I didn't expect much with this book because of the reviews but I'm happy to say that, unlike Genesis, nothing in this book was really bad. Nothing in this book was very good either. It turned out to be a very regular Doctor Who story. The whole thing reminded me of The Krotons, just without the stupid robot villains. I think the last 30 pages picked up a little bit and did something with the story, but the way it took ~170 pages to do that made it not fun to read. I also don't think the story does anything particularly unique with the characters. The Doctor gets a sentence kinda referring to how he's forever lonely because his companions always have to go, but that was a single sentence. Ace gets her aggression highlighted in this story, and she's put in another situation where The Doctor ends up hurting her by holding information from her. I think she and Raphael would've been a cool companion duo, but I guess we'll never see him again. Raphael seemed interesting and would've been nice as Ace's opposite if they had travelled together. All the other characters failed to make an impression on me. I found myself mixing up names and needing to go with what they did for the plot rather than remembering which character is which.