The Kindle versions of Blood of Atlantis, Times Squared and Mind of Stone are all free on Amazon!

That's extraordinarily generous of them, dunno what kind of crazy business model these people are running, but now we have NO EXCUSE not to read the bug - er, kind gifts.

Mind of Stone:

Foreword: Haisman was a 'supremely talented scriptwriter'? Have you not SEEN The Dominators! 'I have to admit that, not being an avid viewer of Doctor Who over the years' - oh. You haven't. That would explain it.

Starts off lively enough - our Brig! In JAIL! - but soon starts treading water.

'I assure you that nobody goes to prison in this country without good cause' - and none of them laugh in Hamilton's face?

'"You're too young to be a POW." "From the Second World War, yes"' - look, I'm not BLAMING anyone for ignoring the Deadly Reunion PDA. It's the only remotely sane thing to do (she says, having just read Deadly Reunion for the second time). But that's not gonna stop me pointing out it had the Brig fighting in World War Two...

The book keeps referring to 'Miss Travers', whilst people introduce her as 'Doctor Travers'.

'What sort of weapon could do something like this to troops of the Special Forces Support Group? They underwent some of the most advanced training in the British Army...' - which would of course TOTALLY protect them against alien turning-you-to-stone rays...

There's a sweet little chat about the late Captain Knight from Web of Fear. Mysteriously failing to mention how his voice aged by, like, fifty years in those last few days...(The Diary of River Song Season Six: The Web of Time). Also, how DARE Anne repent of being 'so •••• superior' towards him? Any man who oozes 'What's a girl like you doing in a job like this?' deserves everything he gets.

'Don't worry, old chap. I'll make sure nobody hurts you on my account' - since when has the Brig made promises he can't keep, especially ones with such blatantly obvious holes in them ('And just how do you plan to do that cooped up in here?')?

There's something so horribly WRONG about the Brig being beaten half to death by criminals in jail. It's like someone threatening to rape the Doctor or something. It's fundamentally against everything the Whoniverse IS. (NB: fine in the hands of a brilliant writer doing it deliberately - viz, Interference when Pertwee got boiling coffee thrown in his face before dying in the dust because he'd wandered into the wrong adventure. But just not acceptable in any OTHER circumstances.)

Why doesn't Jenkins tell the Brig he's not fit to be returned to his cell and quietly offer him another couple of days in the infirmary BEFORE rather than AFTER declaring him fit to be returned to his cell?

Anne usually spends the beginning of December planning Christmas with her father? The Yeti-loving freak just doesn't seem the TYPE to be obsessed by Christmas instead of, well, Yetis.

'Liz from Cambridge' is an old friend of Anne Travers' since WHEN!

'They'll know that we will have made contact with the authorities, blocking their way into London' - you DID? WHEN!

The protection around this stupid lump of rock is looking ridiculous when compared with the security around the Dalek-carrying truck in Revolution...

'"What do you mean, something you can use against them?" Alistair asked. "Information? Evidence of some kind of crimes?" "That's none of your concern," Godfrey said quickly. Alistair shrugged. "I'm happy to keep it that way"' - so, er, why did you ask then?

'When he asked questions about Travers and Douglas, Cowie's gut took against the man' - what, AGAIN? You just said that 'When [Cowie] met Leslie Johnston he took an instant dislike to the man'!

The crooks are a bit too ready to believe that the Brig could be executed even though Britain had de facto abolished the death penalty by then.

Didn't it occur to them that they needed a torch for the tunnel?

Who wanted to know the Brig is currently wearing hideous paisley pattern nylon underpants? Certainly not me. I'm still struggling with Capaldi's revelations in Zygon Invasion/Inversion...

Lucky the thug who couldn't walk on his busted ankle could run and vault over a lot of fences on it.

Hang on, the stupid lump of rock was kidnapped LAST AUGUST? That must have been pre-Web of Fear (what with Captain Knight being, y'know, ALIVE) so that's one hell of a lot of adventures jampacked into very few months...

'Go down and tell him to get a move on, will you' - um, Anne gives orders to Douglas since when? And who's 'he'? The Brig? How the hell is Douglas supposed to give orders to an undercover man? Telepathically?

The Brig didn't worry about TOUCHING Godfrey's hand that had turned to stone? In case it's infectious?

What the hell made the Brig think that telling the criminal thug he's betrayed him and played him for a fool all along will get him to co-operate?

