The planet Drebnar possesses a strange attraction--what is it that so frequently lures people to this inhospitable world? When the TARDIS is inadvertently dragged there, the Doctor makes it his business to find out the reason. He discovers that scientists from the shady Frontier Worlds Operation are using the planet as a base, and are creating strange hybrids of people and plants. But when the TARDIS crew become involved in this sinister biological struggle, they are soon caught up in individual crises. And when the doctor is trapped in the freezing wilderness, it appears as if no one will be able save him from a fatal experiment in genetic modification.

Anghelides creates his strange planet and its sinister inhabitants with rich atmosphere and menace, and the extra attention given to the TARDIS crew pays off in dividends: the Doctor remains centre stage, but there are more characters for the reader to become totally involved in. And when a lethal alien organism is lured to Drebnar by the Corporation, things become very nasty indeed. If the latter menace owes not a little to a certain Ridley Scott film, it's no worse for that, and ratchets up the tension considerably. Another winner in an ambitious and arresting series. --Barry Forshaw

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Frontier Worlds is a magnificent adventure yarn. Engrossing and very, very enjoyable. It starts with a bang--almost like a James Bond film in fact--as the Doctor escapes from a freezing mountain-top by sliding down a cable-car cable and being rescued by Fitz before being pursued across a snow-covered terrain by thugs and narrowly escaping capture by the officials of the shady Frontier Worlds Corporation.

From this nail-biting start, the novel gathers pace as we see things from Fitz's point of view. Angelides has managed to do what none of the previous authors have managed and this is to make Fitz and Compassion come startlingly to life. Fitz's narrative paints him as a normal human, struggling to infiltrate the Frontier Worlds' complex with Compassion posing as his sister--the names they choose: Frank and Nancy Sinatra point to Fitz's love of espionage movies of his time and to his need to "act" as a character in order to survive on an alien planet. Compassion's affinity with computers and her understated attachment to Fitz and the Doctor are so well drawn that it's a pity that Angelides is not writing the next few books.

What really made this book for me, however, was the way Fitz's attachment to Alura was handled, Alura being a girlfriend he acquired while undercover on the planet. The emotional aspects of this relationship were so well handled, that the eventual outcome will leave you reeling with surprise and horror.

While all this character building is going on, the Doctor is trying to find out what Frontier Worlds is all about: mysterious chairmen who shed their skin to become younger; employees who suffer strange debilitating illnesses? What the Doctor discovers forms the core of the novel and, while bearing similarities with something the Doctor previously encountered on TV, is handled here in a somewhat different manner.

The reader comes to understand Fitz and especially Compassion a lot more and that their travels with the Doctor--who is also extremely well-written and defined--have some meaning and purpose after all.

It's a brilliant novel and a fine return to form for the range. --David Howe

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