Fortunately, it did.

"Death and Diplomacy" can largely be considered as two stories welded together. There's the Doctor's experiences in the Summit, trying to reconcile the three warring races -- the Czhan, the Saloi and the Dakhaari. Then there's the developing relationship between Benny and stranded Earthman Jason Kane. The third plot strand Stone follows -- Cwej and Forrester's experiences in the Czhanist army -- is generally irrelevant and really pretty tedious.

The Doctor's part of the plot is great fun, reading like something out of a David Eddings novel as three rulers, nominally nemeses but all quite intelligent individuals, come to set aside their differences and get along, realizing that the petty cultural discrepancies which had set them at each others' throats were really pretty meaningless after all. Three main supporting characters in this section, the leaders of the three races, are all ably portrayed, although only the Saloi leader gets any real evelopment. It is the Doctor who stands out here. "Death and Diplomacy" is rare in that the Doctor and his companions are separated for almost the entirety of the novel, and so we see the Time Lord in an entirely new light, through the eyes of the Summit delegates. It's thoroughly engaging and well-executed, and the Doctor is expertly captured throughout. My only quibble is Stone's tendancy to make the Doctor some kind of almost magical character by having him (for instance) appear to be in three places at the same time. Although I appreciate a good deal of mystery surrounding the Doctor, this efforts tend to stretch the limits of my belief, and are a little off-putting.

Stone's biggest challenge is in the Bernice part of the novel. Anyone who's been paying any attention to fan news is aware of the impending marriage of Benny and Jason Kane, so heading into "Death and Diplomacy", I was more in a position of observing how Stone got the couple together, rather than wondering if they *would* get together. And it is indeed a challenge to create a realistic relationship which ends in marriage in just two hundred and eighty pages. A lesser author would probably have created something trite and laughable; Stone manages to make Jason and Benny's relationship plausiable, realistic and interesting. It's still a little hard to fathom Benny accepting Jason's proposal so quickly, but it's a helluvalot more believable than I'd feared. Jason is a very good character, and the perfect foil for Bernice; I look forward to encountering him again in "Happy Endings", "Return of the Living Dad" and (perhaps) the Benny-only NAs.

As I said, the Cwej/Forrester parts of the novel are really pretty tedious, and it's clear that Stone has little use for them. Their characterization is workmanlike if unremarkable, and there's little momentum in their chapters. In that context, "Death and Diplomacy" is a book which would have worked far better had it been set in the break between Ace's departure and the Adjudicators' arrival.

The plot itself is interesting and holds the book together well, but it does suffer from Stone's tendency (a holdover from "Sky Pirates!") to dash through ideas without proper explanation or exploration. The nature of the book's villains, their plot for domination of the Dagellan Cluster, and even the transformation of the TARDIS interior, all deserved far more inspection than Stone gives them. Unfortunately, this leaves the reader wondering exactly what's been going on, and gives "Death and Diplomacy" a rather rushed feeling towards the end, which is unfortunate.

All in all, though, "Death and Diplomacy" is a far better novel than "Sky Pirates!". It's certainly a lot funnier! Although the somewhat muddy plot, slow opening and useless Roz/Chris chapters hamper it a bit, as a whole it was quite successful, and bodes well for Stone's third Doctor Who novel, "Burning Heart".

7/10.

Back to Reviews From The Land Of Fiction