James Mortimer (Author of The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords)

James rated a book really liked it Doctor Who: Wonderland by Mark Chadbourn (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I bought this book in 2006/2007, from a glass cabinet inside the Doctor Who Up Close exhibition, in Cardiff's Red Dragon Centre. It feels apt that, twenty or so years on, I'm finally reading it, in Cardiff. So firstly, it's probably good that I didn't ...more
Jul 13, 2026 11:09AM · 1 like · like · see review
James rated a book liked it Doctor Who: Circuit Breaker: Adversary of the Daleks by Dulse M. Montoya	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a really fun story, and it captures Jo Martin's Doctor incredibly well. I love the way she handles situations - it's refreshingly different, and I like that she exists to be different. The opening has a nice concise introduction of the 'Circu ...more
Jul 13, 2026 10:58AM · 1 like · like · see review
James rated a book liked it Doctor Who: The Space Museum (Classic TV Soundtrack) by Glyn Jones	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Maureen o'Brien's linking narration is, as ever, a delight. The first episode of this story is so interesting and inventive, and there's some absolutely delightful moments throughout. It never loses sight of its central concept - and it's such a cool ...more
Jun 13, 2026 01:10PM · 1 like · like · see review
James rated a book it was amazing Doctor Who: City of Death by Douglas Adams	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This reminded me what an incredible script this is. The perfect, quintessential Doctor Who. It's funny, it's mad, it's clever but easy to follow, the dialogue is unhinged in the best way at times. This version has Lalla Ward's linking narration, and ...more
Jun 13, 2026 01:07PM · 1 like · like · see review
James liked Cam's review of The Land of Painted Caves (Earth's Children, #6): "Have so enjoyed reading the complete set of Clan of the Cave Bear books! Read the first two many moons ago - and it has been lovely to revisit and to complete Ayla's story. Thank you James for the set :) Loved them!"
May 30, 2026 05:27AM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
James rated a book liked it Doctor Who: Alien Bodies (Eighth Doctor Adventures, #6) by Lawrence Miles	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I have thoughts. Reading some of the other reviews of this book, it seems like most people who encounter this book do! I knew a few of the ideas and concepts that it would explore before I started, and kind of sought this book out because of those, a ...more
May 19, 2026 12:28PM · 1 like · like · see review
James rated a book really liked it Doctor Who: The Time of Angels: 11th Doctor Novelisation by Jenny T Colgan	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
It gives me so much joy that Maureen o'Brien has read another of these novelisations. She was a great choice for The Waters of Mars because she kind of emulated Adelaide, and this choice seems completely random, but it works so well? I can't help but ...more
May 08, 2026 11:51AM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Doctor Who by Jenny T Colgan. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Doctor Who by Jenny T Colgan <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
James rated a book really liked it Doctor Who: Wirrn Dawn by Nicholas Briggs	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I really liked this one. I think the thing that I got into the most was that the action was sometimes unclear, because it wasn't punctuated by people narrating 'visualise this thing, Audio Listener!' It felt really refreshing, and fast-paced, and dan ...more
Apr 15, 2026 11:00AM · 1 like · like · see review
James rated a book liked it Doctor Who: Hothouse by Jonathan Morris (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Is this story essentially the same as 'The Seeds of Doom'? Yes. Is it worth listening to anyway? Yes. It's got enough differences to work, and it feels really relevant, in 2026 as well as when it was made, almost twenty years ago now. I wish there was ...more
Mar 03, 2026 06:44AM · 1 like · like · see review
James rated a book liked it Doctor Who: The Web Planet: 1st Doctor TV Soundtrack by Bill Strutton	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a really solid - if occasionally too long - story. At times nervewracking, at others funny, and at others completely bewildering that it ever made it to screen. I imagine if this was a four-parter it would be remembered much more fondly than ...more
Mar 03, 2026 06:39AM · 1 like · like · see review

James rated a book really liked it

Doctor Who: Wonderland
by Mark Chadbourn (Goodreads Author)

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I bought this book in 2006/2007, from a glass cabinet inside the Doctor Who Up Close exhibition, in Cardiff's Red Dragon Centre. It feels apt that, twenty or so years on, I'm finally reading it, in Cardiff.

