This is a review of Vindictus, a Blake's 7 continuation novel by Louella Richardson and Neil Shearer. I have attempted to be as fair as possible in regard to noting its strengths and weaknesses. This review will include spoilers, so I urge anyone who hasn't read it to get the book first!
As they go, Post-Gauda Prime stories tend to vary wildly in concept and execution. Over the decades, there have been many valiant and outlandish attempts: Afterlife captures the feel of the series in its first half before flying wildly off the rails in the middle; the Lucifer trilogy starts off weirdly, has a great second book and a horrendous ending; The Logic Of Empire is a strange take on the concept and not one I gelled with.
PGPs really depend on the author's interpretation of events and so far, none have really stuck to what Blake's 7 really stood for. This was the catalyst for me to write my own (a short story called Survive) which you'll see early next year; I wouldn't say it's much better, mind, but it's an attempt to be a little bit more consistent with Series D and reflects something the BBC could've made in 1981.
I became aware of Vindictus in around October of 2022 due to the writers' tactic of advertising the book under pretty much any B7-related tweet. I figured it would be interesting to check out - I always intended on ranking the main continuation narratives, and it would fit in quite nicely with the others.
The best way of describing this book is “familiar”. Everything in it is anchored to previously-established lore. I don't have any issue with that idea in concept but it does swamp the reader with tons of setup and at least four storylines to keep track of until Chapter 18, which is pretty much where the story actually starts.
Similarly to Afterlife, we have two leads from the original show and a few original characters; Vila and Tarrant survive the shootout, with Vila pretending to die and Tarrant getting hit in the leg (which was coincidentally the same reason I used in Survive. Hmmm.). I always felt these two had the best chance of survival, and I was glad that Louella and Neil didn't have Avon survive - his story ends at Gauda Prime, you cannot convince me otherwise.
Vila and Tarrant are mostly written as per how they were used on TV, although Tarrant appears to have rekindled the dickish side of his personality that was on display in Series C, and Vila is back to being the bag of nerves he was in Series B. I expected them to be more like they were in Series D or the natural evolution from that (Vila becoming hardened and cynical from his experiences in Orbit and Tarrant becoming even more hands-off - spoiler alert, that's how I wrote them), but it appears that the writers wish to base their story on the good old days of A - C rather than embrace the good things D brought to the table.
Our newbies are Lou Blake (daughter of Blake's cousin Inga from Hostage), Zac Ensor (grandson of Ensor from Orac), an advanced mutoid with a personality called Semele and a Zadithan religious type named Callan. Again, continuing Louella and Neil's apparent love for the first three series, it's obvious that Lou, Zac and Semele are based on Blake, Avon and an amalgamation of Jenna and Cally respectively. Not that this a bad thing necessarily, it's a nice acknowledgement of the past and proof that history repeats itself.
I really quite liked their dynamic, and it was fun to see Lou slowly become more like Blake as the book goes on. Semele's attempts at flirting with Ensor were pretty funny. I believe this is an acknowledgement of the Avon/Cally ship that I and many other fans are in support of, though I'm not 100% sure of that; if either of the writers are reading this, could you please confirm or deny this? Thanks.
One thing I didn't like about Afterlife was how Tony Attwood brought Tarrant back, wrote him very well, then killed him off in an extremely unsatisfying way. The character still had plenty of potential, but Tony just had him die unceremoniously. I'm sorry to say that Louella and Neil have done this as well - Tarrant dies when Semele drinks his blood (context: they're on a Cygnus Alpha-like religious colony, and one of the leaders destroys Semele's serum vial because he's prejudiced against Mutoids).
This is a question to all future B7 PGP writers - if you're gonna just kill Tarrant off later in your story, what's the point of including him at all?
I will point out that they treat Tarrant's death with reverence, which is nice.
Continuing the theme of familiarity is Vindictus itself. It's another of the System's vessels which resembles the Liberator, complete with teleport braceletes, handguns and its own Zen equivalent named Koios. While it's neat seeing another such vessel, I do think it was a shame that they didn't invent an entirely new ship with similar capabilities; having another Liberator just makes Scorpio irrelevant by comparison.
