Dry Pilgrimage (novel)

Dry Pilgrimage was the thirteenth Virgin New Adventures novel. Featuring Bernice Summerfield, this was the first novel to be entirely set on the planet Dellah.

Publisher's summary
"I am going to make you immortal."

Bored with her job, bored with being perpetually skint, Bernice Summerfield leaps at the chance of a free holiday arranged by her new friend Maeve Ruthven, St Oscar's Professor of Comparative Religion.

But all is not what it seems.

Benny's holiday rapidly goes from bad to worse to downright dangerous. For a start, the "luxury cruise" is a religious pilgrimage, and alcohol is forbidden to those on board. Then she is attacked, badly injured and confined to a wheelchair.

And that's before the murder.

Benny finds herself caught in a web of intrigue — not knowing who on board can be trusted or which way to turn. And with the future of more than one world depending on her actions, she must decide who to believe, expose the hidden killer and prevent a ruthless grab for power.

Chapter titles

 * 1) Out to Get You
 * 2) Living Too Late
 * 3) Trouble With the Plumbing
 * 4) New Face in Hell
 * 5) I Need Proof Before Belief
 * 6) Between a Man and a Woman
 * 7) Waking Up in the Sun
 * 8) Secrets and Lies
 * 9) To Hide in Death Awhile
 * 10) A Conversation
 * 11) Suddenly My Feet Are Feet of Mud, It All Goes Slo-Mo
 * 12) Not Only Love Can Break Your Heart
 * 13) The Second Born is Dead
 * 14) Audience With the Mind
 * 15) Rage Against the Machine
 * 16) Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime
 * 17) War Stories
 * 18) When You Tire of One Side the Other Serves You Best
 * 19) Violaine
 * 20) A War is Never Over, a Soldier Never Dies
 * 21) Unholy Transference
 * 22) Who Had Faith, Who Betrayed?
 * 23) Bottom of the Well
 * 24) The Great Escape
 * 25) True Faith
 * 26) Life's Hard and Then You Don't Die
 * 27) At the Edge of the Sea
 * 28) I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Vitor Pluse
 * Jane Waspo
 * Maeve Ruthven
 * Theo Tamlyn
 * Karl Donimo
 * Vilbian
 * Brion Arvaile
 * Captain Dieter Fontana
 * Professor Hugh Southernay
 * Martine Ingersköld
 * Professor Hamilton Smith

Aquatic vessels

 * Captain Dieter Fontana is captain of the Lady of Lorelei.

Fashion and clothing

 * Bernice wears a purple velvet bikini, with gold tassels on the nipples and a big star on the crotch.

Foods and beverages

 * Benny, in a desperate search for alcohol, drinks the potent (eye watering) Brettellian Potato Spirit.

Individuals

 * Maeve Ruthven gets killed, has her mind put inside a Saraani, then inside a bioconstruct, goes on a rampage, recovers and then dies.
 * Maeve Ruthven is a professor and member of St Oscar's Comparative Religion department.
 * Martine Ingersköld is a climatologist.
 * Professor Hamilton Smith specialises in alien-human interaction.

Planets

 * The planet Visphok is an Earth colony that was settled by Russians and other Slavic peoples.

Religion

 * Marunianism was a religion which believed all science is evil, but is now just against: genetics, vivisection and for no reason, experimentation. Its roots are in Protestantism.

Species

 * The Oblongooni have thirteen genders.

Continuity

 * Theo Tamlyn has studied Grel, (PROSE: Oh No It Isn't!, et al.) Canopusi, (PROSE: Ghost Devices) and Chelonians. (PROSE: The Highest Science, et al.)
 * Hamilton Smith proposes theories on: Chelonians, (PROSE: The Highest Science, et al.) Krakenites, (PROSE: Dreamstone Moon) Valethske, (PROSE: Superior Beings) Xarax, (PROSE: Dancing the Code) Tzun, (PROSE: First Frontier) and Tractites. (PROSE: Genocide)
 * Bernice has several bottles of Chateau Yquatine. (PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine)
 * Hamilton Smith is later mentioned in PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine, Superior Beings, and Mentioning the War.