Review: Doctor Who Time Lord Fairy Tales by Justin Richards

A stunning illustrated collection of fifteen dark and ancient fairy tales from the world of Doctor Who.

These captivating stories include mysterious myths and legends about heroes and monsters of all kinds, from every corner of the universe. Originally told to young Time Lords at bedtime, these twisted tales are an enchanting read for Doctor Who fans of all ages.

I am a lifelong fan of Doctor Who and as a child/young teen I spent may an hour reading as many of the Target novelisations as I could get my hands on (as ever, the local library did not let me down). However, somewhere along the way I stopped reading Doctor Who fiction - I wonder whether it was due to the sheer volume of books that were being published, especially after the show was cancelled by the BBC back in 1989 and writers/published filled the gap with New Adventures and Missing Adventures. I intend to remedy this in 2016 as a friend has recently recommended two books that I really like the sound of: Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds and The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter.

But I am getting ahead of myself. A couple of months ago I had a lovely surprise package in the post, courtesy of those lovely people at Puffin. Said package included a copy of Doctor Who: The Dangerous Book of Monsters (devoured in a single sitting btw), and Doctor Who: Time Lord Fairy Tales. It was the latter of the two that really piqued my interest - it is an anthology of fairy tales, each of which has a Doctor Who twist. Most of the classic tales they are based on are instantly recognisable (including Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Three Little Pigs, Three Billy Goats Gruff and many more) but writer Justin Richards has very cleverly twisted them around to make them tales that just might be told to Gallifreyan kids.

I have to be honest, it took me a couple of stories to really get into the book, as it was aimed at a younger audience than I had originally presumed, and the tone of the stories is most definitely fairy-tale-ish in nature. However, once I had got my head around this I found myself really enjoying most of the tales. A number of the stories do not even feature the Doctor himself (and even when he appears it is usually little more than a cameo role to help save the day), but many of the classic Whovian monsters are there in one form or another, including Sontarans, Cybermen and Weeping Angels and some of the less well known to modern viewers, such as the Nimon and the Wirrn. 

Each story comes with its own wonderful illustration by David Wardle, all produced in a classic wood block printing style that perfectly matches the fairy tale theme of the book. Adult readers may recognise the style from the cover of Essie Fox's The Somnambulist, which Wardle also created.

For those of you who love audio books, a little googling has revealed that all of these tales are available to purchase as downloads from iTunes and Amazon, read by the likes of Paul McGann, Michelle Gomez, Sophie Aldred and even Tom Baker. I'm not a big fan of audio books (I have attention span problems), but these sound cracking so I might have to have a listen in the future. It also looks like there is a planned CD release for April, for those of you who prefer a physical copy.

Time Lord Fairy Tales is great fun and deserves a place on the shelves of any fan of Doctor Who, young or old. It has certainly whetted my appetite for more Doctor Who fiction, so if any of you have any recommendations they would be very gratefully received.

Haunted Blog Tour: Guest Post by Philip Reeve

Short stories are great! Especially those of the spooky kind. I remember reading through many an anthology of ghost stories as a child, but these days it seems that many young people prefer longer novels and there are only a minority of these compilations published each year. Back in September Andersen Press published Haunted, a superb anthology of ghost stories written by some of the biggest names in children's literature today. This book includes tales by the likes of Derek Landy (author of Skulduggery Pleasant), Robin Jarvis (author of Dancing Jax and many others), Joseph Delaney (author of the Spooks series), and many others, including the legend that is Philip Reeve. Yes, the Mortal Engines Philip Reeve! Thus I am more than a little excited that I am today hosting a guest post by Philip about his beloved Dartmoor. Not only that, there are also a couple of stunning photos taken by Sarah Reeve, as well as a special video produced by Philip's friend, author and illustrator Sarah McIntyre (look really closely - is that a ghost in one of the images in the video?).

Haunted Dartmoor

Dartmoor, where I live, is ghost country.  You might not notice it if you see it in the summertime, when bracken greens and softens the steep hillsides, and the moorland car-parks are filled with picnicking visitors and greedy ponies hoping for a crisp.  On wire racks outside the shops and cafes in Widecombe you’ might find little books of ‘Dartmoor Ghost Stories’, but they seem like pretty thin stuff: well-worn tales of phantom monks and spectral huntsmen, and the ‘hairy hands’ which are supposed to appear and grip the steering wheels of cars on the lonely road from Postbridge to Princetown, causing them to swerve off the road (that one always sounds to me like an excuse some local farmer invented after he drove into a ditch on his way home from the Warren House Inn).  These are processed ghosts, served up for the tourist industry, and unlikely to scare anybody nowadays.

