Wow… this book is a tough one to read and talk about, mahonys prose alone is enough to fill this review to the brim, it’s random, it’s fluid, and at times it’s difficult to read and trying to understand it is what makes this book so intruiging, each sentence describing something being so chocked full of vivid imagery that it makes the book hard to put down, had I not had exams I would have read this book so much faster and likely within fewer sittings.

the characters are the highlight of this book in my opinion, it’s a piece where everyone suffers, Bernice , Ace and the doctor are tortured throughout the book by the sadistic Gabriel and Tanith, they’re interesting conceptually as the personification of all the death and suffering caused by time travel, given form by the cathedral, the consequences of time travel, the doctors and many others children given form coming in to , in a sense , punish the doctor , there are so many passages here where I found myself genuinely wishing the book would move on (in a good way) as it hurt to see characters like Bernice degraded morally and physically like this.

I think plot wise this book gets confusing and I wouldn’t blame someone for putting it down, my one critique of it would be that at times the plot moves a bit slow, as good as mahonys descriptions are there comes a point where it’s being over descriptive and later parts of the book in the cathedral suffer from this, cutting the pacing and making it a bit slower to read

every character is characterized perfectly, Ace has to come face to face with her violent nature in the form of Jane and is forced to confront her feelings of having become this violent person, seeing how her and the doctor react to Bennys “death” as well is painful, genuinely some of the most depressing passages in the book, the doctor doesn’t get to be a hero here, while he is party responsible for the suffering here, he does not get to do anything essentially…. Most of the plot is reliant on outside forces to move forward the tardis team just desperately fighting to survive, it’s a horror show, written as I saw in another review, as an answer to Marc platts ghostlight in a sense and one adventure that will stick with me for how disturbing it is! Definitely up there as one of the better VNAs so far!! Loved it!