Review: Life on Mars novels, part two July 16, 2017

Make sure you’ve read part one, below, and that you’ve seen all of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Spoilers!

Actually, I don’t want to say too much about these two. If you care enough to read this, just go read the books now.

Borstal Slags and Get Cartwright increase the continuity and the suspense. The former does things in a somewhat annoying way, though — Same gets some very important things very, very wrong. He has some pieces of the puzzle but not as many as he thinks he does, and makes things more complicated than they need to be. In typical early episode fashion, he jumps to conclusions about who’s a villain and who’s a poor misunderstood soul, putting everyone in danger.

But that’s mostly been sorted out by Get Cartwright. By then it’s clear who the real enemy is, who’s on Sam and Annie’s side, and what exactly happened in Annie’s real life. Annie is remembering and she is having a hard time with it; she disappears. Sam has to find her before it’s too late. It’s a suspenseful trip out of Manchester that puts the characters on less familiar ground.

Ashes to Ashes never really gives us all that much information about Sam and Annie, so there’s room for suspense. Overall, though, the book ends in a satisfying way, neatly tying up the story threads built up in previous volumes, giving a few characters chances to shine, and I’m glad to have read it. It also works well with Ashes to Ashes. I recommend this to fans of the two series.