All Flesh Is Grass is a Doctor Who novel written by Una McCormack and is part of the saga entitled Time Lord Victorious. Yes, three Doctors come together to face the Daleks and Vampires during the Dark Times before the existence of the Time Lords.

The Tenth Doctor is about to eradicate Death from the cosmos and alter the universe’s history irreparably. Two of his previous incarnations have shown up to stop him. The Ninth Doctor has joined the ancient enemies of the Time Lords, the Vampires. The Eighth Doctor is the company of Daleks. The Tenth Doctor is about to break all of the rules to spare the universe chaos and death. As well meaning as that sounds, that could bring catastrophic consequences that even the Time Lord Victorious may not anticipate.

This is a rather interesting idea bringing together Doctors Eight, Nine, and Ten. McCormack is a prolific and competent writer. Brian, the Ood assassin, lends a hand. There are some space battles with Daleks as psychotic as ever. The Doctor even goes off the deep end for a while. The interaction between the Doctors is fairly entertaining and profound. This is a somewhat confusing entry because I am missing out on some of the other installments of this series. It had enough tension and action to keep me engaged.

Next up, I will be seeing if I agree with Alafair Burke in her selection of short stories as The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021.

Memory Wall is a collection of stories by Anthony Doerr. It was first published in 2010. Various characters try to find ways to preserve memories.

I would often go through each story in an anthology if there is under half a dozen, but there are too many for me to be interested in attempting that. Also, I had a very hard time staying interested in any of the stories. That is more likely due to this not being my genre of preference. I can appreciate that Doerr likely has his fans. He has won some literary awards, so he likely has some talent. He also does not appear to have much trouble getting published.

Anyway, this attempt to expand my literary horizons was a bit of a bust, however I will continue the endeavor. I will suggest that Doerr likely will appeal to someone who appreciates a more sentimental and thoughtful type of tale, and he has solid credentials, so I will not discourage anyone from checking him out. My reservations have more to do with my own tastes than with any lack of ability on his part.

So I step back into more familiar territory a Doctor Who novel entitled All Flesh is Grass by Una McCormack, which is part of the Time Lord Victorious series.

Serpentine is the latest novel from Jonathan Kellerman to feature his best known protagonist, Dr. Alex Delaware. Detective Milo Sturgis will sometimes call in his best friend, Dr. Delaware to consult on his more unusual cases. of course, it looks like Sturgis is always needing Delaware’s guidance since that is the series focus. As readers, we are assured that Sturgis really does solve cases on his own. Anyway, I digress.

Sturgis is tasked with looking into a murder that occurred over thirty-five years over due to a wealthy socialite wanting some answers surrounding her mother’s demise. Milo isn’t that hopeful of a solution, however he notices some irregularities in the previous investigations. Milo and Delaware are somewhat surprised that they are starting to make some headway on piecing together what may have happened over three decades ago. They also find that someone is also very active in trying to misdirect them.

Kellerman has written too many books in this series to be that surprising, but he is still reliably diverting. The gimmick of a cold case being introduced is used well here. Sturgis and Delaware run into the usual sort of suspects that tend crop up the other books. It was fun to revisit these characters, however there is not much to make this particular addition to the series to stand out.

Time to take a break from crime fiction and indulge in an anthology written by Anthony Doerr. Memory Wall is the next one to pass under the reading lamp.

Dalek Universe 1 is a Doctor Who audio boxset starring David Tennant. It is a recent Big Finish Productions set directed by Ken Bentley. Tennant is joined by Jane Slavin and Joe Sims as Space Security Agents Anya Kingdom and Mark Seven. The Doctor has encountered them before in a previous incarnation. This time, they join him in a saga involving the Daleks. This set has three episodes.

John Dorney kicks off this set with Buying Time that contains a guest cast Gemma Whelan, Mark Gatiss, Juliet Aubrey, and Chris Jarman. Agent Anya Kingdom finds a crashed spaceship on a jungle planet. She meets up with a ruthless businesswoman and an android colleague. She also finds a displaced Time Lord. Predators are closing in, and the Doctor is without his TARDIS. The Doctor also may find his life ending earlier than he realizes. It’s not a bad start, but Dorney is one of the more reliable writers at Big Finish. Tennant returns with his usual energetic presence. Slavin and Sims also work well with this Doctor, but most everyone at Big Finish knows how to play well with others.

Dorney also introduces The Wrong Woman with a surprise regeneration. I was not sure I was going to appreciate this one with another surprise version of the Doctor, but it turns out to there is quite a clever twist going on here. This one turned out to be pretty entertaining and intriguing.

