This is easily the biggest Target Novel ever written and arguably the best, Steven Moffat takes one of the biggest Doctor Who episodes of all time and creates a new spin of the epic 50th anniversary. Mostly following the same sequence of events as the episode but with so many detours and scenic routes, including a bonus novelisation of The Night of the Doctor acting as a prologue, adding further to the Tenth Doctor's side of the story and how he got started on investigating the Zygons, the clever way the War Doctor gets access to the Moment and so much more. To add a more fun spin on the narrative, the chapter numbers are completely jumbled up, and if you look closely, despite the numbers going up to 13, there's only 12 chapters visible with chapter 9 conspicuously absent. The reason behind this is just too good for me to ruin, especially on the final page of the story. The story is predominantly told from the Curator's perspective providing interludes between each chapter before going into each one which is narrated from a different character's perspective.

Some of my favourite parts of the book revolve around the three Doctors and how they narrate the story and view one another, the scene in the tower is so beautifully adapted and how it plays on the Doctors own perspectives, it gets downright intense at one point. We get some additional characters added, we get more character work from Osgood which really reminded me of just how far the character's come since basically being a background character in the original episode, and the book even makes the Peter Cushing Dalek movies real in the Doctor Who universe. Another little addition I appreciate is acknowledging just how messed up the situation the Black Archive guard is in rather than just playing it as a joke.

The ending with the Doctors saving Gallifrey is a bit corny but I give credit to Moffat for finding a way to incorporate all the Doctors and give them something to do, even if it's just a cheesy montage paragraph. And we even get a cameo in the final chapter from the Thirteenth Doctor in one of her pre-era appearances in the expanded medium.

I enjoy The Day of the Doctor, but I absolutely adore this book, definitely put it on your reading list