Several of my friends regularly watch/watched Dr Who and Torchwood. I managed to never get into Torchwood when it was on the air. I was familiar with the characters and concepts due to catching bits and pieces of the show or hearing friends discuss some point or other. I'm more of a reader than TV watcher, so I started reading this series as I was interested enough to see what it was all about. At first, I had assumed the novels would just retell the events from the TV show, but these are totally different stories. The books do occasionally touch on stuff that happened in the show as the events they portray sort of happen between episodes. After reading the first 12 novels in this series, I actually went back and watched the whole show, too, since I liked the characters so much. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1933433.html

A Torchwood novel where Cardiff is assailed by a zombie invasion and Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Rhys and Policeman Andy have to sort it out. Entertaining enough, with some decently tense horror passages, but no big surprises. ( )

The Torchwood team have seen a lot of strange things, but when zombies swarm Cardiff, Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones feel as though they are living in a bad horror film. With Cardiff mysteriously cut off from the rest of the world, Torchwood and the residents of the bay city are on their own. Can Torchwood determine the source of their undead problem, and, more importantly, can they stop it?

Of all the Torchwood tie-in novels I have read (I think I have read all but three of them at this point), this was one of the most enjoyable. Zombies and Torchwood go together like bread and butter. Gwen’s husband, Rhys, and her former police partner, PC Andy Davidson, both play larger roles in this novel due to the absences of Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato. I am not a huge fan of Rhys, but I enjoyed him in this story. I also enjoyed seeing more of Andy; I hope we will see his role expand in future novels.

There is a fair amount of gore, as one would expect from a story centering around zombies. I was never bothered by this, despite my aversion to zombie movies as a whole. All of the Torchwood characters are portrayed well; there’s quite a bit of banter between Jack and Ianto and some touching scenes between Gwen and Rhys. The story felt like it could be an episode of the show, which is my main criterion for these books.

Mark Morris has written two Doctor Who tie-in novels, Forever Autumn and Ghosts of India, both of which I enjoyed. I had high expectations for this book based on those two previous titles and I was not disappointed. Recommended for Torchwood fans. ( )

Probably my least favourite so far of the 'Torchwood' spin-off novels. Even after reading the line '... and living corpses are stalking the streets...' in the blurb on the back I didn't twig it was a zombie story. I really don't like zombie stories.
The ending was a cop-out, too, but still, it's 'Torchwood' and it feeds the obsession. : ) ( )