fescan-1By Chris Stone

Long Scarf Publications, available to order till September 30th

A Choose Your Own Adventure for the first 10 Doctors…

Chris Stone’s mammoth book must weigh in at about thirty times the size of the recent Choose Your Own Adventure stories that Penguin have put out. Those aren’t the first to use this format for Doctor Who – somewhere on the shelves I still have the books from the 1980s which included the return to the series of William Emms – but this is the first time that there have been multiple incarnations to the level that this book does.

This means that there are even more potential combinations of paths than you’d normally get in such a book, and Stone ensures that the stories work for the particular version of the Doctor that you’re embodying at the time (as you might expect, you need to play as more than one if you’re going to get through the whole thing). They’re not simple binary choices either: a lot of thought has gone into this and I suspect a lot of scribbling on pieces of paper to make sure everything loops and ducks as it’s meant to.

There’s only the one printing, and it’s happening soon – so if you want a chance to experience a rather Doctor Who tale, and help benefit mental health charities, click on the link here.

Verdict: An old format given new life for a good cause. 8/10

Paul Simpson