I was disappointed to realise that the audiobooks I’m listening to are abridged versions, I’d usually avoid abridgements in favour of the full original texts. But then I just got over it because you can’t argue with great readers telling you Doctor Who tales in a reasonable and short time. Hooray! This one was a bit pirate-y but I did like the twist at the end, and the fact that there was a scientific hurdle to the gang managing to get the Tardis away from where they had landed. Pretty good.

I mean, the Doctor, Rose and Jack on an adventure in the depths of wintry Russia with submarines! What’s not to like? Well, the life-sucking blue monster blobs and a terrifyingly deadly Stonehenge-style circle, but otherwise, all good! It’s a great adventure, the Doctor thinking on his feet as always, and I loved Jack coming into his own with his fierce loyalty and no-man-left-behind attitude. I think Rose was a bit underused in this story, but there were a lot of characters to keep track of so no harm done.

I remember reading this before, and I actually blogged about it at the time. This book was released as an app, and it was one of the first reading experiences I had on a phone. As a book, I said it was fine, a bit predictable, a super quick and easy read (obviously, being part of the excellent Quick Reads initiative), not challenging but doing the job well. I pretty much agree with that although I think I enjoyed it more this time round as I was just reading the book rather than thinking about the whole app concept as well.

It took me a while to get used to listening to the Doctor rather than seeing him/her. Nicholas Briggs voices this first book and his version of the Doctor is a good one, it has that Northern goofiness so that you can immediately tell who it is but I did think it sometimes went a bit too far into the silly voice. Our Doctor can be serious too.

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