As it's been quite a long time since i read a 10th doctor book, i figured i'd give another one a try as i didn't really dislike The last dodo or Sick house. Unfortunately, while this book was...fine? it was still the worst of the three.

Basically the 10th doctor and martha end up in a new england town and see a bunch of green gas coming out of a tree where some kids dug up an old book. Evil tree people are trying to do something that will end up being evil.

The premise was...fine, if the setting wasn't a bit boring. Imagine like a random upper middle class town in suburban Massachusetts. there's your setting.

There are several side characters they felt the need to give backstories to (as per usual) that i really didn't care about and all the side characters (minus one old lady who was palling around with the doctor in her cat filled house) were forgettable and boring.

Towards the end it almost felt like the author forgot they needed a body count and with like 10 pages to go went "oh! and a bunch of people die". it felt very tacked on for shock value.

The doctor and martha were fine and in character, but tennant definitely felt dialed up on the annoyance-o-meter as he went a little wacky with the eccentricity.

Overall though, it wasn't a BAD who book, just very meh. Which is disappointing because the last book i read by mark morris was "bodysnatchers" with the 8th doctor and i really enjoyed that one. The writing style wasn't really the problem though as it read SUPER fast as i read this book in 2 days, it was more a flawed premise from the start.

big old meh. even 3 out of 5.