It's a shame that Ian Marter never got to write any VNAs or EDAs because I know in my heart they would have been fantastic. The Invasion is not a TV story I remember too well, but the book does follow the story closely, without much of the extra detail Marter often puts in his novelisations.

That said, the prose is beautifully written. The story moves along at a great pace, all the characters feel like the screen versions we love and the threat of the Cybermen feels real. There's hardly any extra padding, and where there is, it's to drive home how brutal a death is or how twisted the villain's plan is. It is a litte gorier than the TV version - as I say, Marter would have aced a VNA.

A genuinely enjoyable listen, read well by David Troughton, and yet again proving what a wonderful writer Marter is.

After the joy and fun of Demontage, Revolution Man comes and hits like a brick in the face. Heavy, dark, full of drugs and splattery deaths, Leonard presents us with another book which is full of social commentary and gore. This may be my favourite of the Leonard-penned EDAs so far, though I am still trying to decipher how I felt about it.

For one thing, it wasn't boring. We have a small set of minor characters, and though they're all destined for the grave eventually (what else is a minor character in the EDAs for, after all?), they are relatively compelling, if all a little caricaturish. Maddie, naive and sweet, gets swept up in the drug-fuelled schemes of her pop star boyfriend, Ed. Ed has stumbled upon a mystical flower that grants users magical psychic abilies when ingested. And he decides to use these to overthrow the entire world.

I must say that the finer details of why he was motivated to do this were lost on me, and certainly the narrative doesn't paint his Revolution Man ideas in a particularly flattering light. It is hard to tell exactly what this book thinks about world governments and about revolutionaries because it seems to want to condemn them all as violent and a little useless.

However, a political plot is one Sam thrives in. For the first time in a while, she feels like she has a presence again which is nice. Trapped in the late 60s, she draws parallels between activism then and from her time, and makes some nice acknowledgments of the progress that has been made. Her conflict with Fitz is also compelling, especially when it comes to how they view the Doctor. Her worship of him and insistence that he can do no wrong has previously made her a bit passive, but in contrast with Fitz's doubt, she flourishes here. Fitz, meanwhile, spends a lot of time freezing to death in Tibet. I didn't like him very much in this one - he was lacking some of what made him endearing in previous novels.

The Doctor too felt a little out of character and distant, and I'm certainly not sure how I feel about him pulling the trigger at the end. Of course, Ed isn't the first person the Doctor has got killed, but the viscera of Ed's gory insides splattering on the Doctor's coat was a strong choice. I am not sure I agree with it though.

Overall, definitely a better read than some of the other tedious and terrible books of the range, though its subject matter means enjoying it was not easy. A decent enough book, but not one I'd rush to reread.

What a delight it is to have a fun book in this series! I don't think we've had a properly fun one since The Scarlet Empress, and I don't think I've honestly enjoyed one this much since then either. I feel like I'm really on the precipice of hitting the really excellent section of the EDAs, which is exciting to me.

But to the topic at hand: Demontage. There are a lot of moving parts in this book. Set in a casino complex at the edge of a warzone between the generically human-y Battrulians and the wolfish Canvines. As far as Who stories go, that's not an atypical kind of setup - a war, a tension, political players manouevring and scheming. Because the Battrul president is arriving, and there's a target on her head. And on top of that, the artist whose creepy works are being displayed, has been murdered, and it looks like a Canvine did it.

This book is just brimming with side characters, which is something I have complained about in DW novels before, but this one gives them a rich personality and doesn't just treat them as cannon fodder, which is refreshing. We have Bigdog Caruso, the Canvine who just wants to watch the opera in peace; the two artists Blanc and Gath who are up to no good; poor, beautiful Vermillion who gets trapped in a painting. Then we have double-bluffing Stabilo, pretending to be a buffoon but really out to protect the president; and Rappare and Forster, lying and cheating gamblers. All of these are great characters, to the point that I even remembered all the names without looking them up!

Though of course, the best side character in this novel is Hazard Solarin, super assassin with his cool glass murder-ware and a life lived entirely by random chance. For almost the entire novel, we assume he's out to kill the president and the Doctor, but in reality, he's been paid to make sure the president isn't harmed. His death at the end didn't come as a surprise, exactly, but it did make me go aw, man, which is more than a random side character's death usually does in these things.

And all of this is before I've said a word about Fitz and his ridiculous James Bond schtick, getting him muddled up in the assassination. The man just wants a cigarette, but his nature just keeps getting him into scrapes. Two books in, and I'm easily seeing why he's a fan favourite. The Doctor too was characterised beatifully in this book - seemingly naive and innocent, but always scheming, always pulling the strings. That's the Mr Dr Who that I like to see. Poor Sam yet again gets the least to do, but she wasn't totally bland  which is more than she has been elsewhere.

I'm not sure I fully understood Blanc and Rath's scheme with the painting monsters, but I'm also not sure it really matters because I had fun. The monsters were unique too - I really liked the descriptions of them as being made of canvas. The end came round quite quickly in a battle of painting demons and action, and as I say, I lost the plot a little, but I don't mind. I had fun. To me, that's what counts.

I will confess, it is only a love for the ICMG that has brought me here. But what fun I have had! Ian with a comical beard! Allison smacking someone on the head with a wrench! Rachel working on a turbofan engine! All that was missing was Sir Toby up to something (and yes, this completely flies in the face of the audios canon, but it is what it is).

