Truly embarrassing accents and performance by the reader. ( )

A Doctor Who novel featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones, set in the Wild West of America's Colorado Territory. The plot involves a traveling salesman whose snake oil "medicines" have suddenly become so miraculously effective they can even cure smallpox (although not without some side effects), and a couple of dangerous alien creatures who've come looking for him.

It feels very much like it could be an episode of the show, which does seem to be the general feeling this particular line of books tends to go for. It'd make an adequate, but not an especially exciting or memorable episode, I'd say. Lots of very familiar tropes here.

It was a reasonably diverting read, anyway, but I'm pretty sure the only thing that's remotely going to stick in my head about it is the moment where I suddenly realized that these characters were wandering around in the middle of a smallpox epidemic and were then presumably going to get back into their time machine and return to the 21st century and holy crap, no, Martha, please think about the possible consequences of that! She didn't, though, and apparently neither did the author. But then, we all probably had pandemics much less in our brains in 2007, when this was published. ( )

Ok, the Doctor takes Martha on a trip to the real Wild West in compensation for not being able to take her to a cinema in the far future, but being the Doctor and Martha, nothing's simple or safe. Not only does Martha face some... interesting comments, and not had the town of Redwood come out the other side of a pestilence that had threatened to kill all of the town, but there was something unusual about the medicine man who'd passed through a few days before with an unusually successful cure for the plague. But there are unwelcome side effects as well - young Blaine's nightmares were stopping him from sleeping and the two gunmen who came into town looking for 'the healer' were right obnoxious folk. The Doctor and Martha find themselves having to save the townsfolk from an accidental invasion attempt by a set of alien war machines that knew nothing but destruction and conquest.

Having just rewatched the season three TV stories with the Doctor and Martha, I was pleasantly surprised to see how accurately Swallow captured their voices and attitudes quite well and the story itself is reasonably consistent. ( )

This book would have made a very good episode of the “new” Doctor Who series. It is almost of parody of gunslinger type Westerns (of which I am not a fan) but with a Who twist. The characters of both the Doctor and Martha Jones are written true to the TV show. The Doctor with all his whimsical charm and Martha with her determined confidence face the Clad, an alien warrior race whose members embody themselves in weapons through which they inhabit their hosts.
Is this great literature? No. Does it have some stereotypical Western secondary characters? Yes. Are the Wild West accents annoying? At times. I think that’s the point, though. This book pokes fun at that type of thing by incorporating the clichés of the genre, and it does it well. The story is a fun, light read with a good plot but driven by the very well portrayed characters of the Doctor and his companion, Martha. Fans of the Doctor should enjoy this.
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*Spoiler alert - if you've not read this book and you want to, there are some spoilers in the following review.*

This is a Doctor Who novel featuring the Doctor in his Tenth incarnation with Martha Jones. In this book, they travel to the American West in the 1880s and discover a travelling medicine man appears to actually be able to cure disease.

This does seem very much like a typical Western, just in book form. It has all the clichés and stereotypical characters: tough sheriff, lonely schoolmarm, token Native American, and local youth who wants to be older than he is so he can be involved. Even the plot wasn't unique, it's actually very similar to Wishing Well: alien device falls from the sky, attaches itself telepathically to its finder, the device causes physical problems in the local towns folk and the Doctor brings down the ceiling of the cave where it's located in order to allow the people to escape. Both books feature Ten and Martha, and actually Wishing Well is number 19 in the series while this book is number 21. It's a little ridiculous.

Despite the copied plot, it's not a bad book and quite an easy read, although the characterisations weren't brilliant. Both characters of the Doctor and Martha seemed to be rather flat and lacking something, Martha in particular didn't seem quite right. The part where she refused more appropriate clothing rather than her jeans and leather jacket seemed a bit odd. Although it does match up with the show as the only time she appeared in time-appropriate clothing was for the Human Nature/Family of Blood episodes, the audience wasn't privy to a discussion about her attire. Being an educated woman and already well-travelled with the Doctor (this is the ninth book with Martha) she must have realised that in the American West, it would look bad for a woman to wear trousers. She already sticks out enough as a black person in the 1880s - which is shown in the book - without bringing her clothing into it as well.

I also had an issue with the huge amount of death there is in this book. I was rather surprised by just how much there is and also how coldblooded it is. The scale of it is unnecessary, especially seeing as it's a children's book. It's as though the author forgot who the intended audience was. ( )