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. ( )

The plot is a bit flimsy but it's more than made up for by the excellent characterization of the main characters, Owen and Tosh. Ford really does capture the brittle anger of Owen and Tosh's brilliant intelligence and weaknesses in other areas. The remaining Torchwood crew are well-drawn, especially Gwen and Rhys.

It reads a lot like an unfilmed season 2 episode, and I mean that in all the best ways since season 2 rocked my socks. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1885088.html

Another pretty decent Torchwood novel, with an intersection between exploitative aliens and exploitative crime lords in the property market in Cardiff Bay, set just after Gwen and Rhys return from honeymoon, with Owen still dead and walking. Some nice exploration of the dysfunction in the Owen/Toshiko relationship (Toshiko gets to be on the front cover this time) and lots of reference to their back-stories which will please the diehard fan. My one gripe is that the supposedly Latvian crimelord has a rather Adriatic name ("Besnik Lucca" - first name Albanian, second name Italian). ( )

Probably the best written of the Torchwood books, with lots of references to Doctor Who and a well written storyline. ( )