(Originally written in 2022 from TheTimeScales)

How disappointing…

I was really looking forward to reading this book, though a lot of my excitement came mostly from the gorgeous cover. Seriously, this is one of the best book covers from the BBC books line. Unfortunately, this is one of the few stand-out things from this book.

I will also give credit for the solid characterization of the 4th Doctor and Leela (despite how rarely they’re utilized here) and the snowy setting. Aye and it takes place in the GOOD OLD COUNTRY THE US OF A. YESSIR YESSIR!

Other than that… wow this was a slog to get through. One of the big problems with this story is how there’s just too many characters to keep track of and how indistinct they are. There’s a lot soldier characters and they kind of mesh together making it really hard to distinguish who you’re supposed to be reading. The other characters, like the family and their daughter, are fine but they don’t really amount to much apart from moving the plot along. Like I said, the Doctor and Leela are seldom used throughout a good portion of this book which would be fine but given how boring these characters are… well, I was constantly wishing for them to appear.

The plot itself is… well nothing really. It’s a very slow read which I would be fine with but when the plot literally does nothing but have characters basically f**k around in one place or in the snow landscape doing nothing of interest for 150-160 pages and then kicks up into high gear at the end without any real build up… it reallllllly makes it a pain to read.

I’m gonna be real with you, I'm struggling to remember a lot of plot details or really anything much from the story because of how nothing and boring the book is. I can’t outright say the book was bad, it’s really not, but I can’t help feeling like that if the book was a bit more tightly written we would’ve had a really good character-focused, atmospheric story. How disappointing.