TW: Consequences

Here we go, the biggest Torchwood book this year, no less that five authors have combined their stories to bring you... Torchwood: Consequences!

This book promised to span over Torchwood's history, and completely fails to live up to that very basic premise. The first story, The Baby Farmers by David Llewellyn, is set in Torchwood early years, where it is run by those two women, with Jack recently joined them, and a Mr Gaskell, whose notable feature is, according to the story, that he is black. None of the stories in this book can really develop due to limited size, and considering that this is in the past, it is disappointing that we don't get more than them going around and solving the situation presented... and not much more. Certainly no character development worth discussing...

So, on to the next story. Maybe with George and Harriet? Or in the 1950s? Or even, if we must, with Suzie? Nope. Kaleidoscope by Sarah Pinborough is set between series one and two, and focusses on the team without Jack. The story is a nice character piece, developing the team dynamic and the one off character Danny, but I can't help feel that the very ending is off. A point is made that Jack would have caught the human factor, but wasn't the whole point of Gwen that she brought in the human factor because the rest of the team missing it?

But never mind, as we are onto The Wrong Hands by Andrew Cartmel, who takes the bold step of having the team as they are after the last book. That's right, no more Torchwood historical teams, we're in the same setting as the previous pair of books. Sigh. And aside from a plot point at the end of this story, not much to talk about there either.

That plot point does feed into Virus by James Moran, who forgoes anything storywise to go for an Ianto action piece. Nice change of pace, but realistic? He's the coffee boy!

At the end, we have Consequences by Joseph Lidster, who goes for tying together many elements from the books, mainly in the form of Nina Rodgers. We get a little of an outsider perspective to the activities of Torchwood, but as to the explanation of what's going on... I'm sure it's supposed to be very meta, and contextual, and other things that mean much to English literature students, which I am not. So rather disappointing.

...meh...

[END]