Book Review by Chlo Hickson
Timewyrm: Apocalypse is the 3rd novel of the Timewyrm saga and is definitely the weakest of the books. This doesn’t mean it’s doing anything wrong, just it isn’t doing a lot of memorable things.
The book starts with a promising mystery which does keep you hooked for the rest of the book, but the book doesn’t have much else going for it to keep you engaged, apart from a few nice moments with Ace. What pushes the book down a bit more is that it doesn’t feel like it contributed much to the Timewyrm arc. Apocalypse is a fairly classic Doctor Who style idea, but then nothing happens. And then nothing happens. And after that, nothing happens. A good 80% of the overall story happens in the last two chapters. This book is 100% padding. I feel that how Exodus ended we could’ve easily just gone into Revelation.
The plot itself sounds a little too similar to the Doctor Who TV adventure ‘The Krotons’. Nigel Robinson clearly took inspiration from it and, I’m going to get into this in a minute, if I’m going to guess it’s pretty obvious that the 2nd Doctor was Robinson’s favourite Doctor.
If I’m being honest the Doctor feels generally out of character and feels like it was written for other Doctors at various points, especially for the first and second Doctors.
Seeing as it’s a 7th Doctor adventure there were a lot of flashbacks to the 2nd Doctor and his era in several parts of the story, this is explained by the Doctor trying to tell himself something. Seriously, with these books why does it have to be specific incarnations wanting to send a message or something of that nature, because it doesn’t make sense?
When Robinson does eventually write for the 7th Doctor he does a decent job, he’s definitely not as bad as Peel but honestly this could’ve been better.
Apocalypse does feature some pretty good characterisation for Ace. It definitely feels like Nigel was more concerned about fleshing out Ace than he was the Doctor.
But yet again, the Timewyrm seriously got a downgrade in her own story arc! Why was she easily defeated here?
I don’t know why the Timewyrm is never mentioned throughout the entire book until the very end, and even when it finally appears for the final confrontation, it is quickly disposed of in a rushed finale as if it were added in as a last minute addition to tie this novel into the Timewyrm arc.
Timewyrm: Apocalypse is a quick read at 200 pages, but it still feels long because there is very little to do with it that is engaging. I’ll be honest there were a few scenes that did jump out at me which is a good sign but overall, the plot and the characters … I couldn’t tell you much about. After reading the book I think Robinson’s strengths lie in describing the horrible experiments and mutations that we come across in this adventure, some of which are pretty gross and are involved in a few action scenes. But that’s about it. This book completely failed to keep me entertained throughout most of its chapters, which is the biggest red flag a novel can give you. I generally did struggle to finish it as it just felt like a chore to get through.
Unless you’re a completionist, then skip this one.
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