Mission Report by UNIT Agent Bill Filer to Trap One - Subject matter: Transit

How to make this review without being as sexually explicit as this book? 🤔 Let's just say that if "Kola nuts" pop up in future books I will not look at them the same 😳 I'll try to keep it clean, but did we actually need a story that include a scene about how a prostitute cleans her nether region?

This is really a very straightforward plot for a futuristic sci-fi book (sentient interplanetary transit system gains consciousness when stretched to go interstellar and goes rogue) - then Ben Aaronovitch takes too many cues from Marc Platt and makes it as convoluted as possible. Marc Platt just have a better handle on convoluted storytelling. If tightened up and rigorously edited this could have been a really good 50-page short story in my opinion.

Having Benny possessed in her first proper outing as a Team TARDIS member was a bad call, I would much have preferred to have a story that highlights her best features and gives us more information on our brand new companion. It gives the impression that Aaronovitch is only interested in the on screen companion that he helped create.

Ming was totally unnecessary for the story and it could have worked just as well if not better if she had been cut in editing. She was fleshed out as a character (polyamory and a preference for floor sex, again with too much graphic sexual content - did we really need to know about her first climax?) but in the end she was expendable to the story.

The Angel Francine was a tad confusing I'll admit, a blind hacker/crime boss/fighter pilot/friend of the Doctor - what was she really all about? Make her make sense! 😉 And was the Flying Dutchman she encounters supposed to be a version of the Doctor as Merlin?

Kadiatu Lethbridge -Stewart is a good character - even if you disregard her family heritage. Genetically engineered or enhanced, genius-level time travel theory student with a hard edge and a heart of gold - that's a proper sci-fi character. Her sexual encounters were really unnecessarily graphic in their nature and overshadowed the story. Include sex in a story all you want, but it should work within the framework of the overall universe - for Doctor Who I would argue that you can include pre-coital and post-coital scenes but should refrain from the "middle bit".

Graphic sex is in the end what is memorable about this novel, which is just a giant detriment to the story. I think Aaronovitch is going for adult storytelling here, but misses the mark completely and end up with a juvenile, adolescent approach - he tries to push the boundary for graphic content by using a rocket launcher. This is taking "not understanding the assignment" to the next level. Seriously that sentence with the Kola nuts? 🤨

End of report. Logged and filed at The Black Archive.