TW: The Twilight Streets

The cover alone dictates this as the one and only Torchwood book you must read. Inside... close... The last book in this set: The Twilight Streets by Gary Russell.


The man most identified with gratuitous fanwank (nah, that'll be Craig Hinton) writes a Torchwood novel... and makes it make sense! Yes, there are plenty of references to events in a fair few episodes, including the obvious one, but this time it's not gratuitous, nor even overdone. They are solidly built into the plot, which is more than can be said for other books (but then other authors didn't have the inside track Gary does).

The story is clearly a sequel to End of Days, what with Bilis Manger on the cover and all, but unfortunately the book takes a long time to get going. They said the audience shouldn't be ahead of the characters, but half the book is spent on set up (and the mystery of Tretarri isn't really paid off) and it's around halfway that the Torchwood team find out Bilis is involved! Get on with it, man! Fortunately, the second half does pick up speed, but it's not at all clear who's really good and who's bad, nor even if there is a good and bad. Philosophical ambiguity is one thing, but it shouldn't leave the readers confused and annoyed.

There is also a wee "future story", the sort of thing that might well be a full episode of it's own that either ends with someone going back in time to change history, or being told as a tale by said person, or as just a general future vision. It takes a long time for it to make sense, and I did wonder for a long time what the point of it was. But there finally was one, so it eventually managed to redeem itself.

The characters themselves come across well, but once again we get what is really a Jack story with the others bolted on. Tosh and Owen really get the short shrift and Gwen isn't that much better off. Ianto gets the bulk of the non-Jack scenes, but Bilis is more developed (as far as he can be and still be a complete enigma) more than the main cast.

Of all the Torchwood books, this is the most integrated into the series, but still can't quite be the team effort it should be. If there is another series and another set of books, hopefully other authors will be given the access Gary has and we can get more books of this quality.


Order: Definitely before Reset, but, oooh, Gary's definitely seen the scripts for the rest of the series...

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