Eternity Weeps

As the Virgin line was winding down, obviously the fine people there wanted to keep making money. To do that, they needed to keep publishing books, of course. But how to do it with the Doctor taken out of their hands? The idea was to just keep using Bernice Summerfield and other characters who were created for that series. In retrospect then, this novel seems like a test-run for that sort of thing, since the Doctor and Chris are barely in it. The plot more or less consists of Benny and Jason having a spat and winding up joining different expeditions to find Noah's Ark in Turkey. Unfortunately both the Iran and Iraq armies think that uranium is also there and decide to step in. And thus do things begin to go terribly wrong. In a clever move, the novel is narrated alternately by both Benny and Jason, showing their different perspectives on each other as well as a crosssection of their rapidly crumbling marriage. It makes for some depressing reading sometimes, as neither of them come out pretty well. While I'm more used to Benny and she is certainly effective here, she also comes across as a nagging shrill crazy woman, yelling at Jason for every little thing he does or doesn't do. Jason, meanwhile, seems to spend most of the novel whining or being a coward, which gets real annoying real fast. Fortunately there's bloodshed to distract you from the proceedings. And boy, is there bloodshed. I've read war novels and this has to rank as one of the most casualty ridden books I've ever encountered. There's a bit of a doom and gloom feel to the book to begin with and not long after it starts supporting characters start dropping like flies, all in horrible, horrible ways. The extent of Mortimore's imagination when it comes to violent acts is fascinating and he's marvelously descriptive in all the myriad ways you can die by getting shot at. As others have pointed out, don't get attached to any character, named or otherwise, because chances are they are not making it to the end of the novel. When an actual famous character dies (a former companion, and a popular one at that) hideously, you hardly even notice in the midst of all the carnage (though I'm not sure why they bothered to even bring her back simply to kill her like twenty pages later . . . the Doctor doesn't even seem to care) and it's more of a footnote than it should be. Somewhere in the middle of all this, a virus is unleashed that offers more terrible death. And then we have the Doctor walk in, almost as an afterthought. The novel is about halfway over by the time he puts an appearance in and he's a welcome addition, although he's slightly out of character (that could be explained by the impending regeneration). But for once he's not god-like and nigh-omnipotent, he goofs and it takes him a while to recover. As a book this actually reads quickly, and is rather gripping once you get past the fact that the pages are literally soaked in blood. It's a change of pace from the us

ETERNITY WEEPS was the book to end the short-lived marriage of Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane. As Benny was soon to be taking over the reigns as star of the NAs, the powers that be decided she would work better on her own, unencumbered by her dolt of a husband. During the course of the novel, not only does Mortimore kill off the Summerfield-Kane marriage, but also most of the supporting cast, countless extras, dozens of unseen scientists, an entire alien civilization, and a large percentage of the Earth's population. Yikes. I imagine that if you were to ask Mortimore to mow your lawn for you while on vacation, you'd return home to find that he's accomplished this task by sending your sun supernova.The story is told by alternating the narrative viewpoints; Jason narrates the even-numbered chapters, while Benny relates the events during the odd. This is a neat trick, showing us the state of the marriage from both sides as it slowly disintegrates. The story puts them on separate paths at the beginning, placing each one on a separate expedition to find the remains of Noah's Ark in the early part of the 21st Century. Naturally, the story gets more science-fictiony, but I quite liked the opening trek to find the Ark. This is the sort of thing that the Benny-oriented books did well. There's a lot of good atmosphere setting, character work and playful banter. I enjoy this sort of mystery/voyage type story, and Mortimore does it very well. It serves as a nice counterpoint to what comes later.In general, killing off a sympathetic, well-defined secondary character is effective. Killing off most of the supporting cast can be shocking. When the death toll starts climbing into the millions, it's a little harder to grasp. It's almost difficult to take the story seriously when the numbers get that high. Still, the scenes of the alien virus sweeping through buildings, settlements, military bases and research facilities are genuinely creepy and frightening. It's the success of these portions that allows the reader to vividly imagine how this catastrophe is taking place on a global scale. Mortimore has killed off millions of people before (in his fiction, I hasten to clarify), but I think this is his most effective attempt.Mortimore's fascination with DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS continues here. He manages to tie up a few loose-ends from that story without being fanwanky or annoying, and he even updates one of the more memorable set pieces from that serial.I liked ETERNITY WEEPS, although I couldn't shake the image of Jim Mortimore sitting in front of his work processor, dressed as Omega from "The Three Doctors", pounding on his keyboard, shouting "ALL THINGS! ALL THINGS! ALL THINGS MUST BE DESTROYED!" It's paced confidently and has a couple of good ideas at its core. Just try not to get too attached to, well, anybody.