This carries on from the previous novel The Knight, The Fool and The Dead, so if you haven’t read that, there’ll be spoilers for it here.

The Tenth Doctor continues his quest in the Dark Times to end the Kottururh.

I was soo pleased by the end of the last novel: My questions had been answered. Ever since I listened to the Enemy of my Enemy audio, where, at the conclusion, the Eighth Doctor planned to go back to the Dark Times, I was quite looking forward to find out what happened. But somehow, never got there. With the Tenth being the protagonist of The Knight, The Fool and the Dead, I’d wondered how it had taken the Doctor so long to get there (maybe the time war had got in the way). But then just at the end not only did the Eighth turn up but so did the Ninth!

If you’ve read any other of my TLV reviews, you might know that I only planned to listen to the Big Finish audios. They barely touched on the story, which is why I then watched the Daleks! webcast, read these two novels, the BF short trips, and planned to get the Minds of Magnox audio book that follows this. I would definitely recommend doing some research if you plan to delve into the TLV series, I would have slotted things in differently.

This is definitely the other half of The Knight, the Fool and the Dead. Its the continuation of the same story, so you really need that to enjoy this.

Three Doctors! The Tenth, The Eighth and the Ninth. I don’t know much of how the Ninth Doctor got involved, I think there was a DWM comic that explains it (which I might look into (I did!)), but he comes along with the vampires. The Eighth, as I’ve heard the audios, arrives with Daleks. So including the Kotturuh, its three Doctors and three foes.

The different Doctors are written nicely - I can almost hear the different actors speaking the parts.  Though sometimes I did have to check which one was speaking - at the end of the day the Doctor is the Doctor. But even being a fan of Big Finish it was still a joy to have the other Doctors present.

You are quite worried by the Tenth Doctor in his determination to wipe out the Kotturuh (living up the the Time Lord Victorious name). The two previous Doctors have come to stop him, so Doctor against Doctors. Even then, there’s still the issues of Daleks in the Dark Times to deal with.

As with the first novel I enjoyed it - plenty going on. Brian the Ood, as ever is on hand to help. Having listened to Mutually Asssured Destruction its nice to have things fall into place, though as I said, if I’d of thought about it I would have read this prior to it.

At the time of writing, June 25, its available for download for 99p so not a bad price.