He said he was a doctor. And he certainly looked like one, with his dickie-bow, patched tweed jacket and ridiculous, unmanageable hair. But a doctor? Here? And where was here?
I'm sorry to start the day with two petulant reviews, and I promise the next will be more positive. This is the last of the Eleven/Rory/Amy novels, and probably one you can skip; there are lots of quite good elements - some very well realised aliens and cyborgs, and a slap at the easy target of reality television; I think Finch also captures Smith's Doctor rather well. But the basic scenario, of people being kidnapped to become prey in a grand hunt, is pretty cliched by now, having been done slightly better in The Five Doctors and much better in a Tenth Doctor novel, The Doctor Trap; of course all of these are rooted in The Most Dangerous Game. I did not think that the horror of the situation was adequately reflected in the prose; I also thought the main non-Tardis crew sub-plot, the redemption of a failed London copper's relationship with his family through his heroism, was handled too superficially. In general this felt like an book with adult themes being written for younger readers, and there was a failure to connect style with substance.
There were other minor implausibilities which pushed my own buttons, such as an Albanian character (who disappears as soon as he is mentioned) called Miklos; just possible if he was named after a Hungarian friend or relative, but Mëhill is the usual Albanian translation of Michael, and even that is not very common.
It is a rare lapse in quality of the New Series Adventures, which after a dodgy start in the Eleventh Doctor era became generally much better than this. It was released at the time of broadcast of The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon, at the same time as
altariel's much better The Way Through the Woods and James Goss's superb Dead of Winter), both of which I strongly recommend instead.