The Doctor and Martha turn up in the Wild West of the 1880s and thwart an alien invasion. Thorpe has fun doing the accents.
Interesting setting – near future earth facing catastrophic warming, so chunks of arctic terrain are being preserved (but for some reason in Dubai). Ancient alien menace, of course, dealt with by the Doctor and Martha (who gets some good moments); well enough written and keeps the attention. Georgia Moffett doesn’t go over the top but delivers the goods.
Like Stuart Burns, I began by expecting this book to be a derivative rejigging of Richard Connell’s famous short story, “The Most Dangerous Game”, with the Doctor being pursued by trophy hunters who literally want his head, and like him I was pleased when my expectations were confounded a couple of chapters in and the narrative jumped into quite a different structure of real vs fake Doctors who might or might not know whether or not they are the real thing. Unlike Burns I didn’t quite feel that the conclusion delivered on the premises, but it is decent enough. Tovey has great fun doing the villainous Sebastiene, though his Donna is a bit less confident.
All standard stuff really.
Yes, that would be my guess as well.