So firstly, it's probably good that I didn't I bought this book in 2006/2007, from a glass cabinet inside the Doctor Who Up Close exhibition, in Cardiff's Red Dragon Centre. It feels apt that, twenty or so years on, I'm finally reading it, in Cardiff.

So firstly, it's probably good that I didn't finish this as a kid. It's very dark at times for a Doctor Who story (it's *very* Wilderness Years, and it's characterisation of the Second Doctor is closer to the Seventh at times, which I quite enjoyed tbh). But it's very good. I found the setting fascinating and fitting for Ben and Polly. This was probably my first exposure to them as characters when I read the first ten pages or so all those years ago, and it stuck with me. Now I know them a little better, I can see how well they're written, and Polly especially is brilliant; the way she talks about the situations that occur can be so funny sometimes, and feels very sixties.

It's a quick read, and it's easy to invest in Summer's search for her lost boyfriend. I loved all the historical stuff about JFK and the hippie movement, and the structure of the story doesn't feel that different to a 60s Who at all (or even a detective novel). The monster is portrayed absolutely terrifyingly at times - appearing invisible unless you take a specific brand of LSD, and it's frightening in both guises - and though I was a little disappointed by the revelation as to what's going on with the Colour-Beast, it's very Doctor Who. This really does have elements of a horror novel to it at times, which I enjoyed.

The ending has stuck with me the most. It's a spot-on characterisation of a different incarnation of the Doctor (and it's nice to see more of the character, since he doesn't feature quite enough in the novella for me), and it's a really beautiful, bittersweet, hopeful ending. It has a sense of softness that a lot of the settings of the book are devoid of.

There's fun little cameos for the Doctor, Ben, and Polly, of various different monsters, and again, though the reasoning for their appearances (and, indeed, the reasoning for the Doctor being absent for so much of the novella) aren't quite satisfying enough, they are such lovely little moments.

I feel like this novella influenced me a lot - even if only in the first ten pages I read when I was younger - and it's nice now to return to it. Especially since, really, the book feels exactly as I imagined the rest of it would be, and it retains that throughout, meaning this is a really consistent, but also, for me, a very nostalgic read. ...more

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Doctor Who: Circuit Breaker: Adversary of the Daleks
by Dulse M. Montoya

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This is a really fun story, and it captures Jo Martin's Doctor incredibly well. I love the way she handles situations - it's refreshingly different, and I like that she exists to be different. The opening has a nice concise introduction of the 'Circu This is a really fun story, and it captures Jo Martin's Doctor incredibly well. I love the way she handles situations - it's refreshingly different, and I like that she exists to be different. The opening has a nice concise introduction of the 'Circuit Breaker' vibe for anyone who's missed the UNIT introduction story (which is excellent and written in a really cool format, so I'd recommend that). The art isn't massively to my taste, but the stylised drawings of the exterminations are absolutely stunning, and the Dalek design is great.

My only issues with this are more about what it *doesn't* do, which for the most part aren't really criticisms of the comic itself. There's a cool moment where the Ancient Greeks have to fool a Dalek - but it's odd we never see what this looks like from the Dalek's perspective, and I feel that's maybe a missed opportunity?

As far as a 'the Doctor's first meeting with the Daleks' story goes, this is... an odd one. Why Ancient Greece? What's that telling us about the Daleks? Why are the alien refugees we meet in this story hiding here? And the Doctor gets to know the Daleks on a surface level - the initial confrontation, her dismissal of them, and her simultaneous determination that there *must* be good in them, are wonderful moments - but her discovery of them leaves out a lot of the... fascist stuff? Like, when the only story this can be compared to is the original Daleks story, which is steeped in Atomic War and eugenics and fascism, this story doesn't have the space to introduce the Doctor to who the Daleks really are. We don't need another Skaro story, or a repeat of The Daleks, but for a first meeting, we need *something*, and maybe the comic, drawn in this style and with a limited page count, isn't the place for it?

If we get this in 'Dawn of the Daleks' then amazing, but I'd still have loved her first encounter to have provided a little bit more for the Doctor to get her teeth into. She's breezing through these adventures - but the readers need something to sit with.

