Avon: A Terrible Aspect is an exquisitely terrible book, filled to the brim with bad taste, misconceptions and basic writing errors.
WRITTEN BY
Paul Darrow, who portrayed Avon on the show. This is more or less a hodgepodge of his masculine fantasies, love of Shakespeare and the 1930s noir films of Humphrey Bogart.
PLOT
The novel is divided into four parts, each focusing on a different member of the Avon family and through a series of interconnected vignettes, following the journey that takes Kerguelen Avon from a miserable hut in the middle of nowhere to the prison ship we find him on in Space Fall.
ANALYSIS
Leaving aside all the more evident problems, Avon is a downright fatalistic book in its atmosphere - not so much because of the oppressive Federation regime, but rather its interpretation of human nature itself as animalistic and pointless, with no higher purpose beyond what we ourselves desire as individuals. A repeated thought is that death comes to all, and our only choice in life is how we define and prepare for it. Life is just matter of what indulgence we pick, power or honor. It's not so much Orwellian as it is completely self-destructive.
Darrow never imbues it with a sense of tragedy either, or the sense that this is merely a matter of perspective. Everyone appear more or less aware of this reality of his, and just about every character stabs one another in the back. The problem I have is that whilst this all fits Avon himself, it's completely different to the actual universe of Blake's 7, which was never this grimdark. The show's tone was realistic. Terrible things happened and hope was scarce, but it was a matter of cruelty, not matter of fact.
And then of course, there's the amateurish writing itself. With only 93 pages, the book is incredibly short, but Darrow's pace is breakneck all the way through, with a "tell, don't show" attitude that leaves little time to breathe. The level of pulp in Avon far outdoes its creator Terry Nation. Stilted dialogue, gratuitous sex and violence, and no thought put into the logistics whatsoever.
The most humorous running gag for me was Darrow's childlike understanding of astronomy, culminating in the most beautiful declaration that Avon's uncle had hunted Avon's father all across the universe - way out to the moons of Jupiter!!
Unlike Blake's 7, the size of the Federation in the Darrowverse seems to stretch only across Earth's own solar system, as characters frequently refer to the "Wars of Uranus", a large chunk of the plot is set on Saturn Major and Neptune is also referenced. Everything beyond that is simply that - "the Beyond". It's a bizarre retcon that completely invalidates the show's galaxy-spanning narrative.
The Federation's rule is also substantially different - there is seemingly no President, and the entire upper class is made up of merely nine constantly competing families whose subsidiaries control all vital functions of the empire.
CHARACTERS
Darrow refrains from giving the young Avon any dialogue until about the halfway point in the novel. Rather disappointly, his first lines are hardly noteworthy. From then on, Avon is essentially the character he is in the show's final season - a stone cold killer who does what he has to in order to survive, but has a small soft spot for those he cares about(basically his mother and Anna Grant). He does still attempt to embezzle the Federation bank, but only as means to escape the Federation, rather than profit, which is what the character's purpose was in the beginning of the show. Avon's shyness towards killing in Cygnus Alpha is flatly retconned.
Avon's father, Rogue Avon, is basically an exaggeration of his son - a James Bond type figure who beds women without prompting, and can always work out any scheme being committed against him, no matter how ridiculously convoluted. Interestingly, he is also a former rebel leader, suggesting some kind of parallel with Kerr Avon's later relationship with Blake, but nothing much is made of it. His section of the book was by far the weakest, and came across like a cheap masculine fantasy, complete with a seemingly honorable death via duel.
Avon's mother, Rowena Grant, is laughable. After Rogue saves her life and they have sex, she essentially becomes obsessed with him for no clearly explained reason, and grooms Kerr to try and exact revenge against all those who caused Rogue's demise, despite having been in an actual happy marriage for years by that point. Mind you, Dr Pi Grant isn't much better, considering he asks her to become "his woman" literally minutes after her mother passed away.
Everybody else are varying degrees of asshole, and I really have nothing better to say about any of them.
NOTES
*Why do the family never question Rogue Avon's origins?
*Apparently, Federation assassins are known as "Killer men", which is hilarious.
*Unlike the series, the Federation includes red-eyed Martians.
*I appreciated the "old saying" about being between the devil and the deep, which, it turns out, are Beatles lyrics.
*Modern readers will likely get a good laugh out of the oft-repeated "Wars of Uranus".
*I want to re-emphasize the part about the gratuitous sex and violence - the book's half porn and half gore. Eyes get gouged out and underage girls get lusted over.
*I'm not sure having sex on a stone floor after having an arm slashed open was one of Rogue Avon's better ideas.
*Rogue's temporary prostitute girlfriend's description eerily matches Alexandra Daddario's. Or Servalan's, I suppose.