Andrew Smith wraps up the set with The House of Kingdom. Kevin McNally, Maria Teresa Creasey, and Nicholas Briggs comprise the guest cast here. Anya has a very uncomfortable reunion with her grandfather. The audience gets t find out a little more about her. The Mechanoids are also around as well. An attack on a space station around Neptune interrupts any possible reconciliation between the Kingdoms. Of course, a dangerous contagion can interrupt the lives of the Doctor and his companions. It was a good wrap on a promising new saga.

There is more to come with the Doctor lost during the Time War. I am in for the remainder of that ride unsurprisingly.

Nightmare Alley is a thriller directed by Guillermo del Toro and is a remake of a 1947 film. Del Toro also co-wrote this screenplay with Kim Morgan. It is based on a novel written in 1946 by William Lindsay Gresham. There is an impressive cast that stars Bradley Cooper as Stanton Carlisle and includes Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Ron Perlman, Willem Dafoe, and Richard Jenkins.

The film takes place in the 1940’s, which I appreciate since a lot of remakes are adjusted for the present day. The audience starts off seeing Carlisle hauling something into a hole in the floorboards of a dilapidated house in the country and setting the whole thing alight. He wanders into a carnival and gets a job helping out the psychic. A mentalist dies under some suspicious circumstances. Carlisle then runs off with a pretty girl and ends up in New York working as a mentalist, fleecing the wealthy. Then he meets a female psychologist who gets into his head and then into his scam. As one can imagine, the whole caper starts to unravel rather bloodily.

There is a lot to unpack here with this movie. It does require some patience because there are moments that drag a bit. The visual effects and the set design is very impressive. The performances are quite good, which is not all that surprising considering the cast. Stanton Carlisle is a complicated anti-hero here. This may be one of those films I may have to watch again to get the subtleties. I ended up not loving this film when I first saw it, but I can see the potential of my mind being changed. It just isn’t a film one can just watch with the same sort of attention given to a Marvel movie or something like that. I do give the films kudos for the visual and technical achievements. It felt a little longer than I expected though. I think it will have its fans out there, and there is likely a lot more to appreciate if the proper attention is given. I would recommend not giving this one a pass. I will also likely soon try to catch the original 1947 version fairly soon. I may even see if I can get the novel.

Kiss Her Goodbye is a crime novel by Allan Guthrie which was published in 2005. This is one of the installments from the publishing company known as Hard Case Crime.

Joe Hope is a working leg breaker collecting debts owed to his loan shark buddy Cooper. Hope is in a rather hopeless marriage and has a complicated relationship with his daughter. The daughter ends up dying of a drug overdose, and Hope’s wife is murdered quite brutally. When Hope finds himself accused of the murder, his priorities have to be readjusted. He is not the easiest of men to like, but even Joe Hope deserves to know the truth of what has happened to his family and why.

The story takes place in Edinburgh. There is quite a bit of cliché in the characters presented. It’s mildly interesting to have a bruiser like Hope as the protagonist, but there is not much in the story that is all that gripping. I made it through since it isn’t a difficulty read, but I doubt I will find it that memorable.

Next up on the reading agenda as this year winds down is a new adventure with an old favorite. Dr. Alex Delaware and LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis delve into the coldest of cases with Jonathan Kellerman’s Serpentine.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the latest Marvel superhero film with Tom Holland in the familiar red and blue tights again. He is joined by an impressive cast that includes Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jamie Foxx, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Willem Dafoe, and Benedict Wong. There are some other cast members that may reveal some spoilers I want to avoid in this entry. The script was written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers with Jon Watts serving as director.

At the end of the previous film, Far From Home, Mysterio has let the cat out of the bag regarding Spider-Man’s identity. Peter Parker finds out what happens when everyone knows his secret identity and it starts costing to those closest to him. In desperation, Peter turns to his comrade in arms, Dr. Strange. Strange starts to cast a spell that would have everyone forget, however it goes wrong when Peter tries to make some exceptions as to who should have their memories adjusted. When all kinds of monstrous figures start appearing. The audience recognizes these characters, but this version of Spider-Man had yet to encounter them. The multiverse is coming apart, and Spider-Man has all of reality to repair, and he gets some welcome yet unexpected help.