But come the autumn, when the leaves turn and the nights draw in and the bones of the landscape start to show through the thinning trees, then the true, spooky nature of the moor shows too.  In low light or sudden mists it’s hard to tell the scale of things; those figures on the skyline that you think are a line of walkers turn out to be standing stones, set up some time in the bronze-age, forming an avenue that leads from nowhere to nowhere through the heather.  The tangled woods are full of secret movements.  In one of them, Wistman’s Wood, legend has it that the devil kennels his pack of ghostly hounds under the boulders which lie tumbled between the roots of the gnarled and stunted oak trees.  I don’t believe in the devil, or ghosts, or anything supernatural, but when you’re alone there in autumn it’s easy to imagine that there’s something down among the shaggy moss and leaf mould and dead branches, watching... It’s not unfriendly, perhaps, but it’s as old as the moor itself, and it’s definitely nothing human.  That’s where my story The Ghost Wood in the Haunted anthology comes from: it’s a little gust of autumn wind, blowing down off Dartmoor on Hallowe’en...

Photo by Sarah Reeve

Photo by Sarah Reeve

Video by Sarah McIntyre

~~~

Huge thanks to Philip, Sarah and Sarah for taking the time to produce this piece for The Book Zone. However, before I go I guess you might be wanting to hear my thoughts about the anthology in more detail, so please read on for my brief review.


This book is perfect for Hallowe'en, and for any other time of the year if you love a spooky ghost story. I think what I liked most about Haunted was the way each of the eleven authors brought something very different to the mix. Some of the stories have touches of dark humour, some of them are straight pee-your-pants scary, but every single one of them makes for a great spooky read and Andersen Press have done a sterling job in collecting such a fantastic group of authors and their stories together.


I am still undecided as to which one is my favourite in the anthology. Philip's tale, The Ghost Wood, is not as scary as some of the others, but it made me think about the ancient power that could still lie within our land, despite all that has happened to it since the Industrial Revolution. Mal Peet's story, Good Boy, will have your heart in your mouth whilst reading it, worrying what will happen to main character Katie, and Eleanor Updale's The Ghost in the Machine is very clever and possibly unlike any ghost story you have ever read as it deals with haunting through the internet. For the 'sheer terror award' I think that Susan Cooper's  The Caretakers is definitely in with a shout of first prize, but if I was tied to chair and threatened by a particularly nasty ghost in order to help me make my  mind up I think my favourite of the anthology would have to be Derek Landy's Songs the Dead Sing. Readers of The Book Zone will know I am a huge fan of Derek's Skulduggery Pleasant series, for both its horror element and its brilliant use of humour, and both of these are present in his Haunted short story.


This book is a treat for fans of both short stories and horror fiction and if you have left it late to buy someone an All Hallow's Read then this is well worth buying. My thanks go to the good people at Andersen Press for sending me a copy and for arranging for Philip to write the guest post for us. If your appetite for all things spooky as been whetted then you can read a serialisation of Jamila Gavin's short story, The Blood Line, over at The Guardian by clicking here.

And Then What Happened?

Author Neil Gaiman is a total legend! He wrote Neverwhere, one of my all-time favourite fantasy stories and a book that created my love of urban fantasy set in London. He also the genius behind The Sandman from DC Comics, another of my long time favourites. Last year, with the assistance of Al Sarrantonio, Mr Gaiman edited an anthology of short stories, simply titled Stories. This fantastic volume contained stories by the likes of both editors, Joe Hill, Diana Wynne Jones, Jeffrey Deaver, and many others. Later this week this anthology is released in paperback form, and to commemorate this Sam Eades at Headline had a cracking idea - invite a (insert collective noun of your choice) of bloggers to each contribute 100 words to a short story.

In his introduction to the anthology Neil Gaiman explains that he was asked by one of his blog readers if he could recommend a quote that could be inscribed on the wall of the children's area in a public library. After much thought, he replied that instead of a quote he would choose to display the following: "... and then what happened?", explaining that these are "The four words that children ask, when you pause, telling them a story. The four words you hear at the end of a chapter. The four words, spoken or unspoken, that show you, as a storyteller, that people care." Sam's challenge to her team of bloggers was to use this quote as their inspiration, with one blogger starting off the story, and then each one following on with their own 100 words. So far so good, but as in all good stories there is a twist: each blogger would only receive the preceding 100 words and therefore none of us would have any idea what the final story would be until it was completed.

The full story came through yesterday, along with the official 'book' cover which you can see at the top of this post, with all the participating bloggers listed there. Of course, now I have bored you with the details behind the project it would be mean of me not to show you the final story. It is more than a little surreal in places, and there are a handful of swear words (not from me I hasten to add), but I have *** these especially for The Book Zone. See if you can guess which part I wrote ;-)

The Story


Crash!

It happened so quickly.

The screeching metal bit, anyway.

The actual impact.

This came as a surprise to Michelle, who in idle moments had imagined a car crash must feel like it was happening in super slow motion. Seconds become minutes, and all that jazz. Wasn’t that what they said on those accident investigation programmes?

But now here it was, really happening, and it had been but a blink. It had happened so fast, in fact, that it wasn’t until a pair of feet appeared by Michelle’s forehead that she realised the car had flipped. They were upside down.

