I really enjoyed this. However (here come the possible end spoilers look away NOW) the ending is not an ending its a cliffhanger! I want to know what happened to Pinky, Perky, the Alpha and Omega cultures?! Talk about being left hanging and with a separate diary enty dated years later!

Ok so it is "to be continued" in Old Friends.. but.. Pinky was just getting into the swing of things! ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3014987.html

Well, this was unexpected. I've been reading the Bernice Summerfield books in publication order, which generally means in order of internal chronology; but Genius Loci is an exception. It's a novel about the early career of the first archaeologist companion, on her first offworld dig, and I can think of only two other novels in which a future companion appears before they meet the Doctor (Harry Sullivan in The Face of the Enemy and Erimem, like Benny a non-TV companion, in The Coming of the Queen).

And this is rather good. I've had my problems with some of Aaronovitch's other work (though he certainly seems to have found his stride with Rivers of London, a finalist for last year's Best Series Hugo); here a lot of things come together, a well-rounded main character, lots of detail of non-human cultures, lots of reflection on human politics, and plenty of humour and throwaway lines about 21st century culture. It's one of the very few Bernice Sumemrfield books that you could try a non-Whovian fan on and have reasonable hope that they would appreciate it; the references to canon are light but tempting. ( )

I read a lot of tie-in fiction. And most of it is decent. Not great, but it scratches an itch to have more adventures of characters I like and love. But by and large it doesn't hold a candle to the majority of the original fiction I read. But it is possible to do so, and every now and again I read a work of tie-in fiction that's so good it I would recommend it without hesitation to people who don't normally read such things.

Genius Loci is such a novel. As a Bernice Summerfield novel, it's completely standalone, covering her first archaeological expedition as an eager postgrad with forged credentials. As a science fiction novel, it's completely excellent. I haven't read much of Ben Aaronovitch's prose fiction, but his work here is excellent: young Bernice is a real person trying to figure out how to grow up, while uncovering an ancient mystery on an alien planet. Aaronovitch handles character well: Benny and all her friends come to life here. It feels painful in the moments where they turn on each other because we've really gotten to know them prior to that. He handles worldbuilding well: there are some great ideas here, like the two sentient city-building robots who fall in love with each other, and the ecology and history of Jaiwan. He handles plot well: there are some tough surprises in this book that I didn't see coming, but made whole sense once revealed. He handles prose well: like, most tie-in writers are perfunctory at best. Some stuff here is lovely, like the tale of the two robots in love.

He even does archaeology well. Most Bernice novels have a pretty superficial grasp of archaeology, which I guess makes sense for the books' Indiana Jones-derived action-adventure roots. Benny needs to be in a new location with something exciting; that's all you need archaeology for. But here-- I don't know if archaeology field work is really like this, but based on my experience with ecology field work, it feels right. Archaeology is slow and painstaking and halting; you don't just zip in for a week, do a little digging, and zip back out. More than any other Bernice Summerfield book-- and probably more than any other science fiction book I've read-- this book captures the joys and frustrations of being a space archaeologist.

Seriously, this book is great. I read it in like two days at most, and when I finished it, I handed it to my wife, who couldn't care less about Bernice Summerfield, and she enjoyed it too. It's a complete shame that a story this good only exists as #8 in an out-of-print series of expensive tie-in hardbacks. It should be reprinted as a paperback standalone for all those folks who like Aaronovitch's Rivers of London books. Highly recommended.