The advantage of the Fugitive Doctor is that she's a Doctor of the Dark Times. She needs to be fighting vampires and eldritch horrors and the Daleks absolutely have a place in that - but this hasn't capitalised on it yet. ...more

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Doctor Who: The Space Museum (Classic TV Soundtrack)
by Glyn Jones

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Maureen o'Brien's linking narration is, as ever, a delight. The first episode of this story is so interesting and inventive, and there's some absolutely delightful moments throughout. It never loses sight of its central concept - and it's such a cool ...more

James rated a book it was amazing

Doctor Who: City of Death
by Douglas Adams

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This reminded me what an incredible script this is. The perfect, quintessential Doctor Who. It's funny, it's mad, it's clever but easy to follow, the dialogue is unhinged in the best way at times. This version has Lalla Ward's linking narration, and ...more

James liked Cam's review of The Land of Painted Caves (Earth's Children, #6):

The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel

"Have so enjoyed reading the complete set of Clan of the Cave Bear books! Read the first two many moons ago - and it has been lovely to revisit and to complete Ayla's story. Thank you James for the set :) Loved them!"

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Doctor Who: Alien Bodies (Eighth Doctor Adventures, #6)
by Lawrence Miles

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I have thoughts. Reading some of the other reviews of this book, it seems like most people who encounter this book do! I knew a few of the ideas and concepts that it would explore before I started, and kind of sought this book out because of those, a I have thoughts. Reading some of the other reviews of this book, it seems like most people who encounter this book do! I knew a few of the ideas and concepts that it would explore before I started, and kind of sought this book out because of those, and I'm really glad I've read it and experienced it first-hand.

Cos it surprised me. When a lot of the concepts in this book (the nature of the Relic that all these aliens / humans are bidding over; the Faction Paradox; a war in the future involving the Time Lords) are explained by fandom, they seem... complicated. And they are often complex concepts, and I imagine in future books that's only going to get more so, but the way they're explained here is so simple. There's an ease to the whole book, a casualness, a glide through lots and lots of ideas, but all concepts are explained with the same control and smoothness.

I think, sometimes, the author is also very aware of that. The way I feel about the prose-style changed about every three-five pages. It's brilliant one minute, infuriating the next, and dumb and joyful somewhere in between those two things. It's very readable prose, but the narrative voice gets so loud and overwhelming sometimes that I found myself pulling faces in a 'did it really just say that?' sort of way.

Each section (and the sections change a *lot*, this is structured more like a TV episode than a novel, and that's never my favourite element of Doctor Who books) is third person, but is about 50-50 narrative voice, and the voice of whichever character's perspective we're in at that moment. Sometimes this 50-50 blurs. Sometimes I wonder if it goes too far, like, did one of Faction Paradox need to be quite so misogynistic? Is there a bit of a juvenile joy from occasionally dropping a slur against women? 'Juvenile' is perhaps a good descriptor generally for some of the prose. It's sometimes a bit too excitable, or clever for its own good.

The interludes, where we learn the backstory of each bidder (amongst other things), always started out for me as a bit of an 'ugh' moment, but I think pretty much every single one won me over. The book kept winning me over, even when it had just frustrated me. There's a lot of talent here, a lot of amazing ideas...

And the amazing ideas are clearly so amazing that they keep happening. A human TARDIS (one of my favourite things about this book, it's so weird, and it's kind of romantic, and creepy, and heartbreaking), a powerful Time Lord body, a war in the future. A companion whose life has (maybe) been influenced and manipulated by the Doctor to make her a 'perfect' companion, a Time War, Time Lords ascending to creatures of pure thought, a reference to Smith and Jones! All things that will appear (or, almost appear) in the TV show from 2005 onwards, but are here, in December 1997.

It's clear this book either had a big influence (Moffat, at least, we know read it), or was dealing in fan concepts that were floating in the air in the 90s. Cos the book is very 90s, and it's very dark - too dark, at times. (Bergman repeatedly throwing herself down some stairs (most things with Bergman to be honest) springs to mind.) Maybe sometimes it's not Doctor Who at all... and maybe all of these books from the Wilderness Years will be like that. Maybe that's good, maybe it's bad. It still has a lot of traditional elements of the show that appear to have been misinterpreted (a bewilderingly grumpy Doctor who's a bit off with the companion, for example), and it also has a lot of outright horror elements that are so adult that they would be off-putting if presented in the show (or prose for that matter).

