'Are we faster than them? Are they following?' Olga demanded. 'Where are we going? Are we lost? Will we ever get out of these tunnels alive?'This turned out to be an interesting paired reading with Kiss of the Butterfly, in that they are both riffs on the classic vampire mythos in different ways: where James Lyon has gone right back to the roots of the legend, Justin Richards has of course gone for the Cybermen (who as
'No, probably, not sure, absolutely not, and I hope so.'
What?'
'Well - you asked.'
wwhyte points out are not all that far from the undead anyway). New Who has actually been doing quite a good job of reimagining the Cybermen in their last couple of appearances; this novel has strong links to both the TV story Closing Time and the 8th Doctor audio The Silver Turk, though I felt not quite as good as either. I had expected that this would be an Eleven/Clara novel, but in fact it's Eleven-on-his-own, with one-off companion Olga. (Pedantic niggle: Olga not such a likely name for a woman in a German-speaking village in Central Europe in the 19th century.) A decent enough effort.