Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Bernice Summerfield: The Two Jasons


I was about two-thirds of the way through The Two Jasons when I suddenly thought to myself, "hold on a sec...this is just Death And Diplomacy all over again". Sure enough by the time I got to the end of the novel (or novella really, because this is not a terribly long book), Dave Stone pointed out that he was indeed just retelling the Death And Diplomacy story because it needed to be told for the new audience of Benny fans who would never have read this book.

Except...I'm willing to bet that the only people who are listening to these Benny audios, and reading these Benny novels are only doing so because they continued on from reading The New Adventures back in the nineties. And after nine years, if people are still listening/reading these things then they don't really have a lot of a problem with the Jason/Benny backstory.

So essentially, one can't help but wonder...what's the point of this book then? It tells a story that most of its audience has already read or really don't care about.

OK, yes the story is quite entertaining (although you really need to be a fan of Stone's work or, quite frankly, you'll hate the entire thing) and yes there are some new elements in the book that we haven't read before, but frankly it's going to take more than a "ooohhh look - Roz and Chris...and a thinly veiled reference to the Doctor" to make the book worthwhile.

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