Order of the Golden Sprout The New Robert Rankin Fan Club

Paul Cornell is well known for writing some of the best episodes of the new series of Doctor Who, along with some excellent comics. As a result I was keen to try out some of his novels, and I wasn't disappointed with British Summertime.

The story centres around Alison, a relatively ordinary girl with a rather extraordinary ability she calls "chipshopness", which allows her to see all kinds of things about people she looks at. This tends to be rather a curse as she sees a lot of things she'd rather not deal with, and she's just got a feeling that the world is about to end. When she runs into a pilot from the future, she's initially relieved as it proves there is a future. However, soon she realised he's not from her future and things start to get complicated.

This book had me hooked from start to finish, which is what you want from a novel. The characters were all engaging, and the plot is rather ingenious, and almost needs you to keep a pen and paper handy to keep track of how the various timelines weave together. It's one of the cleverest time travel stories I've read.

In fact the story reads like a Doctor Who story in a lot of places. Although the characters do things to thenselves that would never happen in a Doctor Who story, I think the essence of this novel would make an excellent basis for an episode (a rare Dr Who story that's actually about time travel).

I really enjoyed this book, and although it's not a humourous novel per say, I did feel it appealed to the same part of my brain as a Robert Rankin story.

I look forward to reading more by Cornell.