TITLE: The Suicide Exhibition (The Never War #1)
AUTHOR: Justin Richards
GENRE: Adventure | Historical | Science Fiction
PUBLISHED: March 3, 2015
RATING: ★★ 1/2
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
I am not sure whether other people think the same way I do, but I believe some stories work better with specific methods of storytelling than with others. Some stories can be told across various media—novels, comics, film, television—but some stories need to stick with just one. Some stories might work wonderfully in novel format but would be near-impossible to translate onto the big or small screen; others might be excellent for television or film but might not fly so well as a novel.
The latter is the case with Justin Richards’ novel The Suicide Exhibition. It opens on the early years of World War II. The Nazis have come into possession of a mysterious weapon: an ancient, mystical power that could turn the tide of the war in their favour. British intelligence has gotten wind of it, though, and is doing its best to figure out just what it is the Nazis have, what they intend to do with it, and how to stop them.
However, neither the British nor the Nazis know the true nature of the power the Nazis have unearthed: ancient, yes, and mystical, yes, but capable of independent thought—and it desires nothing less than the destruction and subjugation of the entire human race.
The first thing that came into my mind when I started reading this novel was: Hellboy. Everything about it—Nazis, the Vril, ancient tombs, secret government organisations—all pointed back to the first Hellboy story arc, except with slightly less Lovecraft. At that point I started comparing the novel to what I remembered of Hellboy, and found this new novel wanting. I realised later, though, that the comparison was hardly fair to the novel; after all, there are only so many ways one can make use of the Nazis’ historical involvement with occult matters, right? Also, Hellboy was another kind of story entirely, and so, although the surface elements were remarkably similar (perhaps too similar, for my liking), I would need another, fairer point of comparison.
A bit more reading led to me decide that perhaps Indiana Jones was the better point of comparison. After all, The Suicide Exhibition was shaping into an adventure story, and shared the Nazi occult element with Raiders of the Lost Ark. From there it was easy to spot the other elements that made this novel more akin to not just the Indiana Jones movies, but the Tintin comics and the Allan Quartermain novels—though hopefully The Suicide Exhibition would do away with the racism and misogyny inherent to the aforementioned examples.
But even with those adjusted expectations, I still wasn't quite happy with it. The most immediate issue is usually the quality of the writing, but that didn't seem to be the problem, since Richards is a master at world-building with a few choice phrases, as the quote below shows:
An artist’s likeness was circulated, but no one reported seeing a walking corpse. Possibly there were so many emaciated and sleep-deprived Londoners that he didn’t seem so out of place. Possibly people had better things to concentrate on, like surviving.
Although there are other parts of the novel that make clear that London is in the middle of the Blitz, the above quote shows that Richards is able to succinctly capture what it was like for Londoners to live in constant terror of a bomb dropping onto them at any time. He does this with his other descriptions as well, such as this description of a very notable, very important man further on in the novel:
The General Secretary sat at a large desk at the side of a huge office. He did not look up when they came in, giving no acknowledgement that he knew Mikhael and the three men with him had arrived. The four of them stood to attention in front of the desk, waiting.
After several minutes, the Secretary put down his pen, and looked up. He fixed his deep, dark eyes on Mikhael, his stare so intense he might be looking into the man’s soul. Still he said nothing.
…
There was silence for several moments, then the Secretary leaned forward to study the photographs again. It was obvious that the meeting was over. Mikhael waited for one of the others to move first, then followed them from the room. At the door, he glanced back at the man at the desk—still absorbed in his work. He could see why he had adopted the name ‘man of steel’—Stalin.
Both quotes show that, whatever else might be problematic about his writing, Richards can not only turn a good phrase, but he can also incorporate historical events and figures seamlessly into his writing. This is a good thing, though also to be expected from someone whose bread-and-butter is mostly writing Doctor Who novels. Still, it’s clear Richards has taken the time to sit down, do research, and incorporate that research as seamlessly as possible into his story, and I can readily appreciate it.
However, although Richards’ writing itself isn't bad, The Suicide Exhibition has one very large issue that gets in the way of everything else: its pacing. The novel starts very slow, and only really starts to pick up towards the end. Now, this is not normally an issue with me: I’m quite happy to have a book start out slow and then pick up towards the end, especially if it’s the beginning of a series; I almost expect it because I understand the writer’s need to establish the setting and the characters, and to move necessary plot points into just the right position so that everything can move a bit faster in the sequels, thus keeping the overall story moving forward to the very end of the series.
But I do not feel the same way about the slow start of this novel. Since Richards has already proven he can pack a lot of world-building in a very small space, and since the facts of World War II are well-known to most readers (thanks in large part to the many documentaries and movies made over the years), the slow start has nothing to do with world-building. Therefore, if it’s not about world-building, then it must be about character development: building up both protagonists and antagonists so that the reader can become attached to them, or at the very least interested in them.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. There is very little development for any of the characters; they all fit into certain stereotypes, and never leave them. This is especially annoying in the case of the female characters. While I understand that a certain amount of stereotyping happens in adventure novels because of the focus on plot, what I do not understand is why Richards let such stereotyping happen at all when there was no urgent need to keep the plot constantly moving forward. The Suicide Exhibition is the first book in a series: the plot can understandably take some time off for other things because it has room to grow. Why Richards does not take advantage of that to truly build his characters into interesting, three-dimensional people worth spending time with is beyond me. As it stands, his characters are irritating to read about: the protagonists are barely fleshed-out caricatures of a list of character traits from TVTropes, and the antagonists (the human ones, anyway) are no better. The only good thing about the human antagonists is that they don't cackle threateningly to themselves, although they do have a mysterious castle lair. (Which actually existed anyway: stereotypes must come from somewhere, after all.)
Of course, my problems with the characterisation and pace wouldn’t be as much of an issue if this story were presented in some other manner—say, as a TV show. As I’ve said earlier, Richards’ bread-and-butter is writing Doctor Who novels, and all the characteristics of The Suicide Exhibition point towards the very heavy influence of TV. The pacing and characterisation are the most obvious examples of this influence, but even the way the story jumps from the point-of-view of one character to another so closely mimics the cinematography and editing of Doctor Who that I half-expected the TARDIS to show up at some point and for the Doctor and his companion to step out and take the Vril head-on.
Overall, The Suicide Exhibition has all the potential to make a great TV show, but it doesn’t work very well as a novel. While Richards’ world-building is well done, and it’s clear his research is solid, those qualities do not excuse the shallow characterisation and agonising pace of the first two-thirds of the novel, with the plot only really picking up speed in the last third. The novel’s callbacks and homages to popular adventure media like Tintin and the Indiana Jones movies might be enough to encourage some readers to push through until the end, but once they reach the end they will realise that there is not enough incentive to keep on going and pick up the next book in the series.