Blink.

Michelle woke in a bed, not her bed. The air was full of garlic and red wine. She could hear voices in a different room, people were singing and laughing.

‘Where am I?’ Michelle croaked into darkness.

‘Safe,’ a voice replied but no one stepped forward. ‘We were able to make you better,’ the voice whispered.

There was something in the murmur of the word that made Michelle ask, ‘Better?’

‘Enhanced, innovative, kinky,’ a voice replied. ‘The surgery was successful.’

Michelle tried to swing her legs off the bed but they wouldn’t move. It was then that she realised. She was tied to the bed. No, she was shackled to the bed. She tried to sit up but her wrists were shackled too. Wait. She could lift her head! Her eyes flitted around the room. She didn’t recognise anything. Where the f**k was she?

A bright light came on. Michelle noticed the walls were covered in padding - some sort of sound proofing. But she’d heard music, people. Had she been dreaming?

And then she saw him.

‘You said I was safe!’ She screamed. ‘If you touch me again, you mad b*stard, I’ll f**king…’

Daniel came towards her holding not a knife, or even a needle. Of all things, the whitecoat bore towards her bearing Tupperware.

‘You’ll f**king what?’ Daniel teased as the dead-zone between them diminished.

‘You’re ours now, Michelle. You’ll do what we tell you, when we tell you. The sooner you make your peace with that, sweetheart, the easier this’ll be.’

But she wasn’t listening. She was transfixed by the red-black mess spattering the walls of the clear plastic container, whose horrific contents Daniel stooped to show her.

‘What... oh God, what is that?’ she choked.

His thin smile said it all.

‘Don’t you recognise your own brain Michelle? Hmmm, I would have thought anyone would recognize their own brain?.’

Michelle felt cold, Daniel was still smiling at her, a sick, twisted smile. She lifted her hands to her head and felt that it was covered in bandages.

‘How? I don’t understand? I’ve been here all the time, how am I here if you have that?’ tears welled up in her eyes.

‘Oh don’t worry,’ Daniel threw his head back and laughed, ‘We didn’t take it all and we filled in the gap with our own little device, as I said, you’re ours now. Now here’s the plan…’

Daniel went on (and on) babbling about his ridiculous evil plan but Michelle paid little attention to what he was saying. She almost rolled her eyes at the absurdity but managed to control herself just in time. She let him go on and cried a bit more so he would think she was utterly defeated. Little did Daniel and his minions know, she had the upper hand as her brain could regenerate and would eventually absorb the device.

‘They think I am theirs now, do they? Well, let’s see what they think
about the fact that they are about to become minions to a HIGHER POWER!’

With a wriggle of her nose that was unnecessary to the casting of the spell, but that Michelle knew was the cutest thing she did, she flung her arms wide and summoned the demon Anamalech. She smirked as the eyes of Daniel and his sniveling minions grew wide with panic. In front of them appeared a ball of smoke, which span and hissed and grew to man-size proportions. Michelle coughed discreetly into her hand as the smoke hit the back of her throat then cleared to reveal a confused looking gentleman. As a result of that ridiculous nasal twitch Michelle had inadvertently summoned a Morris Dancer called Derek.

‘Magic and vanity do not mix well,’ Daniel hissed. ‘It is a precise art, where even the smallest twitch can ruin a spell.’

‘What are you afraid of? His handkerchiefs?’ he shouted to his followers. ‘Finish her off!’

Daniel’s drooling slaves surged forward as one, with Derek caught right in their path. However, the moment one of them touched him, there was a jangle of bells and another white-clad man appeared by his side. And then another. And another until Michelle could see Daniel no longer. Then came a flash as he summoned a lightning bolt and with one bound was free. In panic Michelle wriggled her nose again and prayed that this time she got it right. She felt herself whirling with lights flashing all around and shrieks of dismay from the Morris Dancers who had been caught up in the maelstrom. She could hear cackles of laughter as Anamalech exerted his mighty power and she knew she had overestimated her control over him.

‘You are mine’ he shrieked. ‘Your brain may absorb the device, but I shall extract it from you and then I shall rule the world with my accomplice’ as he revealed Daniel at his side.

‘You did not think for one minute I was going to help you did you?’

But he underestimated British backbone and the dancers with their bells and sticks and cries of ‘Get them chaps’ turned on the deadly duo and soon had them lying on the ground crying for mercy.

Michelle watched full of gratitude that the whole ghastly business was now at an end.

‘So what exactly is this device’ asked Derek as he came towards her with a disconcerting gleam in his eye and an evil look on his face and Michelle realised with a sinking heart that no matter what she had done she was now helpless and alone and in the power of a bunch of Mad Morris Dancers...

Daniel wrestled his way up from the ground and through the Morris dancers, not even stopping to comment on their excellent choice of attire. That could wait, he thought; fashion wasn’t going anywhere, but he soon might be. He made his way over to Michelle, who stood rigid in front of Derek. Was this dude for real?

‘Get out of my way’, Daniel shouted, before pushing Derek to the side like he was nothing more than an unwanted hat stand. ‘Michelle, are you okay? We need to get out of here, like, now’.

‘But you don’t like me’, she sneered back. ‘You just spent half an hour trying to kill me, you bloody idiot’.

‘I know, but I just had a brainwave, if you’ll excuse the pun, and I don’t want to be anyone’s lackey. Least of all Anamalech’s. He’s starting to bore me, and you’re much more interesting. For one thing, I’m now much smarter than you. So, come on. Let’s go!’

With that he faced the open window, and a pair of giant, irridescent wings emerged from Daniel’s shoulder blades, bathing the room - and the Morris dancers - in bright light.

‘No f**king way’, grinned Michelle. ‘You’re TINKERBELL!’

THE END.

