Various Authors
(Puffin Books)
This
is a walloping great tome of a book featuring 11 stories covering 11
Doctors from a gaggle (11, funnily enough) of name writers for teens and
adults. It's a pretty solid experience all told with each author
putting in a pretty robust performance.
Opening
the proceedings is Eoin Colfer with a nippy little rooftop romp over
Victorian London against kiddie stealing space pirates. Blatant Peter
Pan-isms abound made concrete by a very cheesy ending.
Michael
Scott's 'The Nameless City' is a fun Lovecraftish old ones tale that
sticks the second Doctor and Jamie against some very old Time Lord
enemies whilst Marcus Sedgwick sends #3 and Jo to ancient Norway to
swap a spear before finding themselves amongst nascent gods and a
carefully laid trap.
Philip
Reeve sticks 4 and Leela up a very large tree that wants revenge for
something he's not going to do for quite some time and 5 with Nyssa in
tow heads to wartime US and removes two alien species - one happily, the
other not so - from a small town. 6 and Peri come face to face with
the Rani at an Elvis wedding and 7 manages to rewrite the universe and
make the Daleks benign. 8 on the other hand goes up against a
sentientish alien spore that's turning all organic matter into itself.
There's
a lovely idea at the heart of Charlie Higson's quite bloodthirsty ninth
Doctor story set between the two times he asks Rose to travel with
him. Derek Landy on the other hand goes all out with the silly as 10
and Martha are stuck inside an awful sub Enid Blyton novel that, much to
the Doctor's disgust, Martha had read as a kid. Then, finishing the
lot, Neil Gaiman sends the Doctor and Amy up against another bunch of
ancient enemies who have evicted the people of Earth.
In all a light and fast read aimed firmly at the YA market (and sad old DW geeks like me) but also an entirely enjoyable one.
(www.puffinbooks.com)
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