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The
TARDIS enters a peculiarly warped region of space-time, whereupon
it is invaded by hostile Vortex Wraiths. The ship makes an
emergency landing on Shakrath, one of a thousand worlds that
comprise a curiously insular "empire". However, escaping the
Empire will not be easy...
During
this rather episodic novel, the TARDIS sets down on four different
planets, of which Shakrath is just the first. The disparate
worlds of the Empire are connected by Engines of Transference,
portals that can transport individuals across vast distances
of space, though not instantaneously. Depending on the distance
involved, a journey can take centuries, hence the "slow" in
Slow Empire. Upon entering such a portal, the body
of the departing traveller is destroyed, and a new one is
created at the soul's eventual point of arrival. Each traveller
is painfully branded by this decidedly sick and twisted kind
of stargate, so that he or she can be identified as such.
Fortunately, none of the TARDIS crew have to use any of these
devices, although they are accompanied by one such traveller,
Jamon de la Rocas. A wily and foppish merchant, Jamon narrates
intermittent segments of the story, representing an aspect
of the author's personality in trademark fashion. This particular
authorial spokesman takes Stone's convoluted yet conversational
prose style to extremes, frequently using ten words where
one would have done, lampooning Daniel Defoe and other early
novelists.
Each
of the four worlds that is visited demonstrates further stocks
in trade of Stone's eccentric writing, including gruesome
body horror, sadistic science, a blobby alien who spouts gibberish,
and a nightmarish subconscious realm straight out of Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four. All of these elements are standbys
that we have come to expect from Stone, making this novel
something of a pick-and-mix selection, but showing a disappointing
degree of repetition. For instance, the author has previously
had his characters acting out Orwellian fantasies in his Doctor-less
New Adventure, Oblivion, and had featured a
similarly mind-altering spatial warp in Return to the Fractured
Planet.
Virtually
every new Stone novel brings with it a different pseudo-scientific
reason for its level of weirdness, in order to fit the author's
outlandish style into the relatively rational universe of
Doctor Who. On this occasion it is a symptom of "sprained
time", caused by the use of the Engines of Transference. One
wonders if it might not be a bad idea for the author to set
all of his future Who books within the same twisted
region of the continuum where the usual physical laws cease
to apply.
This
book is not without its charms - it features, for instance,
an amusing appendix of explanatory notes - but the narrative
plods plotlessly for too long before reaching a significant
level of cohesion. Up until that point, it's slow going.
Richard
McGinlay
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