Book Log 31/2011 - Gary Russell: The Twilight Streets

[jacey]

Gary Russell: The Twilight Streets – Torchwood 6

Ah, I should have known better.  I am invariably disappointed by TV and movie tie ins because I expect and hope for something which adds depth to the on-screen story. Of course, invariably the very nature of what they are means that there's little change in the characters at the end, regardless of what's happened. Press reset to exit book.

But I keep hoping that I'll find something great – like Karen Traviss' Republic Commando Star Wars books – and I remind myself that I've yet to read Una McCormack's The Way Through the Woods – and I like her writing a lot.

This one, however, was not the one. It promised some additional Captain Jack background, so I weakened and bought it. It wasn't bad, but it was a bit bland and didn't really fulfil the promise of more in-depth character revelations. You're bound to lose story tension when you know they can't put the characters into convincing life-or-death situations because - well - you've already seen the next season's episodes on TV and they're all still running around.

Anyhow, the story... There's a part of Cardiff which is... a bit odd. No one likes living there. The ones who try it don't stay long. Jack can't go anywhere near it as it makes him physically ill. So when a renovation project is launched with street parties and entertainers all is not what it seems. It's got wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff in it and delivers the Captain Jack background via time jumps/flashbacks, Bilis Manger is at his sneaky, manipulative best.

One good thing is that this revisits the original Torchwood team, Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh and Owen. Gary Russell nails the character voices pretty well.

Comments

[julesjones]

I liked it a lot, but I accepted going in that it was going to have the reset button problem. Interestingly, I've found that it's much less of an issue for me with the Torchwood books than it was with the Trek books when I used to read those. I think that's because the series itself has no reset button, so although you know that some things are fixed, the author can still play with things to some extent by their choice of where/when to set the book. And they have some option to change our view of canonical events or characters, as this one does with Bilis.