Okay, I have a lot of thoughts about Timewyrm: Exodus.

Let's start with the most basic - it is, as many reviews have discussed before me, a huge shift in tone and quality from Timewyrm: Genesys. It is a very obvious distinction to make, and really a bit of a non-achievement for Exodus. Exodus is better than a lot of the worst in Doctor Who, sure, but most Doctor Who stories are to begin with.

Beyond that, I approached this novel with a lot of excitement, which at first seemed to really pay off. With Terrence Dicks writing, and his huge history with the Classic series, I expected the novel to be in capable hands that really understood the Doctor. The first act is exactly what I wanted - it was smart, quickly paced, and even fun in spite of some very serious material. It was an incredibly fast read getting through the first act. The Doctor and Ace find themselves in an alternate Britain controlled by Nazis. Clearly inspired by the Third Reich's plans for the UK had they conquered it, this part is fascinating on so many levels.

The Doctor and Ace really get to shine here in tons of little ways. It really feels like only the Doctor could get in the face of the British snitch police and just intimidate them through sheer force of will, and a nice touch that the actual Nazis were less affected by his charisma. I love the people we meet along the way forming a sort of quiet, but very weak, resistance to Nazi-occupied Britain. All that works really well.

Which is where the second act brings me down so heavily it kind of crushed my spirit and positive sentiment for the novel entirely. Everything built up in the first act is whisked away as we go back in time to a few earlier moments in Hitler's career. Then it becomes this bizarre pseudo-sequel to War Games, of all things, and, oh yeah, by the way, this is supposed to be a Timewyrm novel, so sooner or later you know Ishtar has to get involved somehow.

It feels very clumsy, to be honest. Where as I raced through the first act, I found the second very disappointing, and the last to an outright slog to get through. This wasn't a terrible book, but given that Dicks wrote it and it is well-recommended by others, I can't say I was at all impressed. It was tolerable - fun at times, and even occasionally interesting, but otherwise a disjointed experience with a lot of very strange moments to it. I feel like I could tell the entire time that this book was written by an older author, even by 1990s standards. The way he would describe something like Ace hurling rockets at Nazis as if the explosives were mildly annoying rocks, the way the War Chief and War Lords come back only to be unceremoniously defeated and whisked away from the plot, the way the Doctor is able to impress Hitler and his inner circle so easily - these were all executed by a writer who is a little too old hat for my taste. It is very, very hard to imagine a modern Who writer tackling this material like Dicks did, and I would argue that is a good thing. Tropes and cliches are generally avoided for a reason, you know?

Still, like Genesys, both books have solid moments to them and are each worth checking out if you really want to know more about this era of Doctor Who. If a Doctor Who story were to deal with Nazi stuff, I'm glad they were doing it this way. Hitler befriending the Doctor like many other historical figures had or would was a nice touch - a clever bit of writing that gives the Doctor a lot of agency in the final third of the story, though even then I found this content very rushed and poorly explored by the end of the book.

I did like the cover though, and the epilogue talking about the second printing of Exodus. That stuff was neat and about the only thing I unambiguously enjoyed about Exodus.