Border Princes

This was the second Torchwood book released, and is definitely longer and denser than the others I've read. It has a great atmosphere of mystery and the uncanny, and I read the first several chapters with "what the hell is going on!" (in the good way) in the back of my mind. It does a nice job tying subplots (some of which don't concern the cast at all) into the main plot at the end, and includes some brutally vicious action scenes (a plus in my book).

Here's the SPOILERY details on the plot: an alien race on the "far side" of the Rift occasionally sends agents across and places them in deep cover--one of the agents is placed into Torchwood and, through alien mindbending technology, convinces everyone that he's been there for years. In this respect, the book shares a lot of similarities with the Buffy episode Superstar and the later Torchwood series two episode Adam. Meanwhile, a rival alien race's android killing machine has activated itself and is tearing through Cardiff. Like I said, it's all very mysterious and exciting, and includes concepts I would like to see revisited.

The main loose end is that this fake agent of Torchwood, James, has been sleeping with Gwen for weeks and eventually convinces her to leave Rhys--even though the book indicates that the members of Torchwood will eventually forget that James ever existed, won't Rhys be a bit torqued? It makes Gwen even more heartless: we know she slept with Owen and lusted after Jack, but now we find out she hooked up with this James guy (that is, there's no indication she was brainwashed into doing it, just brainwashed into thinking James was a long-time member of the team). Ah, well. I was never a huge Gwen fan anyway . . .