After Clara Oswald discovers a photo of the Twelfth, Eleventh, and Tenth Doctors together, she takes steps to try and stop them from ever meeting, fearing that their coming together would be the catalyst of a terrible disaster. In the process of trying to keep them apart, however, she accidentally plays a part in bringing them together.
I think that’s all I’ll say about the overall story, because there are so many little twists and surprises, that I think it’d be best for fans to enjoy it as intended. Paul Cornell is, in my opinion, one of the best writers to ever write for Doctor Who, because he always manages to tell really amazing stories that maintain a really strong emotional centre, and this is no exception.
This is a story that’s set during Series 8 for the Twelfth Doctor and Clara – this was a fantastic series and Four Doctors fits in really well into it. Indeed, it ties in very cleverly with one of the most emotionally impactful moments of that series (which I shan’t spoil), but, gosh, is it powerful (and sad). It dives deep into the mind of the Twelfth Doctor (my favourite one) and does so just as well as any of the best TV episodes from his era.
Meanwhile, it’s also great to see the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors interacting with the Twelfth. They are both suspicious of him, because they don’t believe there’ll be any incarnations after the Eleventh, thinking that he might even be the Valeyard, with the Twelfth Doctor’s antagonistic behaviour not helping matters. It makes a great dynamic, and they’ve all been written brilliantly.
On top of that, the story provides a glimpse into timelines which show how things may have altered if each of the Doctors in the story had made the wrong decision at particularly sensitive moments – my favourite was the scene that showed a particularly sinister look at the dark side of the Tenth Doctor. On the flip side of that, I found the Eleventh Doctor especially charming in this comic – moreso than I usually do on television. Everyone is characterised perfectly.
While the story is primarily focused on the “new” era of Doctor Who, it does still contain some nice connections with the classic era of the show – specifically by featuring the Voord, the enemies from the story The Keys of Marinus. If you’ve never seen it, don’t worry – I had never seen it when I first read it and it’s really not essential to understanding or enjoying the story. Indeed, the TV story itself doesn’t do much to develop the Voord or make them interesting.
All in all, it’s one of the best Doctor Who comics I’ve ever read and one that I recommend highly. If you’re a fan, there’s so much to enjoy in it.
This is the second book in The Wheel of Time series and it picks up shortly after the end of the first one – and indeed, I think it captures much of the same charm and appeal as the first book, so it’s definitely a sequel you’ll want to come back for.
There are two main story threads in this one that run parallel – the first of which sees Rand, Mat, and Perrin chasing after the forces of Padan Fain after he steals Matt’s dagger, as well as a legendary artefact known as the Horn of Valere, which when blown will supposedly summon the heroes of the past. Meanwhile Egwene and Nynaeve train alongside new friends as they study to become Aes Sedai. Both threads were interesting to me, and I enjoyed getting to switch between them.
The biggest downside was that Moraine and Lan had a significantly smaller role in this one when compared to the first book, which was disappointing, because they were probably my two favourites from the main book. However, I was always intrigued by Moraine being an Aes Sedai, and so I did like that this book revealed a lot of new information about the Aes Sedai, how they live, and what they do. It helped make the world feel even more interesting than before, and certainly adds to my appreciation of Moraine, simply by helping me to understand her more.
And of course, on a similar note, Robert Jordan’s excellent world-building skills continue to shine, not only in his ability to make towns and villages feel like genuine bustling locations which come through in the writing, but also in the way that he further expands the universe (or, perhaps I should say multiverse) of his writing. At certain points in this story, characters are actually transported into different universes, and, I won’t spoil it, but it explains why they exist and what they are, and I found it absolutely fascinating. I can only hope that there’ll be more of that in the future books.
Indeed, I think the interesting new additions to the lore and the storyline where interesting enough to make up for the smaller roles for Lan and Moraine and overall it was a book that I enjoyed just as much as the first. Rand himself continues to feel like a fairly generic protagonist character, which is a shame, but he isn’t actively unlikeable. Egwene and Nynaeve certainly had more to do in this one too, which was nice, while characters like Min and Elayne (who had small roles in the first book) come into their own as main characters in this one.
