Dave Stone is an author known for massive flights of fancy in his books and being an author who some find brilliantly inventive and others find self-indulgently over the top. I have enjoyed some of Stone's books and others have been very middle of the road. This is a book which I actively hated for around 75% of its page count.

I rarely hate Doctor Who stories. If this was any other book, I'd have probably given up five chapters in. But, I can't leave a Doctor Who story unfinished and certainly not one I know is part of an arc which leads up to the finale of the Virgin Bernice Summerfield book range.

The story, what there is of it, sees an unnamed agent who has been employed to find Bernice after the events on Dellah seen in the previous book Where Angels Fear. The trail has only a sparse number of clues and instead of teasing the reader with clues as to what has happened to Bernice, Stone prefers to send the agent on a variety of pointless and unengaging sidequests which I think Stone thinks are amusing and packed with great original characters. They're not. They're just frustrating.

This is ostensibly a Bernice Summerfield book and she doesn't appear until page 200 or so out of 245. Jason Kane appears a few pages before her. It is too little, too late. This isn't an interesting world. The agent isn't an interesting character. The fact that they hardly know who Benny is doesn't help. It makes the entire novel hugely aimless. Where Angels Fear ended on the devastation of Dellah and this story is just chooses to put that firmly into the background and waste time wandering around other planets meeting characters the reader isn't given any reason to care about.

It's telling that the only part I enjoyed was from when Jason turned up, and then obviously the final, eleventh hour, appearance of Bernice. In two or three chapters we suddenly get about half a book's worth of plot squeezed in before the book has to finish. It's finally fun and engaging but all my goodwill towards the book had dissipated long before.

I don't like stories which deliberately obfuscate details. There is no reason for not telling the reader who we are following for 245 pages. They are our point of view character. No name, barely any description. It's just hugely frustrating and then at the end Dave Stone chooses to stick two fingers up to the reader by literally ending with the agent telling us we will never get to find out who they really are. Again, not funny or clever.

It worries me hugely that Stone returns in Return to the Fractured Planet and also that I know the next novel, Dead Romance, is also Benny-less (although at least I know Chris Cwej features in it). I'm hoping I can get through these last few Virgin Benny books with more enjoyment than this novel but the future doesn't look too bright.