I was really enjoying this book - unusually for its ilk - saying 'Alistair' rather than 'Lethbridge-Stewart' all the time, when...it started Lethbridge-Stewart-ing all the time. (Both, of course, are wrong - his name is the Brigadier! - but at least 'Alistair's shorter. I suppose it's deliberate, to reflect the transition from prisoner/fugitive to British Army Officer, but a double-barrelled name gets very repetitive very fast.)

'Balling his fist, Douglas pushed the first knuckle of his middle finger outwards so that when the hand clenched that finger was slightly elevated from the fist. He swung it hard, aiming for Hansen's eye. He hit his target and Hansen screamed in pain, giving Douglas the chance to roll away from the criminal' - what, no gruesome descriptions of the exploding eyeball? How unusually civilised, most Who novels fulfil their eye-gouging duties a lot more...graphically.

The Brig didn't think of shooting instead of hand-to-hand combat with a rapidly-turning-to-stone bloke SOONER?

'The plant's security' - WHAT security? Did they flee in terror from two men like everyone else and then...wander back to the plant?

'A party of four, consisting of three men and two women, were among the first off the train' - !

Either math isn't their forte, or they subscribe to the notion that a woman is only worth half a man.

Why doesn't Jenkins tell the Brig he's not fit to be returned to his cell and quietly offer him another couple of days in the infirmary BEFORE rather than AFTER declaring him fit to be returned to his cell?

To make sure the Brig knows that he is doing him a favor, that he might want to collect on later?

Lucky the thug who couldn't walk on his busted ankle could run and vault over a lot of fences on it.

Adrenaline works wonders.

'A party of four, consisting of three men and two women, were among the first off the train' - !

Either math isn't their forte, or they subscribe to the notion that a woman is only worth half a man.

*Snort* Maybe men are worth two-thirds of a woman...?

That too.

Sounds like someone flunked math.

Innumeracy is better than sexism, I suppose...

Blood of Atlantis:

'"Miss Travers..." "Doctor Travers, if you don't mind."' - compare n'contrast with Grandfather Infestation's 'He looked slightly puzzled. "Why don't they call you Doctor Travers?" Lethbridge-Stewart winced; this was another subject Miss Travers could go on about almost forever. Her disdain for the university system and her education in the more esoteric branches of research'...

Also, if she's suddenly insisting on Doctor Travers, why do the Brig and the book continue to refer to her as 'Miss'?

Aaaand Blood of Atlantis unhelpfully has: ''"May I ask, in what capacity is Miss Travers here?" "Doctor Travers is our head of scientific research"' - *sigh*

Before coming out with lines like 'Just see to it the contents reach Miss Travers safely, would you, Flight Lieutenant?'...*sigh*

God, can Anne just stop shooting embittered glances/hurling embittered comments/flinging embittered papers at the Brig for TWO MINUTES? This is her (world-saving!) job. Of course it comes before indulging her latest bout of Electra-Complex. Even I'm starting to feel like asking 'Time of the month, dear?'...

'A double ring of piers' - piers come in rings?

'Hating himself for forgetting' - well, QUITE. That's bloody HOURS (I exaggerate slightly) that Owen didn't give his friends and comrades a thought.

Owain survived nine or ten hours adrift - unconscious? - in 'so bloody cold' waters? (Alright, come to think of it how cold could it have BEEN in the Mediterranean?)

Quite weird the Brig is intent on 'strong-arming' one particular archaeologist into working for him. (Especially as she's one of those 'woman' things. As late as, um, whenever-the-hell-Battlefield-is-set he really didn't seem to have got the hang of FEMALE UNIT personnel.)

Aww, BLESS, even on the rare occasions it's obviously NOT the Great Intelligence, these guys feel the need to discuss whether the ships are being sunk by some sort of Great Intelligence-built Web underwater (obviously realising they're stuck in a series with rights to VERY FEW Doctor Who monsters)...

'Tabbies, gingers, blacks, black-and-whites, ginger-and-whites, white-and-grey-with-brown-patch-above-nose, and tortoiseshells' - dammit I should be relishing this beautiful picture, if only the Who novels didn't have a fixation with hurting oochies...

Why are all the cats so TIMID? Fleeing in terror when Mummy so much as wags a finger?

What sort of cat-lover calls them MERCENARY?

And...the preciouses are MANGY?