If you ever felt that the first book was a little bit too formulaic, I don’t think you will have that problem with this one, as it goes in its own direction a lot more. It has a twist relating to a certain character too, but I don’t think it will be that much of a surprise to most readers (as it was sign posted even in the first book). But, anyway, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a solid piece of fantasy fiction.
Gosh, this was a bizarre book (and not in a good way). In it, a guy named William Ward, a man set to take over his family’s large brewery business, discovers that his family has been at the heart of some giant, secret conspiracy that spans all of history, with eight different families secretly at war and trying to get their hands on an old treasure.
The premise is okay, I guess, but, I just couldn’t get into it at all. All the character interactions are bizarrely written, and William almost seems like an alien who’s pretending to be a human a lot of the time, because he’s so weird – and that would have been a nice twist, but the way it’s written, I think he’s supposed to be an everyman sort of hero. In the early days, I found this kind of amusing (because I thought it was supposed to be funny), but as it went on, it started to really grate. The other people are a little less weird than him, but I didn’t really feel anything for any of them, which is a shame, because characters are always the biggest point of books that appeals to me.
But, anyway, once William finds out about his family’s secret history, he goes off with a bunch of people and starts an adventure within the SkyView, which is a plane that uses holograms in order to let people see outside of it and into the past… which, credit where credit’s due, is a pretty cool concept. But, to be honest, this SkyView itself is probably the biggest problem with the whole book.
Whole chapters are dedicated to them using the SkyView to help research history, and then there are pages and pages of historic events from the past 700 years. It then explains how all of that era of history has been part of the struggle between those families – which sounds clever, and I guess it is, but for me, as someone who is actually interested in history, this felt extremely boring. Endless lists of dates and names of rebellions and wars – it reminded me of the way that history classes as a kid actively made me less interested in history.
A prominent quote about this book that I see is that it is like Lord of the Rings, and I started reading it in the hopes that it would be (since I love Tolkien), but it felt nothing like that at all. I wish I could say more, but I was so bored throughout the book, that my brain has barely retained anything at all, so this review will have to be a little shorter than others.
I genuinely appreciate what the author tried to do with SkyView, and I’m sure there’s a small group of people who will absolutely adore it. Unfortunately, I am not in this small group and I wouldn’t really recommend this book to anyone. When it ended on a cliffhanger that lead into a sequel, I was so disappointed, because I stuck with it all the way through, and there wasn’t even a conclusion. Oh well. Props to the author for being a history expert.
The eleventh of the Doctor Who New Adventures novels is actually a fairly standard Doctor Who storyline. This is a little unusual for this line of books, which tended to try and experiment more and push the boundaries of what can be done with Doctor Who. Some of my favourite Doctor Who stories come from the innovations of this novel range, but on the other hand, this made for some duds sometimes too (e.g. Transit).
In a sense, though, a standard adventure was kind of necessary, because the new companion, Bernice Summerfield, hadn’t had any regular adventures yet at this point. She’d had her introduction in Love and War (an incredible novel), and then been involved in Transit, but spent most of the novel under an alien influence, so we didn’t get much of a chance to get used to the new TARDIS dynamic. Admittedly, she spends a large portion of this novel under the influence of mind-altering drugs, but we still get to see more of her as herself (and she has a really cool scene that opens the novel), which helped make me appreciate her more as the new companion.
As for the storyline itself, it sees a train full of people plucked out of space and dropped on a distant alien planet where a nearby army of Chelonians (turtle-like aliens) are preparing to exterminate them. The Seventh Doctor and Benny also arrive on the scene and have to sort things out for everyone. If that sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because the same writer loosely recycled the storyline for the TV episode Planet of the Dead.
One thing that I quite appreciated about this book was that it didn’t make the Chelonians a generic race of evil aliens. Several chapters are done from the Chelonians’ perspective, and this does a lot to ‘humanise’ them. Even though they’re doing awful things, it makes it clear that it’s largely out of ignorance and that they have the capacity to be decent people, just like anyone does. It’s a level of nuance I wish they’d have in television Doctor Who more often.
