The Tenth Doctor and Martha find themselves on a luxury cruise spaceship under peculiar attack; a scenario which the TV version of Who did rather better a few months after this came out (though with Kylie Minogue instead of Freema). We know that the pirates are funny because they have working class accents and aren’t very bright. Also they look like badgers. There is a reasonably neat time loop idea (the loop of the title) and a sort-of moral to the tale (neat bracketing of the Ood, the Monoids and the Vocs); would probably have made a slightly above average couple of TV episodes.
From the Heart of Europe
Books, politics, languages and life
I read it. I enjoyed the unreliable narrator bit, but I also wonder if anyone not around the same age as her or as steeped in the culture would have the same reaction. There were moments that brought me almost to tears and others where I wanted to snort with laughter and I don’t think they were meant to be funny. So I would categorize it as powerful but uneven and resting on a rather precarious foundation. Still, I quite liked it.