But special mentions for my favourite elements - the Shift, a being of ideas, who can only communicate if there's something to write on nearby; the 3rd Doctor and Sarah Jane in the opening, such a beautiful way to start the novel, and a very, very Doctor Who idea; and Marie, the human TARDIS, who seems to get more emotion and character than most characters in the book, and she's not even really a person at all.

Do I feel satisfied at the end? It's hard to imagine a different ending (though I think a shorter book with less Kroton-distractions may have been preferable to me...), and I think everything I expected to be wrapped up has been. It's a book of ideas, but not in the way I was expecting, and I think that's a very good compliment indeed. ...more

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Doctor Who: The Time of Angels: 11th Doctor Novelisation
by Jenny T Colgan

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It gives me so much joy that Maureen o'Brien has read another of these novelisations. She was a great choice for The Waters of Mars because she kind of emulated Adelaide, and this choice seems completely random, but it works so well? I can't help but It gives me so much joy that Maureen o'Brien has read another of these novelisations. She was a great choice for The Waters of Mars because she kind of emulated Adelaide, and this choice seems completely random, but it works so well? I can't help but imagine what she makes of some of this as a companion of the First Doctor (especially the (very sensitively-rewritten) final scene between the Doctor and Amy), but she also really brings out some of Hartnell's gruffness in Matt Smith's more grouchy lines, which is great.

The novelisation itself brings out some lovely details, most of all River's perspective on seeing Amy, when Amy has no idea that this woman is her daughter. It's really beautifully done and, though the thread disappears mostly in the last third of the novel, is given really good focus early on. The goodbye scene is also really touching. There's some great extra little details about Octavian, his Church, his opinions on the Doctor, and it all supports the content from the TV episodes.

My one wish is that some of these novelisations went further. I'm speculating here, but I guess if it's your own TV episode, you feel you have a bit more of a licence to change things (or maybe you even legally do, idk), and substantially expand what was in your episode. Writers novelising other people's episodes maybe have to honour that fine line between representing what was on screen, deepening it and adding to it, but without changing too much? I wish some of the conversations were expanded here, I wish there were new little scenes dotted around, and I think most of all I felt a sense that this book could've been so much longer. It's a good representation of the stories as they happened, with some lovely new character work, but I think my personal taste for Target novelisations is 'let's topple the London Eye' or 'let's introduce a subplot about a therapy robot' (from 'Rose' and 'The Day of the Doctor').

But that isn't to understate what a beautifully, touching novel this is. It's not as much of a horror as the TV episodes can touch upon, but it's turned into a much more intimate version of the story, and that's very okay with me. ...more

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Doctor Who: Wirrn Dawn
by Nicholas Briggs

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I really liked this one. I think the thing that I got into the most was that the action was sometimes unclear, because it wasn't punctuated by people narrating 'visualise this thing, Audio Listener!' It felt really refreshing, and fast-paced, and dan ...more

James rated a book liked it

Doctor Who: Hothouse
by Jonathan Morris (Goodreads Author)

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Is this story essentially the same as 'The Seeds of Doom'? Yes. Is it worth listening to anyway? Yes.

It's got enough differences to work, and it feels really relevant, in 2026 as well as when it was made, almost twenty years ago now. I wish there was ...more

James rated a book liked it

Doctor Who: The Web Planet: 1st Doctor TV Soundtrack
by Bill Strutton

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This is a really solid - if occasionally too long - story. At times nervewracking, at others funny, and at others completely bewildering that it ever made it to screen. I imagine if this was a four-parter it would be remembered much more fondly than ...more

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	The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (The Black Archive, #38) 3.47 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2019	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Flux (The Black Archive, #63) by Paul Driscoll (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Alasdair Stuart (Goodreads Author), James Cooray Smith 3.93 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2023	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nail Varnish it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2017	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Darcaelan Casebook Volume One by Jake Hannam, James Mortimer (Goodreads Author), Elliott Johnson it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2017	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

James’s Year In Books

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James’s Friends (10)

James Mortimer

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