Another aspect I enjoyed was the introduction of something called a “fortean flicker” which causes reality to bend and shift in strange, unusual ways that create huge coincidences. To some extent, you could say that this was just introduced as an excuse to make the set-up of the train stranded on an alien planet, but as it goes on, it becomes more and more relevant. It also ties in to the legendary “highest science” which was supposedly some powerful knowledge held by a civilisation that lived on the planet long ago.
All in all, I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat as I read this book. It was good, sure, and the Doctor and Benny were both well written in it, but it was just a regular old Doctor Who adventure. If you’re an obsessive fan like me who wants to read them all, then go ahead, I’m sure you’ll have a good time with it, but if you only want to read the books that do something really clever or interesting, then this is probably going to be one to skip.
The third book in the Little House series (the one that would lend its name to the 1970s TV adaptation and ultimately become the name that most people use to refer to the series as a whole), returns to the story of Laura and her family, after focusing on Almanzo Wilder in the second book – I was delighted by the return to the Ingalls family, because the story of Almonso was significantly less appealing to me.
When it started off, it was just as good as the first book – the story of them moving on and finding a new home, and the perils they faced while on their journey, was something that I really enjoyed reading. It managed to successfully capture that same magical feeling that the first book had, and I found myself drawn into the American wilderness with them.
Once they get to the prairie and settle in their new home, they encounter some of the indigenous people who were living in America at the time. At this point, things start to become pretty uncomfortable, because the people who live there are frequently spoken about as if they are lesser than the white settlers, culminating in a scene where somebody comments “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” and is barely condemned for it.
Much of the book is about the tension between the settlers and the native people, and I get that that sort of environment will lead to hateful and negative perceptions. Indeed, at one point, some indigenous people essentially just come in and help themselves to the Ingalls’ supplies, an experience which was no doubt going to be upsetting for the young Laura, and ultimately something that soured her opinions of the native people at large.
Nonetheless, I don’t think it excuses the huge amount of negativity expressed towards the indigenous people throughout the book. Laura’s mother, in particular, comes across as rather unlikeable due to her extremely prejudiced attitude, but it feels like we’re supposed to just accept it as her being overly cautious – her thoughts on the matter, like the statement mentioned above, are never really challenged.
While I definitely think it’s important that this kind of thing is explored and written about accurately, I would have just liked to see the hateful attitudes challenged more, rather than just left to stand… especially in a book for children.
Having said that – I don’t think that the author herself wrote this book intending to come across this way. Throughout the book, her father, Charles, is friendly towards the indigenous people, and tries to encourage everyone to treat them just like everyone else. Laura herself at one point watches them going by and fantasises about living like them and ‘running naked through the fields’ or something like that, which at very least shows that she has some admiration for their way of life.
I guess it’s important to consider it as a product of its time, and to think that the way in which these subjects are written about wouldn’t have seemed controversial at all for the time. Indeed, I have certainly read a lot worse, and I do appreciate that some of the indigenous peoples turned out to be genuinely good people, but it felt more like it was saying “see, they’re not all bad” rather than “these are literally human beings just like us”.
Of course, it’s always going to be a very sensitive subject, especially for people writing first-hand accounts of things they experienced as children, but overall, it did rub me the wrong way more than a few times, and I think a lot of modern readers might struggle with this.
I won’t spoil it, but I did think the ending was pretty good though (and it made me feel less bad about the seemingly insensitive parts), and a part of the story that deals with malaria was also particularly fascinating reading. In the end, it was a book that I enjoyed, even if it did have its flaws – on another positive note, it does also tell the story of an African American doctor who is written about in only positive ways, which is progressive for the time it was written, and even moreso for the time it happened.
While I don’t think that this lives up to the first book, it definitely felt like an improvement over the second. I wonder whether the magical quality of the first book in part comes down to the fact that Laura was so young when she wrote it, but we shall see – I’m cautiously optimistic about the quality of the next book.
The cost of living crisis is making things harder for all of us, so I decided I’d take the time to write a list of ten top pieces of advice for anybody who’s feeling the bite. These are ten easily actionable tips that literally anybody can start doing right away, and which will help you spread every pound a little further.
Eat Less Greggs
It’s fair to say that the average person spends between £50 and £100 on Greggs every single day. It might not sound a lot, but if you cut out those daily Greggs, you’ll actually find yourself with a tasty bit of savings at the end of each month. I found myself with an extra £3,021 each month just by going from having Greggs every day, to just having Greggs every other day.
