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For years the great Labyrinth of Kerykeion has been home to
one of the largest libraries of human incunabula in the galaxy.
Here, otherwise lost volumes are all carefully preserved.
From tomorrow, it's under new management. Benny is sent to
acquire some of the rarest books for the Braxiatel Collection
before the new corporate owners bulldoze their way in. She's
hoping for a quiet time searching the archives. Some chance.
Soon she's investigating a horrible murder. There's an insane
killer cyborg on her heels. And then ancient subterranean
powers begin to stir...
There's
a neat double meaning to the title of this audio adventure.
It refers both to the timeless passages of verse contained
within the library and to the strange effects that the labyrinthine
corridors have upon the books themselves, somehow protecting
the pages from age and decay.
Daniel
O'Mahony's story starts out in a straightforward manner, with
the remarkable Labyrinth of Kerykeion threatened with closure
and the awful possibility of many unique works being consigned
to oblivion. The destruction of books is deplorable at any
time (with its connotations of Nazi book burnings), but the
idea of unique and irreplaceable works being destroyed is
utterly unconscionable (connotations of the Taliban's desecration
of ancient Buddhist statues putting the BBC's wiping of old
Doctor Who episodes in the shade).
But this is Daniel O'Mahony that we're talking about, whose
previous works have ranged from the merely rather strange
(the Who novels Falls the Shadow and The
Cabinet of Light and short story Nothing
at the End of the Lane) to the downright incomprehensible
(the Who short story The Parliament of Rats and
the Bernice Summerfield short story Kill
the Mouse!). About halfway through the narrative,
things take a turn for the weird as an expletive-uttering
killer cyborg knight and some walking statues with the heads
of Egyptian gods enter the fray.
There's a decidedly Faction Paradox-ish flavour to
such story elements, though I doubt that O'Mahony acquired
this from contributing to the Faction Paradox guide
The Book of the War. Rather, I dare say that Lawrence
Miles selected him because of the suitability of his writing
style.
The
small cast clearly has fun with the script, with one of the
male performers (probably Toby Longworth) doubling up as the
delightfully deranged knight.
This
CD will pass 70 minutes of your time very nicely indeed.
Richard
McGinlay
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