Challenged by a mysterious enemy the Doctor decides to Journey back to
1963 to leave Ace with his first incarnation. Instead they arrive in a
London that bears little resemblance to what it should be and the Doctor
seems never to have existed. The sense of doom and wrongness is reinforced
by an encounter with Ian and Barbara who apparently never taught a Susan
Foreman nor met the First Doctor as they should have.
The dark tone of the book is unrelenting as Ace ends up abandoned
on the unforgiving streets of London in 1888. Much of the focus of the
book centres on Ace as she tries to come to terms with being homeless and
destitute in Victorian England with little hope of seeing the Tardis again.
Ace's infection by the Cheetah People has been touched on before in the
Virgin New Adventures but never explored to such a degree as it
is here.
All
the characterizations are well constructed and the plot is never predictable,
without the reams of incomprehensible psycho/techno-babble that other
writers seem to resort to. |
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|