Put the rent up
There are probably going to be hundreds of people who have a roof over their head thanks to you. Your benevolence allows them to live in comfort in exchange for a small amount of their monthly pay check, and they don’t have to pay any of the costs associated with home-ownership either. By increasing the rent on just one of your properties by 25%, you could easily find yourself with a few extra hundreds each month – the cost of living crisis effects us all, and you should feel no guilt about doing this.
Keep the help off the books
A little bit of a controversial one here, but if you hire help through all of the official channels, you’re going to be bound by things like minimum wage and holiday entitlements. If you go off the books, all of a sudden, you can trim huge amounts off the serving staff costs. Good help is a bit harder to find these days, in the post-Brexit world, but there are still people who are desperate for work at any cost, and you can be the man to give it to them.
Relocate your headquarters
Yes, the UK is becoming more and more tax-friendly by the year, but if your business’s headquarters is still located on British soil, you’re potentially spending much more than you need to. Worried you’re going to have to spend lots of money on the relocation? Don’t be silly. Just buy a shed in the Cayman Islands, make that the “official” headquarters, and continue to operate as usual in the UK. You won’t believe the amount that you could be saving.
Have sex with your wife
We get it. Your marriage is loveless and you probably haven’t felt a positive feeling towards your wife for at least ten years at this point, but she is still a woman and a woman has a body. Once you add it all up, the cost of all those escorts is going to make a substantial dent in your finances, so it’s important to remember that their are avenues for sexual fulfilment at home.
Settle out of court
Although an innocent verdict would be nicer for the newspapers, it’s not guaranteed, and settling out of court can help you to avoid the costs of a lengthy trial, as well as potentially ending in hefty fines. It’s a big payment all at once, but once you’ve paid it, the savings can be astronomical and all your troubles disappear at once. Just make sure it doesn’t get to the authorities next time!
Swap the cocaine for another drug
You need an outlet, that’s understandable. You work hard and you have a stressful life, but while cocaine may be appealing, it’s certainly not the cheapest hit out there. If you can, try to replace it with a combination of alcohol and cigarettes. If that still doesn’t do it, try and go for a natural hit of adrenalin by starting violent altercations with strangers on the street- just be careful of the authorities – you don’t want any more legal fees on your plate. (As a quick aside, the thrill of taking a human life, and nobody ever finding out, is one quite unlike any other – I definitely recommend it).
Cut back on insurance
No doubt, you’re paying huge amount of life insurance each month for your children. Of course, when they were a baby, their life seemed to be the most precious thing to you in the world, but now they’re a young twenty-something who’s always tweeting that you were an abusive father even though you gave them everything. Wouldn’t it be nicer to stop paying the life insurance? Well, if anything were to happen to them, you’d get a huge payout, and you wouldn’t need to worry about paying anymore either – and in today’s troubled world, young adults die tragically all the time. Nobody would suspect you. You’re innocent, of course. You could make a fair bit of money doing interviews in the local papers afterwards too. People love a sob story, and it’s a lot easier to say loving words about your kids after their dead.
Put your money into arms
We live in a troubled world. There is a lot of money in the arms-dealing industry these days, and it’s a slice of cake you should help yourself to. Worried about an end to tensions? Well, call in a favour from a few friends, and maybe certain peace talks fall through. All of a sudden, your money is worth twice as much as it was originally.
Buy out of date bread
Going into the supermarket later in the evening will mean that you have access to discount prices that others only dream of. £0.19 for a loaf of bread? Yes, please. The amount you’ll save by just going to the supermarket a little later is enormous.
So if you have been feeling the pinch lately, I hope that this helps free up a bit of room in your budget. If you aren’t doing these things, you have only yourself to blame for being poor.
I have always been drawn to adventures about pirates on the high seas, and so it was only a matter of time before I got around to reading On Stranger Tides (the book that inspired the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie). Interestingly enough, this was also the first ever book that I ‘read’ as an audiobook.
The novel follows a man named John Chandagnac who is on a ship bound for Jamaica where he hopes to confront his uncle (who betrayed his father), but enroute, the ship is hijacked by pirates, which then completely changes the course of his journey, and of his life.
