A quick one today - I found this a real mixed bag. Kind of fun, but lacking quite severely in certain areas (spoilers ahead) - 3.5/5

I'm going to start with my biggest criticism of this story - why was it Jane Austen? She is a character who crops up quite a bit in the Whoniverse, and in the real world was quite an interesting person. The space she took up in this story could have been filled by anyone. They really didn't do anything with the fact that it was Austen - her existence in this story was pointless.

My other big gripe is that Ippolito, or as I called him in my notes, the sword guy, was just not an intriguing character. I could not get invested in him at all, and did not really get what he was doing in the story. What was his motivation? What role was he supposed to be playing? It was not very clear to me, and I definitely feel like that lack of development of his character lost the story something it really needed.

However, it's not all bad - they did a fantastic job telling a story like this with only two voice actors, and Vicki doing the voices of the Doctor and the others was great fun! Also, the gradual reveal of who Vicki was talking to was done really well - we were given just the right amount of information to figure it out ourselves, but in a way that it felt like it dawned on me without feeling like it was too obvious. The audio maintained a creepy tone with those sections that I really enjoyed - there was never any sense that this was 'getting old', for example. It made me feel uneasy in the right amount, the right way - those sections especially were very well written and performed.

So, this one wasn't for me, but that doesn't mean it didn't have some good elements, or that it's not worth a listen.