Doctor Who: Hunter's Moon Review (3/5)

Much as I'd like to say Hunter's Moon rounds off a great trio of novelised Doctor Who adventures in style, neither of its predecessors were particularly inspiring and Paul Finch does little to buck the trend. The plot is pretty simple: Rory makes a failed bet with an alien gangster, and when he and the TARDIS are captured as a result of his defeat the Doctor and Amy must race to retrieve them and survive a deadly hunt through a dangerous spaceship. Standard Who fanfare, then, but author Finch never gets out of the conventions of the sci-fi drama, sticking to the structures of most episodes since the 2005 revival and playing on the age-old gag of endless corridors unsuccessfully. None of the new characters like Harry and Dora prove memorable due to only appearing for brief intermissions amongst the action setpieces. What Finch does manage, however, is to keep a fast pace throughout that should keep most readers interested, especially in the second half with a great climax, but the other elements of the novel are so blindingly predictable and thus forgettable that I can't help but wonder what the point of it all was!