Format: Hardback
Published: October 1st, 2020
Age: Young Adult
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rating: 2/5 Stars
I pre-ordered this back when Time Lord Victorious was first announced, excited at the approach and the idea of a Doctor Who storyline across different forms of media. Then I quickly realised there was no way I was going to keep up, especially not with the purchases that would have been required to follow the whole thing. I’m not entirely sure what happened in the end, maybe I’ll revisit some of it at some point, but although I cancelled the couple of items I had pre-ordered for TLV, I ended up forgetting about this until it arrived at my house, then forgetting about it until I sat down and logged (most of) the books I own. I was happy to get the chance to read it, but it’s not made me overly excited to continue the rest of TLV.
The Doctor travels back to a time when death is rare. Exploring a planet, he comes across the Kotturuh, who travel through space, judging various species and dictating their lifespans. But there is hope, in the form of the ‘Lifeshroud’, and along with Brian the Ood he tries to track this interesting bit of tech down, along with the girl he saw demonstrating it.
Part of my problem with this is I felt like I was missing a chunk – whether from not remembering something or missing parts of the TLV storyline? I do think Cole writes the Tenth Doctor well, and definitely captured the character, but outside that part of me didn’t really connect with what was actually happening. A lot of it felt fairly simplified, too, which might be because it was aiming at a YA audience, but if so it maybe missed the mark in simplifying it too much. Plus, not to say there aren’t YA fans of Doctor Who (I definitely started as one!) but the larger audience might skew a bit older?
There were some interesting concepts and there’s definitely a sense of a wider plot, tying in with TLV, but something about the overall storyline here just kept me at a distance. It was okay, and I think there are plenty of folks who really loved this, but generally I didn’t hugely enjoy it! I do hope to at some point pick up more of Time Lord Victorious, but I also want to try some of the books outside that, too, and see if I get along with them better.
Reading Challenge
Musicals Reading Challenge 2024
Prompt: The Rocky Horror Show – The Time Warp – a book involving time travel
Progress: 19/24 Completed
Unwrapping Words 