The humour in this story is on-point - every quip, joke and insult is of the same calibre as those seen on TV, which I love. I think my favourite example comes from Chapter 37, when Ensor says “Pretty isn't he, probably pretty stupid”. Love that line.
The book reminds me a lot of Series A, which makes sense considering the book's primarily goal appears to be a “passing of the torch/beginning again”-type narrative. The prime example of this is the Zadith plotline which gives me massive Cygnus Alpha vibes: here is a civilisation who are bound by religion, opposed to computers and distrustful of anything that is not flesh and blood. I really quite enjoyed that segment, save for Tarrant's death, and found the whole idea of space Amish quite amusing. It's very Blake's 7.
The Federation are still very much in control, complete with a new Servalan and Travis (Commissioner Lamia and Space Commander Ariq), which is a nice change from their understated role in Afterlife and the random insertion of the Empire of Cathay in Darrow's trilogy. The only real bugbear to me is that the Federation present in Vindictus is composed of people we've never met, and I'd have liked to have seen a cameo from Servalan or someone from the TV series just to give us a little familiarity with this new faction - indeed, Darrow did this by putting Servalan in Lucifer as a means of passing the torch from the Federation to the Quartet.
I honestly can't comment all that much on this original character-based version of the Federation, as they are pretty much the Servalan/Travis II dynamic with little else. The little we do get is valuable and interesting, though. I particularly like the inclusion of the unseen Supreme Imperator - definitely getting Palptaine vibes. Nice one.
The Kainnessos plot dragged a little for my liking. I like a political dystopia as much as the next man, but I felt it did go on a little too long - still ultimately liked it though. Pylene 74 was an interesting plot detail; the idea of controlling people via a drug gave me Nightmare Of Eden vibes, though it also reminded me of the pills the criminals got on Cygnus Alpha. Another direct (or indirect?) tie to Series A. Starting to think this is the authors' favourite season.
The whole capture and escape from prison bit with Callan and Semele was great fun, and I really liked Tavia's contribution to the plot. She had some really humorous dialogue and her personality was a nice contrast to the others. From the way she was written, I assumed she had an American dialect (given her use of phrases like “sweet cheeks” and “bud”) but I'm not entirely sure. Some clarification would be nice.
Vila's departure was sad but understandable. Given the story is set some 30-odd years after Blake, it only makes sense for Vila's age to catch up with him and abandon heroics in lieu of a retirement plan. This isn't like Lucifer where our aging protagonist has the athleticism of Indiana Jones and the continual urge to fight - Vila knows his time's up and is willing to accept it. Very in-character decision.
The main issue I have with the book is its layout. There are times where you have to wade through quite a lot of exposition to understand what's going on before anything actually happens in certain chapters, an issue that particularly plagues the first half of the story. Thankfully it doesn't hinder the content any, but it is a gripe I had to get used to. A more minor complaint is that the dialogue fluctuates in quality from sounding screen-accurate and in tone with B7 as a whole to sometimes very out of character, even with the original characters, which was a little jarring.
If this review comes across quite negatively, I want to make it extremely clear that that was not my intention whatsoever. For the record, I really enjoyed what it brought to the table and it is a stellar example of how to do a “passing of the torch” narrative. Additionally, it feels like Blake's 7. As I said at the top of this review, the “big three” PGPs - Logic Of Empire, Lucifer and Afterlife - don't stay true to the feel and tone of Blake's 7 at all, massively missing the mark when it comes to making a story that's meant to follow on from the source material. Vindictus not only nails what makes Blake's 7 work conceptually, but the tone, plot progression and characterisation feel like an entirely natural continuation of the series and sits well alongside Series A, B, C and D. If the writers are going to make a sequel of some description, I'll definitely check it out, because this has tons of potential and that cliffhanger ending was so good!
Rating: B
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