Ah. So THIS is why Mind of Stone had everyone saying every five minutes 'Oh look people are turning to stone just like in the last adventure but it's a completely DIFFERENT alien substance that's turning 'em all into stone, honest'. Given they churn out about a thousand L-S novels a year you'd think Candy Jar could have juggled things a BIT so they wouldn't insanely have published these two books in a row.

'The only one running that way' - no one else on the beach had children (or anyone else they cared about) at the water's edge?

'Families clustering together, some rescuing a few belongings amid the stampede' - so they cared more about their POSSESSIONS than their children?! (NB: Not a criticism...)

Owain has a dead twin called Lewis? Because sometimes being the reincarnation of the Great Intelligence and/or the Brig's excised-from-history brother, posing as his nephew...just isn't ENOUGH.

The Brig isn't ARMED?

Samson and the Brig are 'Sam' and 'Al' to each other?! And to think, we never even got to know Benton's first name...

Gods, fight scenes are just so dull in novels.

Grigoriy just watched the other vehicles getting away? Instead of shooting out their tyres or something?

Samson picked up Owain and carried him in a fireman's lift and none of their skin came into contact?

'If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were possessed' - the Brig doesn't believe in possession?!

'This is the Atlantis of films, of popular culture...It cannot be real' - but that Atlantis IS real! We've seen it in The Time Monster! And Fallen Gods!

There's a silicon-based lifeform on Earth? That the Doctor's never heard of? (Since he's going on about how rare they are in Hand of Fear.)

Another Atlantis!?

How many of the bloody things are there on Earth Who?

It's OK, it's not a real Atlantis, it was just faked by some rock for, um, some reason...

Oh, okay then.

The Whoniverse does not need any more of those.

Times Squared:

as opposed to your brother who's a reincarnation of the Great Intelligence

Aha! It's the other way round:

'Centuries from now, via some arcane science or magic he could not begin to fathom, he himself was destined to be reincarnated as well, becoming the ascended, formless being they knew as the Great Intelligence.'

That actually makes (a bit more) sense.

Adorable intro from Terry Molloy of all people. (Davroses. Whatever.)

Sally's a habitual smoker? (Not a nit just not something I remember from the numerous other Sally books before the Brig dumped her.)

The Brig's bought a suite for himself and an adjoining one for Sally (as well as a suite for Owain) at an expensive American hotel?

Owain's got lavish tipping-money?

Always thought the Brig was upper-class with plenty of family money behind him but Candy Jar's own books say otherwise so where's it all coming from?

'Hayes’ voice had a deferential quality to it, but his stance and demeanour didn’t echo it. Whether that was due to Kramer’s youth, gender or the colour of her skin, Lethbridge-Stewart couldn’t say for certain, but it irked him regardless' - Jeez, wasn't it ridiculous enough that the Young Brig was a supporter of gay soldiers shagging (Stranded 2: UNIT Dating) without claiming that he's a proponent of WOMEN'S RIGHTS? Try watching Battlefield some time. (Plus - it's AMERICA. In the nineteen-sixties. In what alternative universe would the Brig honestly expect a BLACK FEMALE SOLDIER to be treated with any sort of RESPECT?)

Does it really not occur to Owain that all this opening-his-inner-eye nonsense might be what CAUSES him to end up as Mr G. Intelligence?

The Intelligence 'set its remaining forces a new mission. One designed to unfold at some later time. And unwilling or unable to wait for time to take its proper course, the Intelligence opened a door. A portal' - ha ha ha ha! The Intelligence lurked around Det-Sen for HUNDREDS OF YEARS with no sign of impatience, but five minutes after the Doctor defeats it then 'some enduring part of the Great Intelligence' successfully screws around with time-travel cos its feeling impatient...

'Over Simon’s protests, Owain had paid their dinner bill...He wanted to repay his new mate for saving his neck, and so Simon relented' - I thought Simon TOLD him to pay for it hours ago - 'You want to pay me back? I'm famished. What do you say to some grub?'

'The red-faced old professor' - you said he was middle-aged earlier.

'He did not like to be underestimated. Dismissed' - I got the impression he was really happy about not being noticed...?

'He was carrying no American funds' - the Brig came to the US without any CURRENCY?

The Brig asks THE MILITARY to check up on his fiancee not answering the phone in her hotel instead of, say, the hotel staff he's just been speaking to?

