4/5

Really just a competent and fun book with interesting characters and plot.

I felt this book to be a breath of fresh air where it is in the series. After the recent run of books, I had been left questioning: ‘why are these people travelling, what is actually in it for them to compensate for all the torture and abuse they get from the universe?’. While I am not averse to the EDAs having a fairly grim outlook on the universe, many books seem to forget to make some attempt to balance this with the idea that these characters are actually having fun in some way; Demontage doesn’t forget this and shows the TARDIS team travelling for fun, doing things because they can, because they want to and then encountering the violent side of the universe while in the context of an actually fun adventure for the team.

Definitely a one to read if the almost grimdark tone of some of the entries to the series starts to weigh.

2.5/5

Option Lock is, I thought, a very interesting book, with a competent complement of characters; certainly, a strong thriller entry into the Doctor Who expanded universe.

My lower rating then, comes from the fact that at around the midpoint of this book I realised that the main characters so far have had very little agency in the run of events and that the villains seemed to be lenient to them, for the sake of keeping the heroes in the plot. From then on, I was on the look out for the main characters having anything meaningful to do that affects the plot and ended up feeling like this never occurred.

The plot however is still interesting, and it feels clear that the author has a talent for the cold war thriller genre – in a rare turn for a Doctor Who book, I feel like the plot is hampered by the presence of The Doctor and all the sci-fi elements he brings with him. I wish I could read a version of this book that wasn’t a part of the Doctor Who universe.

I probably would give this book a slightly higher rating if I read this again, after all it is a competent exercise in its genre, I was just so dejected while reading by the perceived lack of agency of the main characters that I can’t currently give it a higher rating.

2.5/5

Many people will tell you to skip this book if you ask them about the best way to start the EDAs, and while they probably aren’t wrong, I believe that this book is more entertaining than most will give credit for.

The main fault of this book is its structure. Having a novel structured like a collection of linking short stories, when it’s the first book in your series isn’t an amazing choice as the reader is unable to settle with a single complement of characters, or a single environment in which more can be gleaned from how the new main characters for the series interact with it; a structure like this may have fit in more later in the series when it isn’t an immediate priority to flesh out new leading roles. However, even if this book had been written to fit in later in the series the structure of it would still result in a fairly low rating (from me at least, but I’m sure many would still feel the same also) as some compartments of the story are just too small and feel rushed in to have anything particularly meaningful or noteworthy within. As for other general criticisms of this book, odd dialogue and character choices aside, the story feels as if it happens independently of the characters almost – again reducing the agency and freedom of the main character in the first book of their own series is certainly not a great choice.

There are parts of this book I want to defend, with several of the larger sections actually being quite fun, with quite a few interesting moments and character decisions. Without including spoilers, it is hard to explain why I liked several excerpts from this book, but I will say while having a negative opinion of this book after finishing it, months later I would still find myself idly thinking about certain scenes and what they mean for the personalities of the characters involved (or just how fun they were).

Overall, I would probably agree that readers who aren’t committing to reading the full EDA series should probably skip this as it takes momentum out of the start of the series, and there is little within that is of great importance later in the series (I am writing this review while 30 books into the series). It is a book I wish could be restructured with a few little story tweaks; to eliminate the main weaknesses of the book and keep in the interesting segments.