Candy Jar books chose Simon A Forward well as a writer for this series. He really gets it, making an action story, almost James Bond like, but keeping the sci-fi Doctor Who stuff in the story. This series is about a military man and his colleagues and Forward really sees this.
All of the series' regular cast are well treated here. It can be hard to focus on the Brigadier and keep both Anne Travers & the likes of Bishop & Ware plenty to do. Forward splits them up for much of the story, and like in Doctor Who this is often the best way of showing the characters.
Forward also creates several of his own characters, all of which are great. There's cat lady archeologist Señora Montilla, who is like the Anne Travers of a different field. Then there's Captain Bugayev, a Russian who ally's with Lethbridge-Stewart in the middle of the Cold War. I really liked this whole element to the story, the uneasy friendship between the two sides and the Brig never being sure he can trust the Russians.
The threat is a good one and a little different to what we've seen in this series before. It's can get repetitive having intelligent strong aliens being the antagonist every time and here we get something different.
There's plenty more I could praise about this book too. The bittersweet ending, the chapter titles are based on Doctor Who stories/episodes. I've enjoyed much of this series but none more than this one.
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