And then decides to go himself...WITH the cop rather than just on his own? It's not like there's anything remotely sinister about Sally not answering her phone, she's on holiday in New York, she's probably...GONE OUT. (I mean, OBVIOUSLY she's been kidnapped by Evil From Before The Dawn Of Time or whatever but that's not the POINT.)

'Lethbridge-Stewart patted his hip, and cursed. He wasn’t even armed. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like it a bit' - well he should be used to it by now, he's always forgetting his gun (in the L-S novels I mean, not on-screen). At least here he has the excuse of not being able to take firearms on a foreign holiday, though come to think of it this is AMERICA they'd've probably let him into the country with a submachine gun and a few grenades...

Since when have rats hitched lifts on Yeti?

'"Owain?" Lethbridge-Stewart gasped, thunderstruck.' - yeah, what could be more astonishing than the guy who'd begged to accompany his uncle on this mission...following his uncle on this mission?

Why the hell did the Brig run towards the Yeti n'rats rather than...y'know...AWAY? Sure, he wanted to get Kresal's gun but what the hell use did he think it would be against a thousand rats and four Yeti?

To be continued...

Always thought the Brig was upper-class with plenty of family money behind him but Candy Jar's own books say otherwise so where's it all coming from?

War plunder perhaps?

'The red-faced old professor' - you said he was middle-aged earlier.

To some people, past 30 is old.

'He did not like to be underestimated. Dismissed' - I got the impression he was really happy about not being noticed...?

Well, there's a difference. In the first instance, people do notice you, but don't consider you important enough to acknowleged you, which could be seen as insulting. In the second instance, you just fly under their radar, they have no opinion about you because they don't even know you're there.

'He was carrying no American funds' - the Brig came to the US without any CURRENCY?

Par for the course, he often goes into battle without his gun.

Always thought the Brig was upper-class with plenty of family money behind him but Candy Jar's own books say otherwise so where's it all coming from?

War plunder perhaps?

As if the Brig would EVER -

- Well, alright, according to Downtime he pocketed one of those Yeti-chess-pieces, but what does Downtime know about anything?

(OK, OK, so it somehow knew the Brig had a blonde daughter called Kate but APART from that...)

the Brig came to the US without any CURRENCY?

Par for the course, he often goes into battle without his gun.

Yup, that's our Brig!

Times Squared continued:

As you can probably tell from the several months it's taken to finish this book...it's original promise degenerated into endless tedious running-round being chased by oddly-coloured Yeti and rats. Hundreds and hundreds of pages-worth of repetition. Like I can't just STICK WEB OF FEAR INTO THE DVD PLAYER if I fancy some thrilling Yeti-fight-scenes...(admittedly with puzzling Cyberman-music but one can't have EVERYTHING.) In the circumstances, Owain's mind making the rats go splat and seawater making the Yeti go splat should come as a blessed relief, but guess what...no amount of gratitude that THIS IS OVER AT LAST AT LAST makes these concepts anything other than rubbish.

The Brig spits blue epithets at Yeti as he shoots them since WHEN!

'The shaggy, whitish form of a Yeti' - WHITISH?

Great, it's not just the Brig who moves towards thousands of rats in a fit of pathologically-crazy heroism, it's Owain too: 'First hearing, then seeing the rats boiling up from the subway entrance like a living grey wave of teeth and glittering red eyes, had started him forward, wanting to help'...

So Owain just, what, forgets about the 'flood of red-eyed rats' when the Yeti they're accompanying gets run over owing to non-observation of the Green Cross Code...until they suddenly start eating everyone?

Owain giving orders to Kramer is highly annoying.

'Alistair chuckled. "No worries, my dear. It’s only the safety of the free world at stake."' - I can't picture our Brig saying this, somehow. Also, the safety of the NON-free world is also at stake, surely?

'For now, I want to hear about your dress, your vows, the works' - was it normal for people to write their own wedding vows in those days?

'The Intelligence was gone, abandoning its good and faithful servant' - its WHAAAAAT! Said servant was just BETRAYING it!

Speaking of which...we're all used to the baddie having a crisis of conscience and Nobly Self-Sacrificing themselves but to engineer a susceptibility to salt water in the Yeti months ago as an ultra-convenient Achilles heel without the Intelligence noticing...no. Just...no.

'He wanted to ask what had happened to Owain, but knew his time might be very short indeed. "I want to speak to both of them," he said abruptly' - sure, you haven't got time to ask how your 'nephew' IS but you've got time to send Kramer off to fetch said nephew and your fiancee and traipse back to the phone while you're all under Yeti and/or rat attack...

