Dying In The Sun - Jon De Burgh Miller

For an adventure with so much potential, this is a damp squib. Perhaps it falters because I read it shortly after Steve Lyon's Salvation and the basic premise is the same. Aliens offer Humans everything that they could ever want. Salvation of course is written in Lyons' distinctive style that gets under the skin of the characters and really brings them to life. Miller unfortunately does not succeed in the same way. The characters here, if not bland, are generic to the point of insignificance. The Doctor, Ben and Polly run around without really doing anything. They could be any Doctor and companions, what's worse, they could be any science fiction protagonists.

It is unfortunate therefore that the characters, undistinguished as they are, are the most successful part of the book. The plot is, at heart, a good idea with so much potential for examining Hollywood, film noir, Scientology and so on. But not only is every target, no matter how big, missed, but Miller doesn't even have the decency to get the whole thing to make sense. Events occur with no consequences, characters disappear without a word, things happen for no reason and the aliens powers are inconsistent to the point where, shown any kind of scrutiny, the plot falls apart like a tower of jenga hit by a wrecking ball. To give a couple of instances. Characters that meld with the Seyloid (hoho) aliens exude irresistible charm, look like ravishing film stars and can influence whoever they talk to. All such melded characters do this, except for Wallis, the second most important melded character, the only visible change in Wallis apparently is that he's started smiling more. And his subordinates are happy to argue with him. Wallis has none of the powers attributed to the Alien melded humans. A second instance has Ben finding two corpses in a wardrobe which move. The corpses are later revealed to be animated by the Seyloids. However, they also quite happily walk around amongst the Humans, they are not malevolent or trying to hide and also have a purpose to fulfill. So what the hell were two of them doing inside a wardrobe? It's not even a particularly interesting wardrobe. The whole little scene is unbelievably pointless and forgotten about as soon as it's over. The character Maria is built up as a major player and then pointlessly disappears for the final act, barely mentioned again.

Perhaps the biggest crime is the Doctor's treatment of Polly. At one point the Doctor refuses to allow Polly to come with him in accessing the Police forensic department, because it is "too dangerous". Half a page later, the Doctor waltzes into the police station and stays there for several hours without even being challenged. Polly meanwhile wanders off and gets taken in by the Seyloids. It's nonsensical and lazy writing, the plot requires Polly to join the Seyloids, so Miller gives us an insulting excuse to separate the team. It would have taken about two extra sentences to give a plausible explanation for this event but no.

Ultimately the book truly fails by simply being boring. The prose is workmanike, there is nothing to make us want to stay involved. And on top of all the other inconsistancies, there really is very little to recommend.

2 out of 10