Dry Pilgrimage

Bernice Summerfield: Virgin New Adventures #13

by Paul Leonard, Nick Walters

"I am going to make you immortal."

Bored with her job, bored with being perpetually skint, Bernice Summerfield leaps at the chance of a free holiday arranged by her new friend Maeve Ruthven, St Oscar's Professor of Comparative Religion.

But all is not what it seems.

Benny's holiday rapidly goes from bad to worse to downright dangerous. For a start, the "luxury cruise" is a religious pilgrimage, and alcohol is forbidden to those on board. Then she is attacked, badly injured and confined to a wheelchair.

And that's before the murder.

Benny finds herself caught in a web of intrigue — not knowing who on board can be trusted or which way to turn. And with the future of more than one world depending on her actions, she must decide who to believe, expose the hidden killer and prevent a ruthless grab for power.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 21, 1998

About the author

Paul J. Leonard Hinder, better known by his pseudonym of Paul Leonard and also originally published as PJL Hinder, is an author best known for his work on various spin-off fiction based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.

Leonard has acknowledged a debt to his friend and fellow Doctor Who author Jim Mortimore in his writing career, having turned to Mortimore for help and advice at the start of it. This advice led to his first novel, Venusian Lullaby being published as part of Virgin Publishing's Missing Adventures range in 1994. Virgin published three more of his novels before losing their licence to publish Doctor Who fiction: Dancing the Code (1995); Speed of Flight (1996) and (as part of their New Adventures range) Toy Soldiers (1995). Following the loss of their licence, Virgin also published the novel Dry Pilgrimage (co-written with Nick Walters) in 1998 as part of their Bernice Summerfield range of novels.

Leonard also wrote for the fourth volume of Virgin's Decalog short story collections. Following this, he was asked to co-edit the fifth volume of the collection with mentor Jim Mortimore.

Leonard's experience in writing for Doctor Who led to him being asked to write one of the first novels in BBC Books Eighth Doctor Adventures series, the novel Genocide. This led to four further novels for the range, of which The Turing Test received particular acclaim for its evocative use of real-life historical characters and first person narrative.

Leonard has also written short stories for the BBC Short Trips and Big Finish Short Trips collections.

Reviews

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive debut from Nick Walters (edited by Paul Leonard, who is co-credited) featuring yet another mystery on a cruise ship - but this one’s actually at sea! Whether it’s Paul Leonard’s influence I don’t know, but a lot of thought has gone into the aliens we meet here, who have a religion, religious infighting, an unusual lifespan and an even more unusual way of reproducing/reincarnating. Different perspectives are a huge part of the story, which features people being unwillingly turned into killers, and there’s a ton of very thoughtful character writing throughout. It’s also a strong one for Bernice who really seems to live and breathe in this admittedly quite unhappy chain of events. It’s a high point of the series.

[April Mccaffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

'She hoped they were all right. It probably made no difference, hoping, but it made her feel better. That was what hope was for. Making you feel better.'

-

*Spoilers below*

I really enjoyed this book for a few different reasons.

It was really wonderful to see Benny and Maeve's friendship develop-as it is rare we really get to see Benny's friendship with other women develop like this in the earlier books except with Roz and Ace. They were two very different people-Maeve being a religious professor and Benny an atheist / humanist. It's a tragic end for Maeve, but it was nice to see their friendship.

I also liked the other Professors and characters we got introduced on the ship, and Professor Smith was a socially awkward Professor who just used his colleagues as a social experiment, lol.

Poor Benny -her free holiday kept going from bad to worse. First no bikini, no alcohol and then getting attacked and injured. I felt for Theo-the missing student.

I really loved seeing Mirrium and Vilbian -the two main Saraani characters. These two stood out the most for me, and i love Mirrium for questioning his belief and what was right and wrong. I found the whole Saraani fascinating with their short, limited life span and their reincarnation method was really fascinating.

Also loved Benny's confrontation with Brion and Violane. Brion was stupid and had put Benny's life at risk on more than once with his panic and could not keep one straight lie. How he got to be a spy, who knows, lol. Benny was far better spy than he was.

Over all, loved it.

[Jacob Licklider · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2592634.html

featuring a voyage by sea with an alien species whose life cycle and religious beliefs are worked out in interesting detail, of course largely driving the plot. I thought this was an above average book in this series, with convincing characters among both the humans and non-humans and a compassionate take on the conflict between them.

[Richard Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this though felt it dragged a bit in the middle. Very good Benny stuff with alien aliens and some interesting, if unsubtle, things to say about war and religion. Brilliant downbeat ending, also