In Brief: Space Casino! Empires on the verge of war! Killer Painting Monsters!
Demontage is a slow meander of a book. The fist half or so is relatively plotless and aimless as The Doctor, Sam and Fitz wander around a giant space casino that's located between Human and Canvine (think big dog-men) IN SPACE! A load of somewhat forgettable characters are introduced but little seems to happen.
I suspect that Richards was trying his hand at a little bit of "world-building" but without much success since his "world" just isn't very interesting. He's a decent enough writer, his New Adventure Theatre of War was fairly good (his 8DA Option Lock not so much) but here he just can't manage to rise above competent. The second half of the book, where "stuff happens" is definitely stronger. He's good at building up a plot and characters so that (almost) everything and everybody serves a purpose by the end of the book. But it's not enough to raise the novel to more than "not awful".
Overall Demontage sits with the majority of the 8th-Doctor stories in being competent but highly unmemorable. Sam at least isn't too annoying and "right-on 90s!" (I think most authors are just writing her as Generic Companion #2 by this stage, with a lot of books removing her from the action much of the time). However Fitz is showing promise. It's obvious that Richards is much more comfortable writing for a less "perfect" companion, who gets things wrong and is somewhat on the back-foot in facing events. I suspect one of the great unsolved mysteries of Who-dom will remain the decision of BBC Books to lumber the early 8DA with such a boring character as Sam, which when combined with the "less-complex" 8th-Doctor led to the dullest series' leads in any medium.
But back to book. It thankfully ends better than it begins, with a plot by some nefarious art-dealers to kill the president using animated painting-monsters thwarted.
FYI a flame-thrower is particularly effecting against painting-monsters.
However again we've got an entry in the series that does nothing more than simply exist. It doesn't push any boundaries, try anything new or develop the regular characters whatsoever. It's frustrating that 20 books into the Eighth Doctor Adventures there's been absolutely no development. I can't think of another similar period of time (almost 2 years) where the series stayed so still.
No wonder I'm bored.
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