Vanderdeken’s Children

This book is, unfortunately, an 800 page ultra-hard SF novel forced painfully into the skin of a 300 page DW book from 1998. There are a lot of interesting ideas going on in here, and some strands of the plot I even found intriguing - especially Lester and Rhonda's terrible marriage. But even the lure of ghostly and possessed murder wasn't enough to save this one for me.

It was fine. As I say, it wanted to be a novel it was never going to be. There are way too many characters and it feels like the Doctor and Sam are barely there at all. And when they are, she's off getting kidnapped and he's standing about being enigmatic. Meanwhile, all the side characters are fighting this war I didn't care about on ships with ghosts that all get explained away with a portal in space and time.

Certainly not the worst EDA I've read so far, but definitely a solid average. A book I would have enjoyed way more had it been a *book*, not a DW book