David Llewellyn

The Eleventh Doctor and Amy land on a flat world known as the Gyre: a point in space where all sorts of space junk coalesces into a mass that is somewhat reminiscent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They discover that a giant comet is on a collision course with the Gyre, and that the Sittuun want to destroy the Gyre with a nanobomb—if the comet destroys the Gyre, it will destroy twelve other surrounding planets, but the nanobomb will contain the destruction. A tricky moral dilemma show more indeed. And then there are the Humans...

Overall, this was a decent read. I don’t expect much from my Doctor Who novelizations: characters that feel faithful to the TV show and a story that moves along well and hangs together reasonably enough. A Litsy friend stated that this book didn’t work as well for them because they prefer when the Doctor and the companions stay together, because the fun is in the TARDIS party interactions. A fair point! I saw that review before I read the book and bore that in mind. I found the story switched POV often enough to make me feel I wasn’t overly missing out on one character. show less

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2612517.html

I had high hopes for this collection of novellas, since James Goss and Justin Richards, on form, are the best regular Who writers for print, and Jenny Colgan (here adopting a Banksian middle initial as Jenny T. Colgan) is one of the most visible of the big name writers who have been brought in of late - a generally successful initiative.

And I wasn't disappointed. Goss in particular inserts Ashildr into the Thousand and One Nights,in a story that both show more respects the original tradition of nested and linked narratives, but also throws in some gender subversion. Colgan's story of the Black Death is surprisingly bleak. Llewellyn mashes up Columbus and the Hunger Games. Richards wraps it all up at the end. It's a good collection, perhaps aimed at a more mature readership than is immediately apparent. Let's hope for more. show less

Fifth Torchwood tie-in novel, and the middle one of the trio released for the second season. This one has a couple of references which place it late in second season, but no spoilers, and you don't need to know anything but the basics about the universe to enjoy it.

Michael Bellini's a Cardiff dockhand, part of a workgang waiting to unload a ship late one night in 1953. A ship whose cargo includes a crate marked "Torchwood". A strange explosion leaves him in hospital, the only one of his show more mates to survive. But that's not the worst of his worries. There are the men who say they're from the union, but who are clearly government agents. They're not nearly as frightening as the men in black suits and bowler hats, who aren't men at all.

In the present day, a quiet Sunday in the Hub is interrupted by the intruder alarm. A young man has suddenly appeared in a locked room, and he's riddled with a strange form of radiation. It doesn't take long for the team to establish that he's a local boy, but out of time. Not so strange for Torchwood, but there's a twist -- they've all encountered Michael before. Owen was a junior doctor, learning the necessary art of forgetting about his patients at the end of the day. Tosh was a little girl in Japan. Gwen was on her first day with a new partner, and somehow feeling as if it was her first day in the police force. Ianto was in his second week at Canary Wharf, making friends with another recent starter called Lisa.

And Jack? Well, Jack's been with Torchwood a long, long time. His own encounter with Michael was out of hours, but he still knows something about Michael's first encounter with Torchwood, and the alien artefact that sent Michael leaping through time. And a few more things besides.

This is a beautifully constructed novel, which uses Michael's leaps back and forth through time to tell a solidly plotted story around Michael and the artefact, while giving some lovely backstory and characterisation for each of the main cast. Something I particularly liked is that we see the characters when they were younger, and in those scenes they feel like younger versions of themselves, before various things happened to them. There's also some good characterisation in the present-day scenes. The nature of the book means that all of the main cast get a good share of the word count.

This is my favourite of the novels so far. That's partly because it plays to things I like, but it's also because it's well written. And while the canonicity of the Whoniverse tie-in material is ambiguous, I think this one adds a little more depth to the Torchwood world, not just another monster-of-the-week story. show less

The season two Torchwood books are much, much different than the first season books. The new books actually have *our* characters (as we know them second season) and are about half the length. They are more fangirly and they are tied in to the show accurately. I couldn't say any of that for the first season books. Spoilers: Trace Memory was generic enough that I didn't spot any season two spoilers - I think you could read it before you watched season two entirely.

I liked this one - It was show more much more generic that Twilight Streets - Less fangirly moments, not a lot of canon references, much more plot driven. I liked the story, I thought it held together, I found it interesting from start to finish, and there were a few specific favorite moments. The characters seem very much themselves, even if we didn't get a lot of *extra* stuff. I wondered where this whole "Ianto is a Bond fan" thing had come from in the LJ groups... Now I know.

I was kind of intrigued by Jack in this one... We see him mostly in the past and he's that slightly cold, not-really-from-Earth, con-man Jack we sometimes get in flashbacks on the show... I've always found that interesting to watch. He does a few things in the story that hover on the edge of repulsing me (although I don't think the writer meant them to) - And I'll be hard pressed to exclude my impressions of him in this book from my "canon image" of him.

Respond (if you wish) at my LJ: http://agentxpndble.livejournal.com/298253.html show less