Doctor Who: 2 in 1 . 1

Writing a book is hard. So the BBC decided to make it easy by only asking authors to write half a book and sticking two of them together. Or rather, given the type face and spacing, a quarter of a book.

First up, Death Riders/Heart of Stone by Justin Richards/Trevor Baxendale.

Death Riders is about a circus in an asteroid, and a lot of running around. Really a lot. There's also death, and a monster (which I thought was big but must have only been wee), and not everything going on is as it seems. Justin Richards gives us a kiddy book and clearly has delved deeply into kiddy writing. The characterisation was meh, and the story wasn't much better. More like Justin Richards had one or two good ideas, and decided to write a story around them.

Heart of Stone was a lot better, but I'm not sure how much of that is because I like Trevor Baxendale's writing. Now, there is still running around, let's not pretend otherwise, and the story is also aimed low, but there just seemed to be better ideas, and better executed here. Interestingly, when he married Amy, Rory because Rory Pond. Hmm... (Although, to be fair, I couldn't remember his last name either until I rewatched Amy's Choice.)

Not sure I'm a fan of this style of book, but so far 1.5 out of 2...

[END]