Space Security Agent Sara Kingdom is dead, her ashes strewn on the planet Kembel - but, in an old house in Ely, Sara Kingdom lives on. To the Elders of this ruined world, Sara is a ghost, a phantom that must be exorcised. She must prove her right to exist, and she does so with stories - stories of a time when she travelled the universe with an ancient Doctor and his heroic companion Steven inside a magical space/time ship called the TARDIS. One story in particular could make a difference - the one about their trip to a world covered in water, where a human expedition is being wiped out. It’s a battle to survive, as the travellers face the horrors of the drowned world...

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS...

This audio book is a sequel to Home Truths, featuring the same two actors in the same two roles: Jean Marsh as the spirit of Sara Kingdom and Niall MacGregor as Robert, a law-enforcement officer on a devastated and slowly recovering future Earth. Behind the scenes the original gang is also back together, with Lisa Bowerman directing, Richard Fox and Lauren Yason providing the music and sound design, and writer Simon Guerrier returning to pen the tale.

Guerrier’s “primary” (flashback) narrative is derivative of The Abyss, the Star Trek episode The Devil in the Dark and the Next Generation episode Home Soil, but his intriguing frame narrative makes up for this, playing as prominent a role here as it did in Home Truths. MacGregor as Robert does a fair bit of the narrating himself and, unusually for this series, the cliffhanger ending to Part One involves events in both the flashback timeline and the frame story. In Part Two, the narrators and musicians provide a truly moving listening experience.

I enjoyed Home Truths more than this, but The Drowned World is certainly no wet lettuce.

7

Richard McGinlay