Torchwood: Border Princes

So now we've got appropriate starting point, what of the books? Well they look nice, same hardback style (no slip cover) as the new series Dr Who fiction, but a larger size (bigger means more adult?), around 230 pages with medium type. There's no clever Gallifreyan numbers on the side so it's a bit of a guess which one to read first. I went for this one as it had the lowest Borders code on it, which seemed as good a method as any.

Given that these were presumably mostly written before the series aired the characters are reasonably close to their TV versions - Gwen says 'Oi' a lot - and they all spend a lot of time trading quips. There's no swearing or explicit sex. Presumably in case the books get shelved along side the Who books in the children's section. Unfortunately not being covered by the same script editor leads to duplication of series plots. So Gwen is having an affair with one of her colleagues and at one point Jack and Tosh get stuck in the past. I won't go over the plot but I was put off from the start by the fact that Gwen's paramour is a new member of the team called James, who, without the benefit of an on-screen incarnation, seemed insubstantial and difficult to relate to.

Mind you, without giving too much away, the way it all pans out does make both that and the fact that Gwen later sleeps with Owen explainable - if you care about joining all the dots in something like this.

So, a few nice lines, a plot that borrows from other stories, adds up to not an essential read by any means. It remains to be seen whether they get better or worse from here on in.