Bernice Summerfield: Present Danger

You were right when you said that this wasn't so great, Katy - I enjoyed the first half of it, but the last couple of stories were just blah. Essentially the problem of this collection of short stories is that it is set between "Resurrecting the Past" and "Escaping the Future", and when listening to these, I wasn't even aware that there was much of a gap to be bridged. Because there isn't. This book is therefore largely superfluous, and what's more, it separates all of the regular Benny characters, when it would have been much more fun to see them together.

The best stories were the Brax ones, because in both he is doing fairly clever things, and being quite awesome, but also obviously losing this war against the Deindum. They are much better than any Time War stories that I've read insofar as they show how Time Lords should fight a war (if they were manipulative and inventive and perfectly willing to break the laws of time.) I also really liked the one with Bev and Andy Warhol's "Empire" and Benny because that was really stylish, and it used both the Collection and time travel to great effect. And it had Andy Warhol.

I would read a fic about the various artists Benny and her supporting cast (and Brax, naturally, because you know he does that) have met via the wonders of time travel, not gonna lie.

As usual, Benny stories are best when they deal with academia and linguistics and art and history and how all these can be used for politics and war, rather than when they're about action and adventure (of which there was far too much in this). Which is one reason why I'm going to MISS the collection so much, because it's the reason all these things are there, and I doubt there will be as much of them when Benny is a homeless traveller (although "Zero Hour" had much of that and was therefore excellent).

Bernice Summerfield: Present Danger

You were right when you said that this wasn't so great, Katy - I enjoyed the first half of it, but the last couple of stories were just blah. Essentially the problem of this collection of short stories is that it is set between "Resurrecting the Past" and "Escaping the Future", and when listening to these, I wasn't even aware that there was much of a gap to be bridged. Because there isn't. This book is therefore largely superfluous, and what's more, it separates all of the regular Benny characters, when it would have been much more fun to see them together.

The best stories were the Brax ones, because in both he is doing fairly clever things, and being quite awesome, but also obviously losing this war against the Deindum. They are much better than any Time War stories that I've read insofar as they show how Time Lords should fight a war (if they were manipulative and inventive and perfectly willing to break the laws of time.) I also really liked the one with Bev and Andy Warhol's "Empire" and Benny because that was really stylish, and it used both the Collection and time travel to great effect. And it had Andy Warhol.

I would read a fic about the various artists Benny and her supporting cast (and Brax, naturally, because you know he does that) have met via the wonders of time travel, not gonna lie.

As usual, Benny stories are best when they deal with academia and linguistics and art and history and how all these can be used for politics and war, rather than when they're about action and adventure (of which there was far too much in this). Which is one reason why I'm going to MISS the collection so much, because it's the reason all these things are there, and I doubt there will be as much of them when Benny is a homeless traveller (although "Zero Hour" had much of that and was therefore excellent).