wandering around yet more jungle sets, but it definitely livens up the book. It's a little convenient that everyone just happened to be standing in the right spot at the end when Arko instigates the refreezing process, like having all your villains coincidentally standing on the same trap-door at the same time, but the pace has picked up enough by this point that it's forgivable. I'd probably have enjoyed this a bit more if Shell or someone on Benny's side had been trapped in there as well, meaning that our heroes had a price to pay for their victory (especially if Shell were still suffering from an incurable illness at this point), but what can you do. It's still a Steve Cole novel at heart.
The final scene is quite strange. They contact Brax Exposition and then something that wasn't very funny at all from Chapter 2 returns for more oh-so-hilarious comedy material and the entire cast laughs fakely. Since when did the adventures of Bernice become an episode of Inspector Gadget? Oh, and Benny's hair is described as short and spiky, yet on both the front and back covers she's clearly Lisa Bowerman with a long ponytail. My sister read this book (we were stuck on a bus for three hours and she didn't have anything else to read, honest) and noticed this too, so it's not just nitpickers like me. C'mon Big Finish, get it together. Either she's Lisa Bowerman or she's the actual Bernice, but bring your cover art and your descriptions into line.
Gods of the Underworld isn't as bad as it might seem from my nitpicking, but it's nothing particularly special either. It's very uneven in places, with characters popping up at random and a mixture of yet more interminable jungle scenes and a furiously paced ending with about fifteen different villains competing for attention. It's my least favourite Big Finish novel thus far, but that could easily change. That said, I'm still vaguely embarrassed that I'm sad enough to have paid $20 for a Steve Cole novel. Oh, the humanity.
A Review by Finn Clark 10/1/03
When Steve Cole was the harassed and overworked editor of the BBC Books, I'm afraid I excoricated him as a waste of space who didn't (IMO) understand plotting. However as a writer he's always been better than that. His pseudonymous Short Trips stories are highly regarded and his novels have been improving by leaps and bounds, to the point where after Vanishing Point and Ten Little Aliens I'm nearly looking forward to Timeless.
But this book, Gods of the Underworld... dear Gods. Did I disparage Steve Cole's plotting? Presumably he's learned much since (I'd guess not least from being edited by Justin Richards), but this is possibly the worst plot I've ever seen in a Who-related novel. Benny runs around, gets captured and escapes. So do a couple of talking rodents (Arko and Forno) and their blonde friend Shell, characters who get introduced so offhandedly that I didn't realise there were three of them and ended up having to flick back a few pages. There's also Starl. He runs around, gets captured and escapes.
None of the above characters spend much time interacting with the bad guys, who are also running around, getting captured and escaping.
And that's the entire plot.
I mean, huh? At one point, Benny's escape ruse is so hackneyed that the text actually apologises for it. When Benny does something clever to defeat the big bad guy, it's less impressive than it might be due to the fact that SHE ONLY JUST MET HIM FOR THE FIRST TIME ON PAGE 200. And this in a 224-page novel whose final chapter is the equivalent of the "wacky accident happens and all the characters laugh unconvincingly" scene at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode. In fairness, there's some danger from some gruesome alien killers. These things would be scarier if Bantagel couldn't snap them in half with his bare hands.
Starl drove me completely insane. In Benny's last adventure, The Doomsday Manuscript, she mysteriously shed sixty or seventy IQ points and made Kolonel Daglan Straklant her sidekick without even wondering whether he might be a sadistic murderous villain. And now, in the very next book, she does the same thing! Starl's introduction is so suspicious that he might as well have a flashing neon sign over his head, saying "hidden agenda". Does Benny smell a rat? Does she bollocks. She doesn't even seem too concerned when a syringe falls out of Starl's pocket and random passers-by accuse him of dirty deeds. Even the Fifth Axis get a namecheck on p38. Personally I was convinced that Starl would turn out to be Dalgan Straklant's cousin; I won't spoil his eventual secret, but it's painfully obvious that he has one... except to Benny. Come on. She ain't that green.
I wanted Arko to die in agony, but later he improves. I'm prepared to overlook the fact that this is achieved by jettisoning most of his characterisation.
And it gets worse! Page 100 reruns the cliffhanger from Dragonfire. (If that wasn't the authorial intention, someone should have suggested a rewrite.) Characters are stupid. Venedel's populace are (in true BBC style) comprised of three bad actors and an extra. This book should have been unmitigated rubbish...
