For those of our readers who follow my weekly fanfiction recs, you may have noticed that I’m been a bit remiss in my recs for the past month or so. I can explain in two words: Terminal Decay. Five weeks ago, I made it my mission to finish reading this fic by the airing of “The Day of the Doctor.” I’m still not finished.

“Terminal Decay” by unslinky is a monstrous fic. I don’t mean that it’s horrid and large and ugly like a kraken, but rather, it’s HUGE. Don’t believe me? Well, take a look at this…

Yes, it really does say 1002 chapters and 3,065,944 words.

Or to put it another way, since I’ve been reading for 5 weeks that’s:

• 28 chapters per day (if I had finished…which I haven’t quite)
• over 80,000 words read per day (about 160 pages)
• If you account that the typical single-spaced page is about 500 words, that’s 6,132 pages.

To put that into even more perspective:

• the Harry Potter series is 1,084, 170 words, so reading “Terminal Decay” is like reading the HP series 3 times.
• the Guinness world record holder for longest novel is A le recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. The novel is 1,267,069 words. “Terminal Decay” is almost 2.5 times that length.

Can you blame me for not quite finishing in time for this rec? I’m on chapter 800, with almost a million words to go before I reach the conclusion.

So why put myself through this? Why read almost an entire novel every day just to rec one fic?

Well, if you’ve read any of my previous DW fic recs, you would probably remember my bitching about the lack of quality Whovian fanfiction.  Even though I’m fairly good at sussing out good fics, I had to turn to my fairy fanfic godmother for help with the DW fandom. “Terminal Decay” was her #1 rec, and boy, I had no idea what I was getting into. So, my Whovian friends, if you want a fic that’s more like an odyssey, then this one’s for you.