[cross-posting from my goodreads]

is this a good book? not particularly.
did i get very happy, blushed, and said “OMG IT’S YOU, HIIII” every time any of the Doctors and companions showed up? yes, yes i did.

the story does hold, although it’s not very inspired. the same goes for the writing. but it’s only the first book of the series, the mise en place, so to speak. it was enjoyable enough, so i’m hyped for the rest of this series.

Ngl my journey into the Classic Who started with this book. YEAH. I was 10 and I randomly decided that I should start the Eighth Doctor Adventures. And there was no moment in this story when I would question if I should've watched the episodes first. No, I was really fine with everything, and it only encouraged me to start watching the show. I would even say it helped me to have a bit of expectations and a little information about some of the characters and stories. I also slightly fell in love with Eight before even seeing the movie. I could call him my bisexual awakening I suppose? Lol. Anyway, I reread it a year ago and damn it was strange. Not the best start. Can't say it was THAT awful but I just think it is very unnecessary and its only purpose in life was introducing my 10 yo self to the classic who and the wilderness era

Pretty entertaining for the most part and it’s nice to see how older incarnations interact with the more “dashing” 8th Doctor, but the entire concept is fundamentally flawed.

Probably not the best idea for the first story in the EDAs to be largely focused on completely different characters that come and go every few chapters.

2.5/5

Many people will tell you to skip this book if you ask them about the best way to start the EDAs, and while they probably aren’t wrong, I believe that this book is more entertaining than most will give credit for.

The main fault of this book is its structure. Having a novel structured like a collection of linking short stories, when it’s the first book in your series isn’t an amazing choice as the reader is unable to settle with a single complement of characters, or a single environment in which more can be gleaned from how the new main characters for the series interact with it; a structure like this may have fit in more later in the series when it isn’t an immediate priority to flesh out new leading roles. However, even if this book had been written to fit in later in the series the structure of it would still result in a fairly low rating (from me at least, but I’m sure many would still feel the same also) as some compartments of the story are just too small and feel rushed in to have anything particularly meaningful or noteworthy within. As for other general criticisms of this book, odd dialogue and character choices aside, the story feels as if it happens independently of the characters almost – again reducing the agency and freedom of the main character in the first book of their own series is certainly not a great choice.

There are parts of this book I want to defend, with several of the larger sections actually being quite fun, with quite a few interesting moments and character decisions. Without including spoilers, it is hard to explain why I liked several excerpts from this book, but I will say while having a negative opinion of this book after finishing it, months later I would still find myself idly thinking about certain scenes and what they mean for the personalities of the characters involved (or just how fun they were).

Overall, I would probably agree that readers who aren’t committing to reading the full EDA series should probably skip this as it takes momentum out of the start of the series, and there is little within that is of great importance later in the series (I am writing this review while 30 books into the series). It is a book I wish could be restructured with a few little story tweaks; to eliminate the main weaknesses of the book and keep in the interesting segments.

weird fun way to start a new era of books