Everything's happening at once...

In a desolate tunnel in hyperspace sits a graveyard of broken spaceships. But these ships are not abandoned - the Montressor is populated by zombies, and the Cerberus is home to the leisure park, the Festival of Death. At the heart of this is waiting the ultimate experience: The Beautiful Death, a return journey into the afterlife, in which not all of the customers complete the round trip... and where not only do the Doctor and Romana find themselves typically under suspicion of sabotage, but the Doctor is recognised and heralded as the man who has already prevented disaster once before. How can this be, if the Doctor has never been here before...?

An intriguing but straightforward opening? Maybe, but one delightful aspect of Festival of Death is this deceptive simplicity. As it becomes apparent that causality has been compromised and that although the Doctor has been here at an earlier time, he personally hasn't been here yet, we begin to appreciate the threat of the fate that awaits him on his next visit - and it's more worrying than just one more false accusation. Things then get even more complicated when the Doctor has to meet everyone again - for the first time.

Confused? Well, Jonathan Morris clearly wasn't interested in taking a cautious approach to his first Doctor Who novel - seemingly unconnected mystifying incidents cascade with astonishing speed in the opening chapters. Connecting and resolving these in a satisfactory fashion would have been difficult enough in a more linear story - so it's to the writer's credit that not only do cause and effect mingle believably across several time streams, but the pacey story also reaches a conclusion that is not only satisfying, but seems inevitable in retrospect. If the best stories are those in which the reader catches himself saying "oh, obviously" immediately after each new development, then Festival of Death - in which this happens repeatedly - qualifies as a good story well told. And, as befits the era, it's funny with it.

You will like Festival of Death. Believe me.