The story picks up immediately after 'Revolution Man': Fitz is going back to Sam's room to apologise after their fight over his and the Doctor's role on Ed Hill's murder. He gets there just in time to see her and her whole room get swallowed by a vortex, as the TARDIS has been attacked by something. The Doctor manages to land and get himself and Fitz out before she goes straight into recovery mode (complete with turning back into a grey cube!), locking them out and stranding them in Sweden, 1999.

Sam's away for half the book. We get her POV in part 2, but frankly, I don't think the story would have changed at all if she'd just showed up at the end. The one thing she does is stop Itharquell from killing himself, a scene what was not really necessary. I don't dislike Sam, but this is book number 22, and I can only say I really liked her in maybe 8 of them. I guess she's just... boring, at this point. Reacts more than acts, follows more than leads, obeys more than questions. In any case, she's sidelined here to make room for Fitz and his relationship with the Doctor to develop more, as it is only his 4th book as a companion, and he was off the TARDIS for two years during 'Revolution Man'.

The Doctor is neurotic and disoriented for this entire story. Part of it we can assume is due to Ed Hill's murder, another part due to losing Sam and the TARDIS so suddenly. The TARDIS is so broken he can't even feel her in his mind, which we are told is Very Bad, and makes him 'incomplete'. He's not talking about her resources either, he's really talking about his ability to be himself, to be the Doctor. Huh. He freezes when they're attacked at Björn's farm and is told to use his gun to protect them all. He freaks out when he's taken into custody by UNIT/C19; he developed claustrophobia in 'Seeing I', but even so, he's been locked up a few times since, and in worse circumstances, and has managed to keep his cool better than he does here. He gets pretty panicky when he can't immediately figure out who's behind the kidnappings, shaking his fist at the sky, at a point in the story where things are nowhere near as dire as they tend to get for Eight. Basically, he's flip-flopping wildly between the man you can trust with your life (the hero) and a guy making things up as he goes with no back-up plan. Dr. Lindgard's death in his escape attempt is the encapsulation of this, an easy-peasy situation in any other circumstance, botched horribly. His state of mind being this strange is intentional. Thing is, I don't mind seeing the Doctor in a vulnerable position at all; I welcome it! But he was on the verge of looking incompetent, which is a step too far. He gets better as book goes on, though, and is in much better shape by the end of it.

Poor Fitz just got back from a year of being brainwashed by the Chinese government and is thrown into this mess. He gets to play investigator for a bit, is Kerstin's caretaker for most of the story, and (unlike Sam in most of her stories) gets to do big plot relevant things and makes his own, character-driven decisions. Good for him. He does have a tendency to develop instant crushes on every girl he meets, though, but he thankfully keeps most of it inside his own head. Sam being away means that for over half the book he's the Doctor's only companion. As the Doctor is acting off, Fitz (and Kerstin, to a lesser extent) is on a roller coaster of 'it's over' and 'we're so back' in regards to his trust in the Doctor and his ability to save the day and keep the moral high ground while doing so, and also in regards to whether or not he's going to keep traveling with him or not. 'Trust the Doctor' wins out, as the Doctor saves him, Sam, Kerstin, and the T'hiili from certain death, specially when he realises his own original plan would have actually killed the T'hiili, due to his ignorance of their biology.

I have to discuss Kerstin Bergman. I feel so, so, so sorry for this girl. Boyfriend kidnapped by aliens, boyfriend returned only to be 'Alien'-ed right in front of her eyes, goes to another universe, is the only reason the Doctor manages to save the day, as she's the one that opens the TARDIS for him, goes through a whole internal journey of grief and growth in the span of a couple of days, realises she wants to travel with the Doctor, asks to stay...... AND IS TOLD 'NO'. He looks the girl in the eyes and says that she can't travel with them, that she's gonna have a good normal life, that she needs to process her grief. Rich, considering how Fitz came on board! I'd be absolutely, utterly devastated if this happened to me, asking to be a companion and getting a 'no' so callously. Big, big ouch.

The Dominion as a setting had some interesting ideas, but I'll be damned if I understood the mechanics of the sky-sea things and the interconnected caverns. I also kept confusing which aliens were the Ruin and which were the Bane. Sam's whole 200 page journey there didn't do much for me, and it's honestly ridiculous how Fitz ended up getting so much more to do there in only about 20 pages: he meets the queen and invents fire, for God's sake! The most interesting thing about the wormhole is that the Doctor mentions that the TARDIS 'wanted it' to affect her, meaning she let herself be breached so Sam would be snatched up. Hmmmmmm. Prof. Nagle and Major Wolstencroft were the tired old 'mad scientist that refuses to see the danger of their experiments' and 'military that distrusts aliens (particularly the Doctor) and science in general'. Even the Doctor says something to the effect of 'why does every military lock me up when I need to fix the Problem Machine of the Day'? I quite liked Inspector Nordenstam, but he vanishes completely from the plot after Johan's death by 'Alien'.

Nothing for the List of Pain this time. The Doctor gets shot (in a very 'what are you gonna do, shoot me?' *gets shot* scene), but it's only a tranquiliser gun. What he does get is 02 kisses!!! He kisses Fitz out of pure joy when Fitz says something clever, and is kissed by Sam when they were about to maybe die at the end of the story. It's very funny to me that Sam's the one kissing him in all their 3 kisses ('Longest Day', 'Seeing I' and here), while he's the one to kiss Fitz. It's like Eleven with Amy and Rory! Another funny thing is how multiple people include in their internal monologue how beautiful Eight is. They are, of course, correct. I liked the Doctor's conversation with Björn, when he uses his often forgotten Future Sight (which is soon proven to be unreliable), and pretty much all of Fitz's conversations with Kerstin. I also liked how he has a couple of moments of being a bit envious of the Doctor: once when he manages to get Kerstin to open up to him almost instantly, and another at the end when he saves them all and 'gets all the glory'. It makes sense, since Fitz has moments of feeling inadequate even without a Time Lord to compare himself to.