'No gunshots, though. I believe Lieutenant Kramer and Corporal Wright successfully, erm, made their getaway, as it were' - what a delightfully euphemistic way for Travers to assure Owain that the only two soldiers in the vicinity (one of 'em his own aunt-to-be) had scarpered, leaving the hospital defenceless before the Yeti onslaught...(Is is cos they're both women? I can't imagine a male dereliction-of-duty going down quite so...happily.)

'The clockworks within clicking and humming' - Yeti are clockwork since WHEN!

'And he thought of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, who always stepped forward, even when others around him ran away. Even if the cost should be his own life' - boy your 'uncle' REALLY hasn't told you what happened during Web of Fear, has he...

'He couldn't even get the gun from his belt, he realised. To draw it would mean dropping the insensate man to the wet pavement, making him an easy target for the rats' - on the one hand it's better than most L-S novels which have him just FORGETTING TO CARRY HIS GUN with astonishing regularity, on the OTHER hand, when ARE these books gonna accept that the Brig's not THE DOCTOR who goes round claiming to be a pacifist these days, he's, y'know, A SOLDIER who sometimes needs to SHOOT THAT GUN THING...

'He just hoped that this time he wouldn't end up with a spare jacket belonging to a lieutenant colonel, like he had in the London Underground - not that anybody seemed to notice' - this looks suspiciously like an inside joke. And frankly if Nitcentral doesn't notice that the Brig's (allegedly) in the wrong sort of army jacket in Web of Fear then the novels have no business mentioning it.

There are a lot of mentions of 'magic', dubious enough in the Whoniverse even before you start taking into account that THE BRIG seems to be thinking of it as magic.

Firemen are still, I gather...quite sexist. So for firemen in 1960s America to unhesitatingly take their orders from a BLACK WOMAN without a single comment about her melanin levels or XX chromosomes...?

'Its heavy black-and-tan fur' - I'm sorry, did the Great Intelligence spend hours designing colourful Yeti for, er, some reason, and doing so specifically to freak out IRISH PEOPLE?

'Can you assist me with this gentleman, please? I'm very much afraid he might be dying' - says the Brig IN FRONT OF his new BFF Jemba-Wa - not exactly in keeping with his comments before or since... ('"The devil you say," he shot back, ignoring the man's words and the evidence of his own eyes'; 'No, don't surrender. Fight it, man.')

And he thought of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, who always stepped forward, even when others around him ran away. Even if the cost should be his own life' - boy your 'uncle' REALLY hasn't told you what happened during Web of Fear, has he...

When he lost most of the men under his command.

And what's about a billion times worse...he managed to get his men slaughtered whilst BETRAYING QUEEN AND COUNTRY and ABANDONING LONDON TO THE ALIEN ENEMY and ATTEMPTING TO FLEE TO THE SPACE-TIME-MACHINE SOME RANDOM TRAMP CLAIMED WAS PARKED OVER THERE HONEST...

...I mean, the Brig's behaviour was incomprehensible and unforgivable even if he'd just been a minor random never-seen-again character, whose bat-•••• crazy idea was it to make him the mainstay of Who for literally TWO MILLENNIA...?!

(I mean, obviously, GENIUS and we all love our Brig and just don't CARE if he's a miserable coward/mental patient/maths teacher/Cyberman/Jon Culshaw/mass-murderer etc etc...)

Hang on, Mutalith AND the Showstoppers-creature are both intelligent lifeforms that developed on Earth and the Doctor just NEVER NOTICED THEM? You'd think post-Silurians he'd have a bit of an investigation into such possibilities, if only to alleviate the boredom of being stuck with HUMANS. Also, you'd think the Brig would be all 'Here we go again' when HE meets the Silurians...

Also odd the Brig doesn't even seem to THINK of his Wormwood Scrubs experiences when storming a prison in Mind of Evil.

Weird that the Soviet Union is portrayed as only just becoming aware of alien life and setting up organisations to counter it, given that the KVI was set up by Tsar Nicholas II for this very purpose (Torchwood: Fallout)...

Also odd the Brig doesn't even seem to THINK of his Wormwood Scrubs experiences when storming a prison in Mind of Evil.

Oh, that's nothing, he doesn't even seem to think of his DAY-TRIP TO MARS (Wrath of the Ice Warriors) during Ambassadors of Death...