The Legends of River Song

Like the recent Legends of Ashildr book, this has five short stories featuring River Song. All the stories are from her perspective and are written like they appear in her diary.

Picnic at Asgard by Jenny T. Colgan: Probably the best story of the collection but it's by Colgan so that isn't really surprising. This is one of the last River Song stories that has been mentioned on screen that we haven't seen. It's a fab story featuring a Viking-based sci-fi theme park which is as good as it sounds.

Suspicious Minds by Jacqueline Rayner: River and the Eleventh Doctor team up with an auton Elvis and visit an insect-zoo which is not all it seems. A story that could only happen in Doctor Who which works brilliantly.

A Gamble with Time by Steve Lyons: The Doctor can't cross his own time line so he gets River involved instead. It's a timey-wimey story mostly set in London 2016 featuring a giant alien slug. It's awesome.

Death in New Venice by Guy Adams: My least favourite story. The Doctor is nowhere to be seen in a story about a futuristic rebuild of Venice that goes wrong. Whilst the Venice idea is good I've seen the basic plot before.

River of Time by Andrew Lane: Another no Doctor story but it's steeped in Who mythology anyway. River goes to visit an alien archaeological site where an alien species contemporary to the Time Lords lived. Inevitably they are still there. Very enjoyable.

A good collection and whilst I felt all the authors captured the character well it did mean the style of writing differed a little, as did the format. I felt the authors needed to work more closely together to make the collection a little more coherent. Overall I thought this was one of the best Who releases of recent years.