For those who have recently read Kursaal, Peter Anghelides has just promoted this old post from his blog on Bluesky:
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Here are my highlights from Anachrophobia:
p15 - The Doctor telling Anji that he knows which way is north because that way is east. When she asks him how he knows that way is east, he tells her “Because that way’s north”… beautiful circular logic /hj (and a typical 8 moment imo)
p67 - Anji teasing Fitz when he can’t sleep (after only 5 hours awake) with “5 hours. That’s a big day for you.”
I love Anji and Fitz’s relationship, they’re like siblings (Fitz is definitely the younger one!)
p144 - Fitz’s internal monologue about how being held at gunpoint is becoming a habit for him!
p155 - Anji admitting that it’s her “job to ask stupid questions” of the Doctor… it’s nice when authors are aware of the way companions can occasionally seem like functions (as in World Enough and Time - Exposition and Comic Relief)
p166 - “You will all become like us”… very reminiscent of the cybermen (which is surprisingly similar to Hope, the previous book in the series)
p172 - The Doctor comments on what a formidable businesswoman Anji is (“I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of you in a business meeting”).
This is EXACTLY why I love Anji, she has a skillset and she uses it whenever she can. She’s a strong character and doesn’t rely on the Doctor’s instructions (unlike Fitz).
p265 - “Wherever you go, I will follow” reminds me of Heaven Sent[1]!!
Also, I really enjoyed the idea of the clock-people being able to take people over using the paradox of changing their own past.[2] And there seems to be a theme of suicide in both this and Festival of Death (one of Jonathan Morris’ other novels), with Lane and ERIC, which adds an extra layer of darkness and sadness to the story.
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The EDAs are still yet to properly kick in for me.
Dreamstone Moon, for all its faults, did engage me for most of its length. It’s not a very innovative story, but it’s a neat little mystery. But I really can’t get into Paul Leonard’s prose and the book was too insubstantial for me to truly buy into it and its world.
Full review here, if you enjoy, please leave a like
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You have ‘Seeing I’ next, hopefully that does the trick for you!
I agree with much of your review. I think this one worked better for me because I read it straight after ‘Legacy of the Daleks’, which I despised, so the contrast really worked in its favour. Also, Sam’s a proper character that makes decisions that have consequences in this story, another balm after how bland she comes across in a lot of other early EDAs.
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It’s a holiday in Germany; that means I got to write proper reviews for ‘Coldheart’ (banger), ‘The Space Age’ (slogfest, and super skippable), and ‘The Banquo Legacy’ (lovely if you like outsider POV and late XIX century style mystery novels - I sure do).
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Can I just say how impressed I am by the speed you read the EDAs, mandy? It’s quite impressive to me 
Looking forward to getting around those Books eventually, maybe one day I will be able to properly catch-up with you and others who do it in order (probably not).
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I thought The Banquo Legacy was brilliant!
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Yes! I had a great time, loved how it played with that type of mystery novel structure. It was a bit like reading Dracula as well, with the characters not knowing they’re in a fantastical, scifi setting; that feeling of the characters being like ‘Oh dear I wonder it all means!’ and we’re like ‘it’s aliens!!! they’re time traveling aliens!!!’
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I do love how much of Alien Bodies is just chaos and people screaming 
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I literally laughed outloud at that as well! 
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It really is now that I think about it! It was a whole lot of crazy…! But fun! 
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Finished Alien Bodies. That was a hard one to get through. I read ~200 pages within a day of getting it, then it took me a while to finish.
There was so really cool stuff in there, I LOVED the parts with Faction Paradox, although I wish they had been in it more (but I guess that’s what the spin-off is for[1])
The Relic defence systems were cool too 
The idea of the book (an auction for the Doctor’s body) was great in theory, but in reality, my experience of the book was a lot of talking and flashbacks, the Krotons invaded, then more talking a flashbacks. 
so I was a little bored at times.
I am intrigued by this thing about Sam having two sets of biodata though
although I’ve heard that they don’t appear much in the spin-off books either. So WHERE DO YOU GET PROPER FACTION PARADOX APPEARANCES??
↩︎
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Guess who finished ‘The Ancestor Cell’ and can now buy a T-Shirt that says ‘I survived the Destruction of Gallifrey and all I got was this T-Shirt’? That’s right, me, the Doc, Fitz, Compassion and her little boytoy she kidnapped. The Doctor starts crying when we try to get him to wear his, though he has no idea why…
All in all not a great resolution to the arc, but it did tie everything together. In an ugly bow, but a bow nonetheless. Terribly boring depiction of Time Lord society, flat out bad depiction of Faction Paradox, though.
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I can forgive this one because of how clearly none of this is the intended ending for these storylines, it’s just trying to wrap everything up as quickly as possible and give the new showrunner, Justin Richards, his requested clean slate for the (imo even better) second half of the series.
I do kind of genuinely love the explination that the reason Grandfather Paradox is missing an arm is because the Doctor cut it off after using it to destroy Gallifrey, a thing that prevents Grandfather Paradox from existing in the first place.
Technically,(potentially a minor spoiler) no explination is given in this book for why the Doctor loses his memory. That stuff is… dealt with later. Compassion doing it is a valid theory, but, right or wrong, it’s not meant to be that clear cut this early.
Also, and it’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I didn’t get “love” vibes from the guy Compassion kidnaps. I just took ot as her needing an engineer so she finds and rescues/steals a skilled engineer
Anyway, next up is The Burning, which I genuinely, not a joke, want to use as someone’s first ever Doctor Who story
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Ahh, good to know! It really was quite vague.
So, they do say that’s the actual reason, but she acts in a very “flirty” way (by Compassion standards) towards him, with some smiles and whispering in his ear and stuff, making a nice room for him, that bit at the end where she says ‘the console room is my heart, but your room is just under my thumb’ and ‘Nivet felt the temperature rise for just a second, like the breath of a lover on the back of his neck’. Idk, I’m not saying she’s in love, but there is some interest there, I thought.
Super excited for The Burning next!
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I don’t believe Compassion would ever feel love. Even in Shadows of Avalon, the relationship she has is just to tick off the list. Even though she does show her caring side at the end of this story (because, let’s be honest, she’s hardly in most of it), by giving the Doctor time to recover from the trauma and organising his reunion with Fitz, I can’t buy that she would genuinely fall in love with a Time Lord. I think that’s the Faction Paradox indoctrination telling her to bully him mercilessly…
That would be so funny! The Doctor is completely unrecognisable in The Burning (I was convinced Roger Nepath was him for at least half of the book - but maybe that’s a skill issue).
Although, I guess then you wouldn’t be hoping for flashbacks all the time and could really enjoy the mystery of why The Doctor doesn’t grow older etc.
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Did people do that? I loved the fact that it’s so different and seprate from everything that came before, and that those first few books work perfectly well on their own without any context of the previous books or the tv show (partly because they’re doing things so totally differently that they basically have to reintroduce everything anyway). If anything, I was disappointed when Endgame started referencing past stuff, tying itself back to old continuity, and generally feeling like it’s looking backwards instead of forwards
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Oh, she’s aroace to me, for sure! That’s why I thought it was so strange to for them to write her with that flirty vibe with that rando. I’m going with your headcanon from now on hahahah
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Dropping in to say there’s an interesting little documentary by Reeltime Pictures about the Eighth Doctor Adventures. It’s mostly just interviews from various writers, but still it’s cool it exists. Definitely worth a watch.
Watch Novel Experiences: The BBC Books Adventures Online | Vimeo On Demand on Vimeo?
There’s one for the Virgin New Adventures as well.
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