So there is a very basic idea of the plot. It sounds like that it should be an utter mess and frustrating to follow, however the ride is better than I expected. The performances are very compelling. The humor and banter between the characters throughout the film was very engaging and entertaining. Most of the wisecracks landed quite solidly. The film has been breaking records and deserves to. The film does well to steer away from heavy social issues that being embraced by other studios and productions which likely contributes to its success. There may be some lessons to be learned from the success of this particular installment, but I am not predicting that much of Hollywood will pick up on them.

Anyway, this was much better than I expected. With the overall direction of the more recent cinematic offerings, this turned out to be quite refreshing relatively.

The Nightmare Realm is a Doctor Who audiobook published by BBC Audio. The story is written by Jonathan Morris and read by Dan Starkey. It would feature Peter Capaldi’s version of the Doctor alongside Nardole if this were a television episode.

So the story is framed as if it’s part of an anthology series in the vein of The Twilight Zone or something like that The Doctor and Nardole arrive in a small American town that appears deserted and then suddenly appears to be under a nuclear attack. Strange people and an even stranger monster start to appear with a young boy being the consistent watcher of all of these things. The Doctor starts to wonder if his TARDIS has taken him to someone’s dark imaginings and how to escape a literal nightmare.

This particular installment steps into the arena of surrealism, and it’s a pretty entertaining step. I think this is one of the better ones from the prolific Jonathan Morris. The real treat is Starkey’s vocal gymnastics. He comes out with a fairly wide selection of voices for the various characters. He can even sound fairly close to Capaldi’s Doctor. Starkey may be moving up the list of favorite presenters for the BBC Audio series. He is of course best known as playing the Sontarans in the television series and for Big Finish Productions.

Anyway, this turned out to be a pretty intriguing idea. The idea of the Doctor landing in someone’s dream or imagination has sort of been done before, but Morris managed to pull off one of the better efforts for this kind of story idea. I was quite pleased to add this one to my collection.

The Knight, The Fool And The Dead is a novel that is part of the Doctor Who: Time Lord Victorious saga and is written by Steve Cole.

The Doctor has traveled back to a time in the universe where Death was not as common. He goes up against a race known as the Kotturuh, which apparently brought death into the cosmic realm. The Doctor has to protect a young girl from the attention of the Kotturuh, and he has an Ood assassin as an ally. What could go wrong there.

The Tenth Doctor is the incarnation featured here. Cole is a competent writer here. There is not much to make this the most memorable of Doctor Who novels. Of course, I have not been reading the saga in order, so it could be that I am not following the whole thing correctly. Still, it manages to not be terrible, and Cole seems to catch the Tenth Doctor well enough.

Time to change gears and read something that could be of some help to me mental well-being. Stumbling Toward Wholeness: How the Love of God Changes Us. is written by Andrew J. Bauman and seems to contain much wisdom.

The Secrets of Det-Sen is a Doctor Who audio play from Big Finish Productions and is one of the latest episodes from The Early Adventures range. This play is written by Andy Frankham-Allan with Lisa Bowerman back in the director’s chair. Peter Purves is quite busy here reprising his original role of Steven Taylor, performing an impression of the First Doctor, and narrating the tale. Lauren Cornelius resurrects the character Dodo Chaplet, who was originally portrayed by Jackie Lane in the television series in the 1960’s. Paul Courtenay Nyu, Kerry Gooderson, Jeremy Ang Jones, and Jamie Zubairi join the cast as well. The story also serves as a prequel to the television serial The Abominable Snowmen, which had starred Patrick Troughton.

The TARDIS has brought the Doctor, Dodo, and Steven to the Himalayans where they join a pilgrimage to a monastery where the Doctor will one day return. The Yeti are lurking up on the mountain, and bandits are also waiting to strike. The Doctor learns that there are other secrets Det-Sen keeps that he must help protect from traitors and thieves.

Purves does quite well in fulfilling his various duties. I am getting more used to other actors playing the earlier characters. Jackie Lane never chose to participate in the Big Finish recordings, and she has recently died. I am not sure how close Cornelius gets to capturing the essence of Lane’s portrayal, but it does open the door to explore a certain section of this Doctor’s era for Big Finish to play in. The story was somewhat interesting but not that captivating. The performances help greatly as usual. Purves can’t quite do a perfect impression of William Hartnell’s Doctor, but he gets just close enough to not make it terribly distracting.

Some of the purposes this story serves is more interesting than the actual plot. It brings Dodo back and does open some interesting door. It also fills a hole in the Doctor’s background that was mentioned in the The Abominable Snowmen. This turned out to be an episode that I don’t regret purchasing, but it ma just have to grow on me when I eventually get around to hearing it again.