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Released on bonfire night, this collection of short stories (and a novella) dips into the time streams of the different regenerations of the Doctor’s nemesis and lights up the sky with a an explosion of wicked humour.

Most actors will tell you it’s more fun to play the villain rather than the good guy, and indeed when Sacha Dhawan burst onto our screens at the start of this year as the new Master, he clearly was having a ball. The fine selection of Doctor Who fiction veterans chosen to essay this compendium of dastardly deeds would also appear to have had a splendid time, concocting evil plans and pithy retorts for the bad Time Lord. I’ll let you discover which version of the Master turns up in each story, and whether the Doctor makes an appearance, as that’s all part of the fun.

Peter Anghelides’ Anger Management finds the Master at his Machiavellian best, playing one warlord against the other, Mark Wright’s clever epistolary The Dead Travel Fast is this collection’s celebrity historical, giving Bram Stoker plenty of inspiration for his subsequent vampire opus, while Jac Rayner has great fun with Missy (cunningly disguised as Miss E!) in Missy’s Magical Mystery Mission, helping add some joy to the life of cleaner Mrs N and her superior oat and raisin cookies.

Visual FX supremo Mike Tucker’s A Master of Disguise is a neat heist caper tale, Beverly Sanford’s The Night Harvest takes us to Tala, a planet with many secrets, and finally there’s Matthew Sweet’s 125-page Target-length The Master and Margarita, a tale that mixes a parrot with mushrooms and lizards, using the delicious  premise of The Master becoming scientific adviser to the USSR’s UNIT. Those familiar with Dr Sweet’s interviews on the Doctor Who Blu-ray box sets will know he has a great way of articulating his legacy knowledge of the show, and it comes across strongly in this extended story which really benefits from the longer page count.

Verdict: A welcome, Master-fully written new collection of the Master’s bad deeds to tide you over until the festive special. 8/10

Nick Joy

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