...and yet it isn't.
Steve Cole has always been able to turn a good sentence. Admittedly Gods of the Underworld starts off with what might be his worst writing ever, but things soon improve. (Though I had to snigger at the following... '"I trust so," muttered Mahel. "It would not do to add to our troubles with bad prose."') There are one or two characters I rather liked. The tragic tale of poor Hoodath is well worth your time. The gore and nastiness is quite effective, reminding one that this is also the author of Vanishing Point. Fleshing out this plot into a novel must have been rather like baking a cake out of nothing but candle wax, melted tyres and mouldy orange peel, but Steve Cole ploughed ahead manfully.
Most of this book is nicely written and passes inoffensively. It's only when you start paying attention that you realise that everything would have happened much the same without the heroes... or the villains... or the incidental characters.
I have only one more niggle. This "Earthlink" and its Federation are supposed to have been around for 500 years. How this fits with conventional Whoniverse history I'm not entirely sure... there's the Dalek invasion in the mid-22nd century, followed by Earth's period of primitive isolation, followed by wild west anarchy and capitalism gone mad (all those crazy colonies and evil companies of the 23rd-25th centuries) and eventually militaristic empire. Ah well. It's one more piece of the tapestry.
From a certain point of view, Gods of the Underworld is quite an achievement. I read it from cover to cover and liked quite a lot of it, which given its problems must put it in line for some kind of award. The acknowledgements and dedication both remind one that this book was born under the dark shadow of Steve Cole's burn-out as BBC Books editor. Oh, and there's a huge surprise in store at the end... things start happening! It's a shock after the previous 200 pages, but better late than never.
Overall, this book ain't good. It's better than it has any right to be, but don't go out of your way to read it unless you're a Benny completist or looking for a guide to What Not To Do.
A Review by John Seavey 3/3/03
Previous reviews had left me with the impression that The Doomsday Manuscript was an enjoyable, if slightly flawed thriller, while The Gods of the Underworld was a frustratingly plot-holed by-the-numbers action story. Perhaps it's because of these expectations, but I found I enjoyed Gods far more than I did Doomsday. The two share some strong similarities (Benny goes on an archaeological quest because she thinks it'll help her find Jason, an ancient temple holds modern secrets, someone Benny trusts turns out to be a secret agent)... however, Gods of the Underworld conceals its problems by moving at such a rapid pace that the reader shoots clean over the plot holes without falling into them.
Again, who is that on the cover? Not Benny...
As stated above, both of the first two Big Finish Benny books are similar, perhaps even uncomfortably so. Benny's an archaeologist, used to dealing with grave danger in pursuit of exciting relics -- why does she need the added lure of the Argian Oracle to want to go to Venedel? I suppose it's not necessarily a disaster, but if The Squire's Crystal opens with Benny looking for a relic that'll help her find Jason, I will have strong words.
Plotwise, Gods does seem a bit over-egged. We've got three, no sorry, four races of alien criminals, a five-hundred year cryostasis chamber, killer alien reptiles, fanatical Luddite natives, covert agents for the corrupt inner workings of the Federation, covert agents for the good, nice elements of the Federation, and towards the end, we finally toss in imminent nuclear holocaust and ancient Argian killer energy demons. On the one hand, this does begin to get into the realm of the absurd (apparently everyone in the universe is hatching some sort of scheme on Venedel) -- on the other hand, it does build up into a pretty intense climax, and the actual solution to everyone's problems isn't too bad either. Like Ten Little Aliens, this is a book that thrives on its atmosphere.
The characterization isn't bad, although there's very little time for it given the breakneck pace; Starl is clearly fishy from the get-go, as was Straklant in The Doomsday Manuscript, but at least here Benny doesn't seem like so much of a congenital idiot for trusting him... she trusts him because they're flung in at the deep end, starting with a rampaging mob and moving on to a crash-landing on Venedel before the book even really gets up to speed. There isn't time for her to suspect him of anything... and, in the end, he more or less turns out to be a good guy after all.
On the whole, I did enjoy this book, if only because it tossed so much into the mix that I didn't have time to not enjoy it. It probably wouldn't hold up under close examination, but I have to recommend it as a brisk, thrilling read, best enjoyed in one or two sittings.