The actual story is relatively simple - an alien race has infiltrated humanity with a plan for domination, and the ICMG get mixed up in stopping it. The side characters were relatively uninspiring, but they served their purpose well. If anything, I thought the story itself wrapped up a little too fast, a little too conveniently. But I had fun, so I don't mind that much.

Ace and the Doctor were well served too - Ace especially has a large role in figuring out the alien plan and how to stop it which is nice. There is always a danger in ICMG stories that Allison gets a little overlooked due to her status as an 'assistant', and though she does spend much of the time here as a wall for Rachel to bounce ideas off, I will be thinking about her violent tendecies with fondnes in days to come.

It is difficult, I think, when you have an alien race that has been designated as a homogenous fighter race who love war and all think the same, to write a story that is actually interesting as well as not just being a rehash of stuff done before. John Dorney, as always, delivers. This story plays with the ideas of Sontaran clone batches and how powerful a Sontaran would be if they were to have an entire clone genetic batch in one being. There's also some generic humans v Sontarans stuff, and Strang trying to create a portal that will take him anywhere in space so he can go and conquer it completely.

In a sense, it is a relatively generic story - the Sontaran plotline, though interesting, is run of the mill in terms of 'the bad guy is defeated. But it is the Doctor and Leela's relationship that really makes this story shine. Leela decides, at the end, that it is not worth the potential of Strang's dangerous genetic batch getting out into the universe so she detroys them, against the Doctor's wishes. He is upset by this, but Leela is steadfast in her beliefs. It was very good to hear a story that allows Leela to be ruthless and calculating in a way that isn't just 'yeah, the stupid warrior stabs'. It offers a truly interesting insight into the stark differences between the Doctor and Leela, and Jameson's performance when the Doctor tells Leela he's taking her home is utterly heartbreaking. This alone elevated this to a higher rating for me.

The story is presented as almost a case file of the events of Remembrance. This, I thought, made for a more interesting read than a simple out of universe summary, as althought it did provide a comprehensive recap of events, the tone made it compelling. Though there isn't particularly anything new or groundbreaking in the summary, it is nice to see the ICMG get the recognition they deserve, and for Allison to be recognised as a physicist in her own right rather than just 'Rachel's assistant'.

A summary of events in the 'real world' leading up to of Remembrance of the Daleks. This story solidifies Quatermass as part of the Whoniverse and amusingly references the fact that Doctor Who itself exists in Remembrance. With ties to Delta and the Bannermen and The Abominable Snowmen create a surprisingly coherent narrative given all the disjointed bits of canon it's trying to knit together. Nothing particularly substantial, but an intriguing read nevertheless.

This story was kind of dull to me until about 50 minutes in. The premise itself is not disinteresting - a creature that feasts on the dark and time and provokes apathy in people. We're introduced to a cast of relatively uninspiring side characters who waffle back and forth about turning the lights on and catching the Stormcrow creature.

It's only when the Doctor gets overtaken by the creature that things get a little more interesting. He immediately rejects Leela and humanity as being annoying clinger-ons, and seems to abandon her, much to her surprise. One of the things that intrigues me most about Leela's character is the way she does not and has never belonged. Though she clings to the Sevateem, she never really fit in there, and many of her most interesting stories dig into these ideas. So when Leela said 'I may never find the place where I belong', I sat bolt upright, suddenly intrigued.

Without thinking, this story manages to cut straight to the thesis of Leela's character, giving us a touching scene where she reflects that she will probably never see the place she was born again.

And then it goes back to being a little dull. A shame, but goes to show that every episode can have a hidden gem in it.

This book spends its first thirty pages Doctorless and introducing us to a million side characters who will all be dead by the end. I hate it when DW novels do this - they almost invariably give me no reasons to care about the side characters and I am rarely sad to see them go. The Face Eater is no exception.

It's not a bad book, exactly. I just didn't enjoy any part of it. Sam and the Doctor head to a pioneering human colony world led by tight fisted ex-military Helen Percival. I rather suspect we were meant to think of her as a domineering bitch but I find that kind of woman hot so I liked her. In fact, she was basically the only character with a personality that wasn't just a tired stock trope. We have Fuller, the world weary detective, and Leary, the misunderstood hero, and after that I stop remembering names.

And then we have the Doctor and Sam who are basically just there. The Doctor is off having a jaunty old time getting beaten up and hanging out with the telepathic natives of the world while Sam gets lusted over by a 40 year old man for some reason and has, yet again, a very bad day. Neither of them seemed to be that relevant to the story and both spent a sizeable amount of time hospitalised, immobilised, and broken.

The world itself is an interesting one - Messingham insists upon introducing every character with their full name and racial identity which paints us a picture of an incredibly diverse world. Men and women seem equal in jobs and society. Everyone is pulling towards the same goal. But for all the interesting potentials there, the story may as well have been set on Earth in the 90s. It gave no flavour of otherworldliness.

This perhaps sounds more negative than I feel, but in truth I feel very little. I will, in all likelihood, forget about this book very quickly, except for one conclusion: for a book called The Face Eater, basically nobody got their face eaten. What a false promise.

This could not have been a more generic commentary on climate change and corporate greed if it tried. That said, it was a perfectly fine commentary. It got the job done. The Daleks were... well, there I guess. It was unremarkable, though not tedious.

As always, Leela is the highlight here with Louise Jameson giving her all to fight against becoming a Roboman. And though Leela costume remarks are tiresome at best, I can't deny I did get a kick out of how much she enjoyed wearing trainers.