“This is the Pres­i­dent of the Right­eous Fist of Ras­silon,” he barked. And then he gave the order that he had prayed he would never have to issue. “Break open the Slaughterhouse.”
Excerpt from The Quan­tum Archangel

I wish I could sum­ma­rize this book prop­erly, but it seems to be many sto­ries unfold­ing in one. There are even sto­ries within sto­ries that are noth­ing less than vivid and unnerv­ing. The Doctor goes to inves­ti­gate tem­po­ral dis­tur­bances going on in modern-​day Earth only to find The Master trying to exact revenge upon the Chronovores as well as become a God by taking con­trol of the same power that sus­tains those same Chronovores. The plan goes to hell and a new crea­ture is born: The Quan­tum Archangel. Que the epic end-​of-​everything multi-​verse-​cluster-​fuck that is the second half of this book.

To be honest, I thought that the book was going to be over when there were still about 150 pages left. I hon­estly couldn’t see how they could drag it out any fur­ther then it had already been dragged. Mr. Hinton did a damned fine job of throw­ing me through a loop and cre­at­ing a story so epic, that to render it on TV would require tech­nol­ogy not cur­rently in pro­duc­tion, and a budget to match. The alter­nate real­i­ties pro­vided through­out por­tions of the book really help to com­plete the mind-​blowing that starts at that 150 page mark. It’s one of the few Doctor Who books that pro­vide a view of the Doctor as totally at the mercy of some­thing far greater than himself.

The writ­ing is sold from start to finish, and Craig Hinton does a superb job of nail­ing the Doc­tors third and sixth incar­na­tions, as well as The Mas­ters. The sup­port­ing char­ac­ters are strong, three-​dimensional people who (in some cases) are good recre­ations of their former cor­po­real selves. There’s a strong sense of wit and direc­tion in regards to the back and forth between the dif­fer­ing char­ac­ters and I found myself smirk­ing more than once

This book is the reason that I read and love Doctor Who. The ridicu­lous epic­ness that the Doctor gen­er­ates is worth it all. The depth of char­ac­ter that is dis­played in these books is what the new series lacks, and which is why time and time again I am brought back to the older series. To hell with the youth that they are trying to cap­ture with the new series; give me the depth I crave!

Worth read­ing, espe­cially if you like epic sto­ries and even more so if you’ve seen The Time Mon­ster and enjoyed it.

8/10