The Twelfth Doctor and Clara land in Victorian London to investigate an energy spike. At the same time, Madame Vastra and her crew are investigating a series of suspicious murders, including an acquaintance who was murdered while alone in a locked room. Also, the Frost Fair is going on, and the source of strangeness may very well lie in one of the performer tents.

The setting and concept are super fun and recognizable and feature some of my favorite Doctor Who companions. I really enjoyed seeing even more of the Frost Fair attractions than we have gotten to see in the show and I like the "freak show" element being twisted.

Although the concept and writing is mostly interesting and enjoyable, there were just too many parts to take issue with. There were a lot of typos and grammatical errors throughout the book, which is a minor complaint, but it seemed like this wasn't even proofread. My biggest issue was with how the main characters are portrayed. We have a story featuring three of the strongest female characters in the entire series - Clara, Jenny, and Madame Vastra (also, this may be a nitpick but Jenny is solely portrayed as the servant to Madame Vastra when they are married, and she's out at the Frost Fair letting men flirt with her? This bothered me quite a bit).

However, these women are repeatedly somehow capable of trusting complete strangers without having an inkling of even the natural risk of wandering off with a man they just met five minutes ago. I might be able to accept that the "power" behind the danger of the story has a way of calming people and making them feel safe, however Clara continues to do this later in the story when the "bad guys" aren't even present. You cannot convince me that someone as intelligent as Clara would possibly suggest that she remain alone with dockworkers near a port of sailors - if the Doctor had suggested that, it would be much more believable that he was not paying attention to risk. Then, later, as [SPOILERS]Clara walks upon the Doctor speaking with previous versions of himself, she doesn't even notice that he is speaking with the Eleventh Doctor? Whom she traveled with? I could see the Doctor not taking particular notice of his previous incarnations, and actually found the scene rather funny, until Clara appeared and made it unbelievable. Each of the characters is rather flat and not used to their full potential and I really disliked that the women were made to look so ineffectual and stupid when they are some of the most powerful characters on the show.

Note: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley. I was not compensated in any other fashion for the review and the opinions reflected below are entirely my own. Special thanks to the publisher and author for providing the copy.