Dreamstone Moon [PROSE/1998.5.5]

★☆☆☆☆

  If you're in a particular morbid mood, and you want to "treat" yourself to an nauseatingly boring experience, try out Dreamstone Moon. I have no ill will towards Paul Leonard, but to be honest with myself, I have very little to say about it in terms of anything positive. I suppose the handful of pages where Anton goes through shady black market dealings to find the dreamstones he needs is the best part about it; this portion of the book shows glimpses of a direction Leonard could have taken this book, one that I would've enjoyed a whole lot more than what I got. That sort of book would've been a fascinating deep dive into the monetisation and commercialisation of dreams, a society on its last legs (the book even mentions dreamstone junkies called "dreamies", which indicates that such a concept passed through the writer's head during the writing process)... now that would've been interesting.

  Instead, what Dreamstone Moon turns out to be is a bloated, headache-inducing novel that seems to be categorically opposed to the idea of fun. There are no fun explorations on dreams or how dreamstones work, and instead it prides on being an incredibly clichéd narrative about a simple commodity being excavated at the expense of sentient life, and an artist's nightmares coming to life harnessing this energy. Even these clichéd ideas are drawn out in a way that's so devoid of fun, without any excitement factor or passion in the writing at all that the reading experience becomes such a slog. There's plenty of action for the Eighth Doctor and Sam, but even the action in question is bogged down by repetition. It feels like the impending doom and destruction are there to distract readers from realising how little this book actually has to offer, and once that crosses your mind, it's over. The Doctor and Sam keep getting into similar situations again and again for the duration of this book; they don't get anything interesting to do (except maybe for a few brief moments with Sam where she shows just how much she's learned from her TARDIS travels), and so they end up as pretty bland elements of the novel... and that's a really sad thing to say, but I have to be honest with myself here. Dreamstone Moon actively pains me to read -- an uninspired, soulless husk of a Dr. Who novel trying out all the established tropes but making none of them memorable.