Writing my review here for both Book 1 and Book 2, seeing as they are really one story that had to be divided in two books for logistical reasons.

Okay. Lawrence Miles is clever, that's for sure. Like in 'Alien Bodies', there's about a billion interesting ideas in these books. Although the writing is very engaging, you could easily cut 30% of the text and still come out with a full story. Or kinda, since, by design, there are quite a few loose threads that are supposed to lead to future plotlines. I really like how alien he makes the Time Lords/Gallifreyans in his works. I said the same on 'Alien Bodies', but here you can tell the Doctor is not just a guy with two hearts who is very hard to kill for real. He's made of maths, and isn't that a cool concept? Feed me that with a spoon, I love it.

The Doctor is once again knocked down to the ground in this story. He's imprisoned and tortured within an inch of his life, and is heavily implied to be mentally compromised (as he tells Sarah he's 'already out of his mind' when she rescues him). I honestly hadn't realized until it was heavily implied in the text that the prison he was in was on Earth. This newest imprisonment is the other side of the coin to his 3 year stay in Ha'olam. While that prison broke him by being a nice and humane place he could not rebel against and by having a probe in his mind that frustrated all his escape plans, this Saudi Arabian prison broke him by beating the sh*t out him with no rhyme or reason. He can't escape because he can't think. And here we have to wonder: surely the Doctor can escape a 90's Earth prison that has minimal security. He can pick the lock, he can trick the guards, he can dig a tunnel. The reason he doesn't is that Miles wants to make a point about how things work in the real world. The Doctor, a powerful being made of equations, can't escape the horrors of simple human brutality. He has saved this planet hundreds of times, but he's still going to be killed by these people for no reason. In his (wonderful) conversations with his fellow cellmate Badar, he's confronted with the hypocrisy of his interference (ha!) in a number of other worlds, bringing down corrupt governments, while he turns a blind eye to the corruption of Earth governments. He gives the standard Doctor Who explanation: the Earth is a nexus point, too many fixed points in time depend on it, and messing with them endangers causality, endangers the Web of Time TM. The true reason is closer to this: he doesn't interfere because it will be noticed, and he's afraid of the consequences to himself if he's caught. Bringing him down to the real world and making him confront and suffer what he, by not interfering, is allowing to happen, was very interesting. He promises Badar he will interfere and I.M. Foreman tells him how he can do that do that in a less obvious, untraceable manner: feeding the goose, Sam.

He's preoccupied with Sam's future while in prison. Since she was made to be his perfect companion, either by Faction Paradox or by himself, inadvertently, what happens when she stops being his companion? Does she get to live on, or does she disappear? In a way, his gross manipulation of her by telling her the future of Earth and planting the idea of acting against it in her teenage mind, he makes sure she has a purpose beyond traveling with him. I guess that since her future is anchored to that moment, to him, her continued existence is also anchored.

Goodbye, Sam! It was actually kind of funny to see how badly she handled Compassion's questioning of her principles and morals. After being exposed to the Remote for going through the trauma conga of living through horrible scenarios of 'sacrifice' for their benefit, I hope she has learned something about the type of society she wants to build. Sarah is going to make her a sort of apprentice, apparently, which was a bit frustrating to me. Let her go on her own! Let her do things on her own!!! Anyway. It's done, it's over, Sam survived, amazingly. I was ready to bet 10 quid on her dying for real this time. Good for her.

In a story where everyone, sans Sarah, is psychologically and/or physically tortured, Fitz takes the cake. I spent half the book going from 'Kode is Fitz' to 'no, the last of the Remote is Fitz' only to be doubly right, or doubly wrong. Crazy to think the real, original Fitz is only in there in the first pages of the book. There a parallel somewhere between the Doctor wanting to pretend his new car is the same as the Bug he destroyed in 'Unnatural History' and him re-building the original Fitz from Kode with the help of the TARDIS. 'It's not the same!' said the note. The original Fitz, Father Kreiner, goes on to live an incredibly miserable life, with an incredibly miserable 'death' (not quite). It's 'The Girl Who Waited' times a billion, and it's so so so sad. We know the Doctor can't go back in time and save his original self after having met Kode, but damn does it hurt. I'm very curious to see the fallout of this in the next books.

