This book took me a little over two weeks to read, but it felt longer. I didn't enjoy it much. It wasn't completely terrible, but I found it a bit boring.
The story takes place in 2013, actually, so it's a bit strange in that way, since it was written in 2009. You only realise how many things can happen in 4 years when reading something like this. It happens in a super-mall, which actually didn't sound so bad. It's an environment that I know well, since I work above a mall, and spend a lot of time there, sometimes just to get out of the office. However, the story itself just didn't entertain me so much. It was obvious what was going on at about 10% into the story, so that took the mystery out. Then it was all just people dashing about, some minor characters getting killed, and I just wanted to get to the end already. It was just too simplistic.
I also missed the Doctor having someone to properly explain things to. This takes place at the point of his life when he had lost Donna, and was trying to travel alone. As usual, he did have a temporary companion, but there just wasn't a lot of interaction with her. The Doctor was the Doctor, but I couldn't feel him, I couldn't connect to him.
The author also threw at us a host of temporary characters that got quickly killed off after learning a few things about them. In the show this happens sometimes, and it works, but in this book it just felt random, and like he was a filler writer. That's a term that I use for writers who need to write a certain length, and obviously run out of good ideas before meeting that requirement, so they start to put in random stuff to make the word count.
Overall, not a terrible little book, but if it wasn't a Doctor Who story, I probably would have put it down before finishing. The end didn't hold any surprises for me, and the resolution wasn't so brilliant as it should have been. Maybe he got out of the groove of writing Doctor Who, since his last book for the fandom came out in the 90s.
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