TBH I hadn’t really been looking forward to this book. The concept was hardly original and it was yet another present-day-earth-based story set in a short space of time from 9 & Rose’s perspective (I was counting Retail Therapy as I had listened to that fairly recently).
How wrong was I? It had a well-realised setting and the leads were strongly characterised - the character development of Mickey fitted in well in this slot.
Poor Rose had to endure some truly horrific experiences though and some of the descriptions of these were surprisingly gruesome. The Robert inserts were annoying at first but made perfect sense in the end.
My one negative was the ending - I was surprised at the Doctor committing near-total genocide on the Quevvils when I had been expecting him to engineer a “diplomatic solution” between the two warring races.