Poor Third Doctor was put in the middle of an EDA and was horrified. Yeah man, this is what waits you. 1000% more blood than he's seen in his life. And he dies! No 'Planet of the Spiders' for you! I really want to see what all this FP meddling is gonna do. So far, the only thing that's really happened was the Doctor losing his shadow, but I'm sure more sinister consequences await us.

I.M. Foreman and their increasingly f*cked up incarnations was a very cool concept, and a very cool timeloop. I stupidly though the blind man was the Doctor when he first appeared, so point for Miles for getting me with that one. The universe in a bottle thing was, again, a cool concept.

Lots of cool concepts going around. But it's far from perfect. The structure of the book is infuriating on purpose, jumping in time and in POV. You do not want to take a break between books 1 and 2; half the plot points will just slip through your fingers like sand. The Remote's motivations go back and forth, as they literally change their minds on their own plans many times. Fitz's timeline is hardest one to follow, as he's in the future but also in the relative past of Guest's gang. One thing that annoyed me was that Sam kept trying to put things together and kept being wrong, so I felt almost betrayed for believing her. The metaphor for the media dominated society began as interesting and thought provoking, but became more and more heavy handed as the story progressed. At the end, we're just going 'yes, I GET IT'. Although I really liked the bit were they flat-out say stories are supposed to inspire us real people to take action in the real world. Llewis sure was a character, but I'm not sure why he was given so much focus.

Some other assorted things I liked: Sarah Jane, my beloved. The 'script' parts of the book were great fun; the whole atmosphere was fantastic, specially the visual of the Cold. Giant Seal of Rassilon space coin bomb coming to destroy the Earth. The Eleven day Empire. Male characters breaking/losing their arms like Grandfather Paradox. The iconic 'I'm not sure I've even been a man' line from the Doctor. The nice Ogron! K9: 'Master' - The Doctor: 'Where??'. The Doctor writing time equations on the floor with his own blood while half delirious!!! Stealing himself and Sarah from time!!! Super cool. RIP Saudi soldiers lost in the TARDIS.

Things that made me go 'Ohhh': the Doctor assumes the Giant Seal of Rassilon space coin bomb was heading for the Enemy's home-world. It was, in fact heading for Earth. HMMM. Who was the arm-less shadow that talked to Fitz in his FP initiation? It kind of spoke like the Doctor. Is new!Fitz still initiated in FP? Can he become Father Kreiner again? Is this why Griffin also wanted him as a specimen in 'Unnatural History'? Who took the bottle universe? Obvious guess is the Doctor, but who knows. Did I.M. Foreman shag the Doctor on that hill??? Second book in a row I'm having to ask this! In the same note, his romantic nature (or at least his higher need for companionship) was acknowledged as a side effect of his half-human-ness. Interesting. I already know Compassion is staying for a while. Curious about how that's going to go. I can't see her being a very chummy companion.

Do I even need to say it?

Memory Loss:1 (in 'The Eight Doctors')
Serious Injuries/Near Death Experience:10 (gets vampired 'Vampire Science', nearly drowns in the Thames in 'The Bodysnatchers', bomb+fingers broken in 'Kursaal', electrocuted in 'Longest Day', gets shot + severe blood loss in 'Legacy of the Daleks', nearly squashed by giant hydra in 'The Scarlet Empress', leg broken + slapped around by giant tentacled monster in 'The Face-Eater', stabbed 3 times in 'Unnatural History', electrocuted in 'Autumn Mist', broken arm + more here)
Torture:4 (in 'Genocide', 'Seeing I', 'Unnatural History', by God, this one)