~~~

Massive thanks to Sam Eades at Headline for giving me the opportunity to take part in this (although I was secretly cursing her when it came to my turn to write as I had a total mental blank). My review of Stories will appear on The Book Zone fairly soon. It is aimed at adults but older teens will find it a hugely enjoyable read.

Review: Losing It (edited by Keith Gray)

Melvin Burgess, Keith Gray, Patrick Ness, Sophie McKenzie, Bali Rai, Jenny Valentine and Mary Hooper. Some of today's leading writers for teens are gathered here in a wonderful collection of original stories: some funny, some moving, some haunting but all revolving around the same subject - having sex for the first time.


I may be mistaken but I think this is the first time I have reviewed an anthology of short stories on this blog, and what a book to be the first (pun intended). This is the kind of book that will have old fashioned, Daily Mail reading members of the British public up in arms, demanding that it be banned from schools and the Young Adult section in libraries across the country. And yet, if they bothered to stop and actually read this book they would discover that it could play a small part in helping our society to improve its shameful record of teen pregnancies and underage sex. Strong words, I hear you say, but I stand by them - books like this are very important, yet also seen far too infrequently on library and school bookshelves.


The above blurb from Amazon says it all - this book is a compilation of stories about teens losing (or trying to lose) their virginity. It is something that at some point will monopolise the thoughts of every teenager in the country, whether it be because they are desperate to have sex for the first time, whatever the consequences, or whether they want to save themselves until the time and other person are right for them. And just look at the list of authors who have contributed a story to this anthology - readers are certainly in good hands here.


As with all short story anthologies some of the stories are stronger than others, but as a collective effort it is brilliant. The stories are in turn poignant, funny and cringeworthy and I think most teenagers would run the gamut of emotions as they read through the whole volume. The book also covers a variety of different scenarios, including a boy who questions his football coaches maxim that sex before a big match will affect his performance; a girl living in India and the cultural attitudes of her society concerning relationships and sex; and a boy who is coming to terms with being gay and whether he should feel ashamed of this. This latter story is written by the hugely talented Patrick Ness, author of the Chaos Walking trilogy, and it is probably my favourite story in the anthology. Patrick uses a very crafty device in his writing by having all the 'rude' bits blacked out, as if censored. And I'm not just talking about the occasional word - in places there are whole paragraphs blacked out. I am sure there is many a teenager out there who will find it hilariously funny to create their own idea of what is going on in these blacked out areas.


I think there is something for every teenager in this anthology, and I know that many could gain enormously from reading it. I also feel that many adults will find it hugely entertaining, possibly in a cringing way, as they think back to how it felt being a teenager worried about losing their virginity too soon or too late. Losing It should be on the shelf in every school library, and the copy that Andersen Press kindly sent me will be added to our collection when the new term starts. There is also a fantastic Losing It blog that has been launched to tie in with the book. There are already a number of comments on there from the various authors and Keith Gray (the book's editor), as well as comments from readers who have expressed their own thoughts about losing their virginity.