Border Princes

It’s been a long time since I read a Torchwood novel and, in fact, I’ve only read one – Another Life. Border Princes was part of the same original release of three novels including Another Life and a third one, Slow Decay.

Set in the early days of Torchwood, the full team are present but confusingly, this team includes an agent called James.

Everyone seems extremely settled with James as a team member – Gwen is even having an affair with him. James is not written as a new member but as someone with history within the group. He has clearly defined character traits, such as referring to everything by catchphrases and idioms – Captain Analogy as they call him. As the story progresses, the rest of the team start to notice anomalies involving James such as superheroic strength and, as a reader who knows the Torchwood team, I was constantly looking for clues that everything wasn’t quite right. What’s strange is that, I was expecting those hints to appear long before they eventually do in the story. For a good half of the book, James is written as a long-standing member of the team with the hints of strangeness being about his abilities which, for the team who think they ‘know’ him also come across as strange. It is written in the same way Owen or Tosh suddenly exhibiting ‘powers’ would be written. It’s all rather discombobulating – but engaging at the same time.

Unfortunately, it is also highly reminiscent of the TV episode Adam, which was broadcast the year after this book was published. That, likewise, had a team member suddenly appear in the base and have everyone behave as if they had always been there. The parallels are strong – and it seems odd the book was commissioned so close to the TV episode so a lack of communication seems to have occurred between the book and TV production teams.

One thing I found a little strange about this book is that there are a number of different situations that Torchwood seem to be dealing with. The novel opens with them tackling the Amok. A strange man called Mr Dine is in Cardiff eating Indian food and protecting someone or something. A double glazing salesman is using alien technology to manipulate people into buying windows they don’t need and an old man has a killer robot in his shed. Only Mr Dine eventually ties into the main plot revolving around James – and even that, as a plot, is hidden in the background behind the double glazing salesman, Amok and robot storylines which dominate the first half of the book. It’s a little odd as both those plots just sort of stop partway through when the focus shifts on to James. I suppose it is how James behaves in those situations – it is where he shows his superpowers that begin to make the team suspicious – that is the reason for their presence but they just seemed to be resolved so suddenly (particularly the double glazing salesman) that I wondered why had invested any time in them. There’s also a really odd bit where the team gets separated across time which, again, doesn’t really go anywhere in terms of the main plot and gets resolved rather cursorily.

Consequently, there are too many disparate parts to this story for it to feel ‘whole’. The revelation that James is, basically, royalty from another world that’s fallen through the Rift isn’t massively original and, for me ended what had been a quite enjoyable book on a bit of a damp squib.

That said, the multitude of threats does keep the book pacey and engaging – it’s just a shame they don’t really tie into each other in the way I would have expected them too.

The author is Dan Abnett, more familiar to me as the writer behind some classic DWM comic strips such as The Mark of Mandragora and the Sontaran origin story, Pureblood. His handling of the regular Torchwood team is excellent, especially Gwen. James is immediately likeable and integral to the team which is a clever piece of writing on his part. I almost began to feel like I, myself, had forgotten that James had been in the TV series as he seems to fit so well into the dynamics already present, particularly in the early days of the show when Ianto was very much the ‘tea boy’ stuck back and base, Owen had the murky ethics and Gwen was trying to figure out how to deal with this strange new world she had been thrown into. With Jack deep into his enigmatic schtick its possible only Tosh who doesn’t really come to the fore and feels a little bit surplus to requirements.

There is some effective imagery throughout the book which is wriiten evocatively so, whilst I may have ended up a little unsatisfied with how the plot developed, I was always entertained. There is a particularly effective ‘battle with an alien robot’ sequence which can be tricky to write in prose.

A fun, pacey read.