*Pruth and Gilpin's scheme to embarrass the Federation by sending Rogue to Earth is ridiculously hard to follow, but it involves Rogue going to Gilpin for a ship, fighting off a prostitute, then being sent to Pruth who advises him to assassinate Gilpin, he goes back, only to find Gilpin is working with Pruth and wants to assassinate him. He then kills Gilpin, takes the prostitute after surviving another assassination attempt from her, and they land near Earth, where they are ambushed by Pruth, who reveals he wanted them to go to Earth in the first place? I don't get it.
*Rogue travels between the Magellan Clouds, which in reality are two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. This enables him to glide through a "space corridor" between the moons of Jupiter.
*Why would a space graveyard designed to freeze its occupants have a way of shooting coffins at Earth?
*The Prospector is described as "His long gray beard caused him to resemble a famous prophet who might have inhabited a childish religious imagination." Clearly Darrow isn't too fond of Christianity.
*I'm surprised Rowena was ok with Grant basically drugging his mother before she died - I mean, yeah, no pain that way, but I would at least want to have a chance to say goodbye.
*Apparently, the Federation is a recent development, only born out of the last 100 years as opposed to an established institution like in the show.
*I do like the morbid idea that since so many parents are killed by the Federation, that they force people to adopt children.
*The Federation also has ideals of racial purity, suggesting a Nazi-esque background. That's actually not a bad addition in my opinion.
*Another positive I have to give the book is that by switching the POV between different characters, Darrow does manage to fill in a lot of the blanks I had early on, though you have to pay attention to keep track of these things.
*Having Bosch's "The Garden Of Earthly Delights" hanging in the Federation's central castle was an inspired choice.
*Why does Avon find Del Grant distasteful for being an oppurtunist, given his own nature?
*For some reason, the book refers to Axel Reiss as "Mel Reiss" on several occasions. Vasht's name also switches to Yasht and Yacht a few times.
*Avon wanting to go and prove himself in the Federation's wars doesn't seem in-character to me.
*Why would Sabbath bother to get Avon to change his last name to match his father's? Who cares?
*What's the point of sending Avon to Nereid anyway, given that the endgame is for Reiss to simply kill him off? Why would they need to prove his worth to the Federation High Council?
*Maco asks Avon to describe his intentions to him as if he were an ignorant, but given that Maco is also a computer expert, this seems a little pointless.
*Why bother stretching the duel to the death out over three days, especially if there are no viewers? Just get Avon and Reiss in a room together and have them duke it out, for pity's sake.
*So Vasht, this Servalan precursor who's plotted her way as a member or leader of the Federation Council for literal decades, simply kills herself offscreen at the sign that people want her out? Lame.
INFORMATION!
*The novel features villainous henchmen throughout, always referred to as "Subsidiaries". It is mentioned very briefly that these are the next-level version of the female Mutoids from the show, introduced in Seek-Locate-Destroy.
*Rogue Avon gets shot to a planet in a bullet-shaped capsule, much like his son would be in Aftermath.
*There are several references to a potential alien invasion and the effect that that would have on the
populace. This finally occurs in Star One.
*This novel features the first chronological appearances of Kerr Avon(first seen in Space Fall), Tynus (from Killer), Del Grant (from Countdown), Anna Grant (from Rumours Of Death) and Avon's so-called "brother"(whose visage Avon sees in Space Fall).
*Avon's brother wishes him luck, at which point the latter retorts "luck will have nothing to do with it". This is similar to the statement Avon made to Jenna in Space Fall after Blake wished him luck. Later in the book, Avon's brother also wishes God were with him, and Avon declares he has nothing to do with it either.
*Axel predicts that "sometime in the future, there will be a banding together of determined individuals who will attempt to blow us apart." This of course became the central premise of Blake's 7.
*Blake's trial from The Way Back is mentioned both as a usual process, and specifically later on as the cause for a delay in transporting Avon.
*The amount of money Avon tries to embezzle is 500 million credits, which is the amount suggested in Ultraworld and not Space Fall, where the amount was 5 million.
*Vasht suggests that eventually, someone like her will take control over the Federation again, predicting Servalan's rise to power in Star One.
*Tynus asks Avon not to give up his involvement in Avon's operation, which is later the reason why he's in Avon's debt in Killer.
*Cygnus Alpha(though unnamed) is mentioned as a newly acquired planet, directly contradicting the episode Cygnus Alpha, in which the planet had been owned by the Federation for several generations.
*Raher tells Avon that the prison ship guard has a reputation for cruelty, which is a reference to Raiker from Space Fall.
*Blake is very briefly seen sitting at the portside window, tied up. He is referred to only as a "big man".
"It is better to live for one day like a lion than for a hundred years as a sheep."
CONCLUSION
Darrow: A Terrible Fanfiction
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