http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2662796.html

Rebecca Levene was editor of the Doctor Who New Adventures novels during their glory days, and Simon Winstone was her deputy. Here they combined forces to push the Bernice Summerfield novel series in a new direction, destroying her home base, setting up the enigmatic Irving Braxiatel, bringing back the Grel, and shifting the narrative in general. I really liked it; I felt that it broke away from the rather unvarying series format and also invoked issues of religion and anthropology. Frankly you could skip most of the preceding Bernice novels before reading this one. ( )

This New Adventure injects some much-needed urgency and focus into Benny's dig-of-the-week stories, with a dangerous secret of the People becoming loose on Dellah. I like the way that this shakes up our status quo: Bernice, Emile (yay!), and Braxiatel are all put through the wringer, both emotionally and physically. It's neat to see the Grel in a more complicated role than goofy baddies (I particularly loved their creation myth). There's also some neat ideas about faith here: I loved Renée Thalia's Church of the Grey, for example.

I do wish the series had been a little more coherent up to this point, however: James Harker's heel turn would be more interesting if he hadn't been another longtime friend of Benny's we've just met, and Renée's relationship with Brax would be stronger if we'd ever seen her working for him before. Seeds about the faith explosion seem like they could have been better planted ahead of time, too. And it's not so much a problem with this book in and of itself, but Braxiatel is not quite the man he'll be depicted as later on.