The Doctor and Martha go to rescue a human colony from the Voracious Craw.

I liked this book from the beginning to near the end - but the end was a joke, right? There's a real end floating around out there somewhere that I just missed, right? The end just stupid. ( )

Not impressed by this one at all. I felt the set up was contrived, with too few characters meaning that it was pretty obvious who was going to fill what roles. Also the ending struck me as a complete cop out. Something that has been described as unstoppable through out is stopped. And not by a reason developed through the text but rather out of the blue.
Not a good one. ( )

These books aren't terribly detailed, but if you enjoy the series they're a quick, easy read.

In this book, the Doctor and Martha find a planet being devoured by a giant tapeworm-type creature. They pop down to the surface to make sure the few people living there know the danger and to help them escape if necessary. They find the planet to be a cold, somewhat prehistoric place, filled with sabre-toothed cats and giant bear-type monsters, but one valley has a force shield around it. The valley is warm and the homestead the top of comfort. The inhabitants are but one family, a man who made a fortune creating servo-furniture and his family. They settled here to escape the rest of humanity. The house truly is the peak of comfort, with numerous servo-furniture robots to tend to a guest's every need. As the worm approaches, the machines start to go bonkers, and it's up to the Doctor to save the day once again. ( )

This had the plot of a much skinnier book. And I say that as someone who can get through one of these in about two hours. Basically they lock Martha and the Doctor in a house full of danger. After that there's a lot of running around and things trying to kill them. If you think the Disney cartoons gone wrong thing is enough to keep you interested for a whole book, fair enough. But there's a serious shortage of stuff like mystery or things to figure out or twists or character development or, actually, characters. I mean there are a few, but they're all meant to be mad and many of them are robots and they aren't what you'd call deep and well rounded. So, if this book was smaller, I'd have liked it more.

That said, it didn't suck. Which is yaay. And the Doctor was the slightly mad last of his kind saves the world a lot guy we are all there to read about, and Martha helps and heals, and generally they're in character. So that works out. ( )