This novel seemed the best news since before the telemovie. Possibly only Douglas Adams and Stephen Gallagher would have been more stimulating names to see below the title of a Doctor Who novel than Chris Boucher - the man behind the best of Blakes 7, the creation of Leela and some of the best Doctor Who ever televised. His debut Doctor Who novel features the fourth Doctor and Leela encountering a unit of select troops on a search and retrieve mission. However, this apparently elite squad seems to fall short of the expected peaks of fitness and preparation, and the terrain is not quite right.

A nice stylistic touch is the use of gaps between paragraphs to suggest a change of perspective rather than just a total change of scene. However, the anticipated witty dialogue is generally not very funny, and though it opens with gratifyingly minimal preamble, in the first half of the book little happens other than attempts to elude monsters - even while multiple plot strands proceed in parallel, similar escape and pursuit antics ensue in all of them. The plot is mildly intriguing but insubstantial, and it's little more than a short story which can be felt to drag feebly by midway through. It's not until the final third that shifts of location and emphasis expand the potential for conflict and development in place of incident.

However, although it's agreeably surprising in some details, the essence of what's going on is too obvious from early clues. Twenty pages from the end there is a detailed explanation of something which was evident pretty much from the start - and perhaps even from the title. Yet the actions and motivations of individual characters are frequently unclear, with the result a book which is simultaneously predictable and confusing; an unpleasant combination. This confusion is such that I never quite figured out the importance of some themes, such as the weight problems apparently experienced by some characters, or precisely why Shakespeare seems to be so relevant and hallowed.

Far worse Doctor Who books have been written and published, but few can have been quite so crushingly disappointing.