The novel “SkyPoint” by Phil Ford was published for the first time in 2008.
Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams just got married and he set up a meeting with a real estate agent to visit SkyPoint, the brand new Cardiff apartment complex. Rhys knows he can’t afford it but hopes for a better future for him and Gwen. The visit, however, doesn’t start well because Gwen sees Besnik Lucca, well known to the police, who would love to find evidence of the many crimes he’s suspected of.
The visit to SkyPoint continues but the real estate agent suddenly vanishes into thin air. Gwen asks her Torchwood colleagues for a check up and there’s no Rift activity but that’s not the first mysterious disappearance at SkyPoint. To investigate, Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato go to live in the skyscraper pretending they just got married.
“SkyPoint” is part of a series of novels connected to the TV show “Torchwood“, a “Doctor Who” spinoff. The size is the same as “Doctor Who” books starting from the Eleventh Doctor. In the first books the font was smaller while in the following one the font is the same size as in “Doctor Who” books.
“SkyPoint” is set shortly after the wedding between Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams and this means that Owen Harper is still part of the team but is dead. This must be kept in mind because these are important elements in the novel’s plot, in which both Gwen and Owen reflect on the changes that happened in their lives, inevitably with remarkably different conclusions.
Torchwood’s investigation starts from Gwen Cooper after a real estate agent who was showing them an apartment in the skyscraper known as SkyPoint vanishes after he enters the bathroom, which has no other exits. There are no traces of Cardiff Rift’s activity but that’s not the first disappearance at SkyPoint. On the other hand, the fact that a man suspected of many crimes lives there leaves open the possibility that he’s in some way guilty of those disappearances as well.
With this doubt, Captain Jack Harkness’s team begins an investigation that leads Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato to go live at SkyPoint pretending they’re married. This is an important part of the novel that allows to develop the relationship between Owen and Toshiko even more than was done in the television episodes making them the novel’s real protagonists. The fact that Owen is dead makes the situation between the two more complicated.
As if that weren’t enough, Owen Harper is also on a sort of personal mission during which he has even more possibilities to reflect on his situation. The parts about Owen generally have gloomy tones but this is a Torchwood novel so that’s not surprising.
Phil Ford also manages to create some characters who have a certain importance in the plot and their interactions with Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato allow to develop the two protagonists’ storyline and at the same time to create a good characterization for these characters.
In “SkyPoint” there’s the complete Jack Harkness team and every member has something to do. The problem is that sometimes the protagonists are separated and you need to remember where they are and what they’re doing while the author is focused on one or two of them who at a certain moment are at the center of something important.
All these intertwining relationships between characters are used by Phil Ford to build a plot full of surprises and twists. This means that the pace tends to be quite fast despite the many dialogues and Owen Harper’s introspective moments.
Perhaps there’s even too much for a 250-page long novel but all in all it seemed to me that there’s a good balance among the various elements with the merits that abundantly overcome the flaws. For this reason, I recommend reading “SkyPoint” to “Torchwood” fans.
