Product Description

The body in the church hall is very definitely dead. It has been sliced open with surgical precision, its organs exposed, and its vocal cords are gone. It is as if they were never there or they've been dissolved! With the Welsh amateur Operatic Contest getting under way, music is filling the churches and concert halls of Cardiff. The competition has attracted the finest Welsh talent to the city, but it has also drawn something else - there are stories of a metallic creature hiding in the shadows. Torchwood is on its tail, but it's moving too fast for them to track it down! This new threat requires a new tactic, so Ianto Jones is joining a male voice choir... Featuring Captain Jack Harkness as played by John Barrowman, with Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones as played by Eve Myles and Gareth David-Lloyd, in the hit series created by Russell T. Davies for BBC Television.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9771 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

About the Author
Sarah Pinborough is the author of five horror novels, two of which have been short-listed for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel in 2007 and 2008. Sarah currently lives and works in Milton Keynes. You can find out more about Sarah at www.sarahpinborough.com.

Customer Reviews

Then There Were Three
Torchwood: Into The Silence ("Torchwood")

Resisting the temptation to ignore the deaths of Owen and Tosh, this is the first book that relies on the talents of the remaining 3 Torchwood operatives. This in itself provides an excuse to 'pad out' Gwen and Ianto's roles. As always appears to be the case, there is a lot of padded out text, some of which is not really needed. Again, the descriptive text sets the scene very well. Set round a Welsh singing contest, there are soon some very gruesome murders happening. An alien is soon held to be responsible and proves a daunting problem for Torchwood in finding it. Fairly well paced, there is a nice twist at the end, although if like me, you see it coming. Does make one want to keep reading to check out if you are right. Not the best of the series, (a hint of Skypoint was noted) but a welcome addition to the fan of the TV show.

Silent Running (on dangerous ground)
Sarah Pinborough's debut as a Torchwood novelist is pretty inauspicious. The story is very generic - and this is no bad thing in itself, however it lacks a spark, and the liberal references to the deceased team members Tosh and Owen only serve to remind us what the series itself is missing. There are some pretty gruesome depictions in the book, and it is very much aimed at older teenagers or younger adults, it would be okay if the story was stronger but as it is this is really just a series of brutal slayings interspersed with reminders of the Torchwood team's raging libidos. Overall a formulaic novel that is readable but pretty forgettable too.

Satisfyingly creepy
Into the Silence is the first book in the latest trio accompanying the BBC TV series, and is set between series two and three. The three remaining main characters are joined by a disgraced police office with previous Torchwood experience to investigate a number of brutal murders of singers across Cardiff.

While the idea is sound and the plot moves along at an interesting pace, not a lot is learnt about the main characters, with most of the characterization focussing on guests - presumably so as not to tread on the toes of the TV writers. The alien itself is satisfyingly creepy, but it's physical description makes it a tad too similar to every other torchwood bad guy.

While the plot does flow fairly well, there's a lot of backstory peppered throughout the novel that exists purely to set up the ending and which never interacts with the main plot on the way. As much as I often complains about confidences drawing people together in novels, this set up meant the ending was fairly predictable from quite early on.

Overall I found this to be a satisfying quick read, and I definitely think that the Torchwood novels are improving as the series progresses.