Second paragraph of third chapter: A plane coming into Kai Tak took a perilous descent between Hong Kong's skyscrapers, pulled a 90-degree turn to avoid running straight into Diamond Hill, and then tried not to drop off the end of the runway into Kowloon Bay.
The final Seventh doctor novel in terms of continuity, actually it is much more about Sarah ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter: On impulse, he walked along to the shop. 'Excuse me,' he began. 'New window?'
Candy Jar's series of books about the earlier career of Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart have not been getting as much buzz as I feel they deserve. For a lot of us, the UNIT days are the defining period of Who, and the idea here is to look ( Read more... )

Hurrah! Another Liz Shaw story, as the Dctor, newly freed by the Time Lords, takes her and Jo for a spin. Liz being Liz, she asks to see the Tunguska Event; the Tardis being the Tardis, they arrive instead a few years later in St Petersburg just in time to get embroiled in the assassination of Rasputin (to which I have a mild family connection). As ( Read more... )

A New Adventure novel, with the Seventh Doctor and Benny ending up at the awful end of the Albigensian crusade; a rare case of a purely historical story, with the Tardis crew's presence the only sfnal element ( Read more... )

Rather a good Seventh Doctor romp, with Benny and Ace involved with an attempted alien invasion coinciding with the start of the Space Race in late 1957. It felt from the start rather like The Claws of Axos, only done much better, a feeling intensified by a plot twist about halfway through; it also has the general frenetic pace of a televised New ( Read more... )

This isn't quite the last First Doctor novel for me to read, in that I started (but could not bear to finish) The Plotters a couple of years back. But until the BBC decides to licence another First Doctor story, it is the last one whose covers I have cracked; a tale of Vicki, Ian and Barbara in China in the 1860s, encountering the Ten Tigers (of ( Read more... )

When I posted three years ago about appearances of Belgium in Doctor Who, lonemagpie chided me justly for failing to note the very first Who story set in my adopted country, this Eighth Doctor Adventure published in 1999 and set during the Battle of the Bulge around Bastogne. Though to be honest there's not much Belgian about it apart from the weather and ( Read more... )

Fifth Doctor, Turlough and Sontarans, on a human colony with an Indian cultural background, and the Rutans make an appearance as well. Lots of good continuity for both Turlough and the Sontarans, and lots of good world-building, combined with a decent plot; one to look out for.

A relatively rare example of a historical novel in the New Adventures series, taking the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny to Haiti on the eve of the US invasion of 1914. It is a combination of the Tardis crew getting to grips with the setting and Lovecraft pastiche, done for shudders rather than giggles - the zombies turn out to be linked to the Great ( Read more... )

So, what was happening on Earth while the Doctor and Jo were on Peladon? Well, UNIT found itself dealing with peculiar doppelgangers of senior officials, and had to call on the resources of the Master, despite his imprisonment, and of some bloke called Chesterton, who brought his wife Barbara along as well. And up in Faslane, there was a naval ( Read more... )