The ensuing adventure contains battles at sea, the fountain of youth, voodoo zombie pirates, mysterious and remote tropical island, and many of the other tropes that define the pirate fiction genre, and you know what, as much as these things may sound a little cliché, I absolutely love it. I enjoyed its strange interdimensional attempt at explaining the fountain of youth, and I also loved the way that magic was incorporated into the events as a long forgotten art that could still be harnessed by those in the know – it was always written about so beautifully, giving the world a sense of charm and mystery.
Among the pirates in the story, Chandagnac meets a man named Davies, who is a bit of a pirate archetype. I often thought that he seemed to cold-blooded and ruthless to be truly likeable, but I did enjoy the fact that they didn’t shy away from the ugly side of piracy. I also quite liked the friendship that grew between Davies and Chandagnac as it went on and when Blackbeard shows up, he provides a nice point of comparison that shows Davies could be a lot worse.
One of my only real criticisms of the book is the fact that it only really has one major female character: Beth Hurwood. While she is nice enough, I felt like she was too often just there to be a damsel in distress and/or a love interest for Chandagnac. Later on, ‘female magic’ ends up being an important counterpart to ‘male magic’ which I thought was a bit silly too. Beth is alright all things considered – I just wish she got to have more of an active role in the proceedings.
As a quick side note, I just want to mention one of the villains: Leo Friend. Gosh. Tim Powers did an excellent job in creating somebody who is so utterly repulsively and unlikeable. Somehow, he seems to have the perfect name for a villain too. He interactions with Beth are really gross, but it’s nice to have a piece of adventure/fantasy fiction where the disgusting attitudes to women are coming from the villain and are being openly condemned (you know, unlike Game of Thrones).
If you like pirate fiction, then this book gets a strong recommendation from me. It could be better in some ways (it’s not doing anything ground-breaking with the genre), but it is a wonderful atmospheric pirate adventure, tying in history, fantasy, and even a tough of sci-fi, and I really enjoyed it.
This is the first novel in the multi-part Wheel of Time series. It’s set in a world where time is circular (a wheel) and all the people in the world are in a constant cycle of death and reincarnation, doomed to repeat the same things over and over infinitely.
I thought it was a nicely unique concept for a fantasy world, and one which is implemented well throughout. Though it largely focuses on on a single set of people during a single point within this wheel, it was a really interesting backdrop for the story, and one which came up regularly throughout it. I’m excited to see what more is done with the concept in later books.
As for the story of this one, to some extent, it’s your typical fantasy set-up – simple country boys are whisked away from their peaceful life in a quiet village and end up on a quest that will bring them across the world as they journey to battle an evil that threatens everything.
The structure of the story might not be too different from things we’ve all seen before, but using a tried and tested formula is by no means a bad thing. I really enjoyed the book because of all of the interesting locations they visited, excellent world-building, and most of all, a great cast of characters.
My two favourites were Moiraine, an Aes Sedai (which is a sort of witch in this world) and her warder, Lan. Moiraine plays the ‘mysterious old wizard’ part in this story, and I think she does so very well. She comes across as otherworldly, in a way, concerned with higher matters than those happening directly before her, and though she a morally grey character for sure, she was so enigmatic that I was won over.
Meanwhile, Lan, her warder, is a completely stoic man who is unquestionably loyal to Moraine. The bond between the two of them is supposed to exceed that bond between a married couple, without it being in the least bit romantic, which I really liked. You don’t often see things like that in fiction.
The other characters were great too. Rand is a little bit of a generic protagonist, but he’s also an awkward, angsty teen. Egwene is a girl that Rand has always been endeared to, and she’s always wanted to see more of the world and now she wants to learn more about the Aes Sedai from Moiraine, but is pulled in another direction by Nynaeve, the village wisdom, who is anti-Aes Sedai (which creates some good conflict). There’s another great character called Loial, but I won’t say too much about him as he comes into it quite late.
All in all, you really feel like the characters are on a long journey in this book, visiting far off locations all around their world – and it’s a world with such a fascinating backstory. If you enjoy fantasy, you’ll probably love this.
