Strange England is one I went into with zero to no expectations… I’d heard only bad things so imagine my surprise when I read this book within 2 days and found it brilliant, strange England is a very atmospheric piece, very elicit of the story ghostlight (at least at the beginning) it is also very brutal and horror focused, there are some really gory and just straight violent moments, the second half of the book is even crazier and you don’t really get any solid answers till the last 20 pages, honestly that made me like the book a lot more, it always kept me on my toes , always kept me wanting to read more and there was never a slow moment, Simon messingham really hits hard with his first doctor who novel. I’ve seen people complain that the characters are 2D and we shouldn’t care about them and I feel like people miss out that, that’s kind of the point, these are “people” becoming people, learning what it is to be human. The moral debate of Whether the doctor and co are really doing good in the universe comes about again, bigger than ever when considering the whole affair is caused by the doctor and his crew landing inside Galahs Tardis Universe, and Bernice rightfully questions the doctor on this, the doctor and galahs ideals about what “good” is was also very interesting to read, overall a very divisive novel which I believe is severely underrated in the VNA reader community, it isn’t amazing or anything super crazy good but an enjoyable story non the less that has some really interesting ideas