Torchwood: Ghost Train, an (audio) book review

Hi my hot cute girly and boy geeks. I hope you’re not tired of all the Torchwood books I’m reviewing. But I have this thing when reading book series I want to read all of them back to back instead of taking breaks in between, so that’s how you end up with all these reviews. As always, and I keep warning you, spoilers:

About the book:

Title: Torchwood: Ghost Train

Author: James Gross

Narrator: Kai Owen

ISBN 13: 9781408466667

Format: Audio book

Synopsis according to Goodreads:

It’s not easy being Rhys Williams. You’re married to the sexiest woman in Torchwood. She saves the world for a living, you move Lorries round in a timely fashion.

Suddenly, you’ve got a mystery of your own. Oh, it starts off being about missing fridges. But it leads to a midnight train pulling into an abandoned platform at Cardiff Station. What is the mysterious cargo that Rhys is unloading from the train? Where’s it going? And what can be behind it?

Rhys Williams is going to get to the bottom of it. All by him, thank you very much. Soon Captain Jack is missing, his wife’s dead, and it’s up to Rhys to try and put everything right. And find those fridges…Written specially for audio by James Goss, Ghost Train is set before the Children of Earth TV story and features Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones, as played by John Barrowman, Eve Myles and Gareth David-Lloyd in the hit series from BBC Television. It is read by Kai Owen, who plays Rhys.

My Thoughts:

This is one of the more fun books of the Torchwood series. It takes place somewhere between season 2 and 3 I think and its read by Kai Owen, who plays the lovely Rhys Williams in the Torchwood TV series. I’ve listened to more audio books by him and he does have a nice voice for narrating these kinds of things.

It’s funny to see the whole Torchwood experience through the eyes of Rhys and how he deals with all of it. Starting with missing fridges, calling in the help of Torchwood, not getting any. Trying to be Sherlock bloody Holmes (in his own words). And how he sort of fails to notice the whole of Cardiff burning around him, solely focused on solving the mystery. He follows up a lead to the train station and from there on out things go crazy. Bloody Torchwood.

It’s one big paradox time travel mess, or as the Doctor should say, wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. And don’t I agree. He encounters Gwen as shape shifter, travels back in time, stays at Ianto’s flat, overhears some stuff he really wants to wipe from his memory, leaves his own clues in order to not mix up timelines. Saves Captain Jack Harkness and eventually everybody. Hurray for Rhys.

The story is so funny and amazingly well written and narrated; this one is one of my favorites. And again one I would have loved to see as an episode on TV. Can you imagine Rhys on the run from himself and… another version of himself?

And although this isn’t one of the darker Torchwood stories, it does somehow capture that distinctive Torchwood feeling rather good. And I do like the fact that it’s written from Rhys his perspective. It makes him stronger as a character, while in the TV series and other stories, Rhys is just this faithful boyfriend/husband of Gwen Cooper. Doing everything she asks, no mind of his own, and (in the later stories) always buying nappies for Anwen.

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