This is just the kind of fantasy that I love. Many people have probably heard of the popular anime adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle, but it’s also a fantastic book, and I definitely recommend it as a different, but equally strong, experience.
Howl’s Moving Castle tells the story of a young woman named Sophie who is suddenly aged far beyond her years by the Witch of the Waste – a figure who is feared across the land. Afraid and not sure what to do, she runs away and meets Howl and his famous moving castle. Howl himself isn’t exactly well respected or regarded in the community (indeed, rumours say that he eats girls’ hearts), but Sophie tags along with him and his young apprentice, Michael, and his resident demon, Calcifer, who powers the titular moving castle.
Though it times, it can feel a little aimless, with the characters just going from one small adventure to the next, it’s all tied together by the overall plot related to The Witch of the Waste, and Sophie looking for a way to reverse her curse. What appealed to me the most was how whimsical the book often was, but never to the extent to being too silly – unlike you see in some more modern fantasy and sci-fi, it takes itself completely sincerely.
Howl is a very funny character too, in that he’s supposed to be this big scary wizard, but he’s actually a pretentious layabout – even if he is still very powerful. Sophie doesn’t have time for any of his nonsense though, and the way the two of them constantly bicker about things is a great source of entertainment.
One of my favourite chapters of the book has to do with the relation between the fantastical world of Ingary, where the majority of the story takes place, and our real world. I won’t spoil it, but it’s bizarre, and unexpected, and I loved that. I always enjoy fantasy worlds having some tie to our own, and I look forward to seeing that thread explored further in later books in the series.
Though the very ending seemed a little cheesy for me (though true to fairy tales, I suppose), it was also very nice to see how many of the seemingly random things that were introduced all tied together – especially in relation to Calcifer.
While it has the capacity to be quite dark at times, it’s also a book that gives you such whimsical things as boots that can take you several miles in a single steps, conversations with falling stars, scarecrows coming to life, and more. There are even a few references to other pieces of fantasy and literature in it, which all help to make reading this book a very charming experience.
As children’s fantasy goes, this is definitely one that will appeal to adults too. If you want a bit of light and enjoyable escapism, this is a book to try.
While Dracula is the big, well-known vampire novel of the latter nineteenth century (and indeed, one of my favourite books), it was actually preceded by Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. For years, I’d meant to read it, but it was only recently that I got around to doing so.
Surprisingly, despite having been a big fan Dracula fan for so long, I actually think that Carmilla is the better of the two. For me, I always liked the portion of the novel that focused on Jonathan Harker’s stay in Count Dracula’s castle – the setting is beautifully creepy, and being isolated from civilisation only helps to make it even more so. Though shorter, the entirety of Carmilla captures that feeling of early Dracula.
Set in a castle deep in a massive forest in Styria, this novel tells the story of a mysterious young woman named Carmilla who ends up coming to stay with the protagonist (a girl named Laura) and her family. The eerie atmosphere of the setting bleeds through into absolutely everything that happens, with many unusual events seeming to centre around Carmilla herself.
Speaking of, the enigmatic Carmilla is easily my favourite character in this. It’s a shame that her being about vampire is no secret to anybody these days, because leading up to that fact must have been really interesting back in the day, but as it stands, it’s still an engaging read even if you do know where it’s going.
Genuinely, I felt quite sympathetically towards Carmilla. I see her as a genuinely tragic character. Unlike Dracula, who comes across as much more of a plain villain, I, at least, really felt that Carmilla cared for Laura and was rather invested in their relationship. It very strongly suggests that the two of them are in love with each other, and for its time, that’s extremely progressive.
The negative response to Carmilla by other characters could be read as a parallel to the negative response to gay people at that time in history – although as I write that, I’m not sure how much I want to make the comparison between vampirism and homosexuality. There’d be some pretty unfortunately implications there, and I don’t think that author meant anything harmful by that, but it certainly plays with some societal taboos.
Anyway, I won’t say any more for fear of completely ruining the ending, but really I loved this book. The two things that a book can do to leave a big impression on me are: creating characters whose relationship I am invested in, and creating settings that have a really strong sense of place. Carmilla does both of these things, and it has vampires. That makes it pretty amazing in my estimation.
