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More Torchwood! Books this time. That's got to be good, right? The last batch of Torchie books were brilliant, and two out of three of the first batch were. So more have got to be good. Right?! Wrong.
"Almost Perfect" is the first one I picked up. The plot blurb reads like bad fanfiction - Ianto waking up in a woman's body?! You've got to be kidding. But hey, be fair. Give it a go. Except... it really is like bad fanfiction. The whole book. It really, really is. Uninspiring prose, unrecognisable characterisations - it's a mess of bad jokes and rubbish dialogue, all meeting in the middle of a dreadful plot idea. Oh, there are good notions in there. Skeletons sitting at restaurant tables, for example. By the time the end came, though, and everything (a few deaths, Ianto's little problem, some other stuff I can't really remember because I got bored) turned out to be the fault of some gods trying to give the Cardiff gay scene a spruce up, I couldn't even be bothered to roll my eyes. I usually ramble at stupid length about books once I've read them, but with this one I just can't summon the energy. It was rubbish. Even the lousy characterisation that plagued "Border Princes" has nothing on this - and at least Dan Abnett had the excuse that he was writing before there were any episodes to use as a reference point. There's no excuse for this at all.
The first time that Torchwood has ever succeeded in being rubbish. All I can say in its favour is that the cover's fairly pretty. And that's not really a lot, is it.
"Almost Perfect" is the first one I picked up. The plot blurb reads like bad fanfiction - Ianto waking up in a woman's body?! You've got to be kidding. But hey, be fair. Give it a go. Except... it really is like bad fanfiction. The whole book. It really, really is. Uninspiring prose, unrecognisable characterisations - it's a mess of bad jokes and rubbish dialogue, all meeting in the middle of a dreadful plot idea. Oh, there are good notions in there. Skeletons sitting at restaurant tables, for example. By the time the end came, though, and everything (a few deaths, Ianto's little problem, some other stuff I can't really remember because I got bored) turned out to be the fault of some gods trying to give the Cardiff gay scene a spruce up, I couldn't even be bothered to roll my eyes. I usually ramble at stupid length about books once I've read them, but with this one I just can't summon the energy. It was rubbish. Even the lousy characterisation that plagued "Border Princes" has nothing on this - and at least Dan Abnett had the excuse that he was writing before there were any episodes to use as a reference point. There's no excuse for this at all.
The first time that Torchwood has ever succeeded in being rubbish. All I can say in its favour is that the cover's fairly pretty. And that's not really a lot, is it.