I’m starting on my next collection of short stories, and always like to have a thread for them to drop reviews in, so here’s a thread for The Wintertime Paradox
We also recently read a story from this set in the 2024 TARDIS Guide Advent Calendar because it’s available for free online, I HIGHLY reccomend to any and all fans of Nine.
The rage of Gallifrey was a celestial event. No being could stand against it, no more than one could weather a black hole’s hunger or the fury of a newborn star.
And, of all those wayward, volatile children of Time, none was more feared than the Doctor, for his fury had burned the Time Lords themselves.
‘What do you mean,’ he whispered, ‘you “don’t like panto”?’
Already off to an incredible start
My daily 15 minutes of reading wasn’t enough to finish the first story (A nice change of pace from the previous collections
Also ‘He’s Behind You’ is so so much of a better Panto story than ‘Behind You’
I’ve also been reading this and have been really enjoying it. His other anthology Twelve Angels Weeping was also quite good.
That’ll probably be my next short collection after this, what with how much I’m already loving the writing here
Great timing! I’m also reading this now. I’ve already read Canaries previously and will read rhe Advent Calendar entry today, so might as well finish the rest of the collection too.
Read this a few weeks ago, and oh, it’s good!
I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did!
I’ve rated most of these stories 4.5 stars, the lowest ratings being a very solid 3.5.
This also gives me a good excuse to shamelessly publicise my review of the first story!
I’ve checked and the audiobook version is on Spotify Premium so I may well listen to some of these for my Christmas listening (once I’ve finished the Bernice Summerfield Christmas Collection).
I want to have the UK Spotify! It is a Swedish product but you get better content 
He’s Behind You was a nice little story. I’m not familiar with the deeply British thing that is panto, so that added little value to the story for me.
7/10
I’m almost tempted to start a thread to educate non-Brits to this wonder of the theatrical arts.
Please do, Panto is great!
I’ll do it later when I’m at home. It requires proper thought (and not a rant about how the JNT era isn’t, in any way, shape or form, ‘pantomime’). And even if there are any similarities, ‘panto’ isn’t the insult some fans think it is.
A delightful panto story after recently reading the mess that was ‘Behind You’.
I think the story sort of lost it’s way a bit as it kept going on and the threat emerged, but even then it was still a delight to read. The characterisation for Ten and Rose is spot on, I love their back and forth, and this view inside the head of early Season 2 Rose is a really interesting one.
I adore a panto, so that probably helped here, but even without that the way this is written is just incredible. The comedy especially got me every time, talking about the rage of a time lord as Ten asks how Rose can not like pantos, Rose’s comment about how it must be innaccurate after seeing the panto’s gallifreyan costumes because the robes just look silly and Ten moving quickly on. It’s just a load of fun.
And the use of autons for the bits about actors playing actors playing characters is also just silly in the best way too.
I adore it when through prose we get to see into the heads of characters that we don’t get to see the perspectives of in the main show, and that’s exactly what this story is.
The insights into Davros’ mind are brilliant, and pairing him up with Eleven for these stories is a stroke of genius. His thoughts about The Daleks, hearing how he sees them as his kids is just great, the moments where he talks about knowing the true feelings of the daleks, how they can only feel hate, but how he sees more emotion than that, and you can’t quite tell how much of it is delusion and how much is maybe true, maybe they can only hate but maybe there’s varying levels in it. The but where he talks about how the daleks would be a lot calmer if everyone else would just die as well was great, and the choice to have daleks fight krillitane, almost exact opposites, was spectacular.
And then the ending, The Doctor’s plan to prove to Davros that ‘Dalek’ can mean something else if he makes it do so, the daleks blowing themselves up and leaving Davros, never to call on him again. The fact that he almost considers The Doctor’s offer until The Daleks call him one last time for the Time War.
It’s just another great character piece.