Didn't like it. Didn't even finish it. the only reason it gets two stars is because it's Doctor Who. Bummer. I really wanted to like it too

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Two grand traditions of British sf meet in this book, where the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond try to save the universe while dealing with the piratical Captain Cornelius and also with the Terraphiles, re-enactors of Old Earth culture who have rather garbled views of the activities of Edwardian England (it should be noted that both Doctor Who and a Dalek appear in the original Jerry Cornelius series). It's some way from being a standard Who novel, and rather closer to a normal Moorcock production if there is such a thing; having said which, the plot is relatively straightforward if not always elegantly expounded. There are some good rollicking descriptive passages, and Moorcock has fun with the misinterpretation of the rules of cricket perpetrated by the Terraphiles. It's more of a curiosity than a classic, but I enjoyed it.

When it comes to reading book adaptations of television shows or movies, I'm always a little leery. This book was no different when I started it. I had a difficult time getting into the voice of The Doctor and Amy, but it actually helped when I watched an episode so I could hear them better. Names of characters were mentioned as if expecting the reader to know what's being talked about without explanation, and some things were over-explained by backtracking a little bit to explain and then continuing with the story. The perspective jumped a bit amongst characters, and I was disappointed that we didn't spend much time in The Doctor's head. I think that if we had stayed in Amy's perspective, it might not have given me motion sickness. Overall, it was a little bit of a fluffy read, I thought the resolution wouldn't have given the reader a chance to figure it out for themselves, but the heroics of Bingo were not lost on me.

I think that it felt kinda like an episode of Doctor Who on paper, trying to be a novel. Though I think there could be merit in that, I think that the way things were described was lacking and would be better suited for the screen than the page.

I only thought this book was "okay." Though I am an avid fan of Doctor Who and have read and enjoyed Doctor Who novels before, I didn't think that this book did the series justice. There were definitely points where the story dragged and I found it very difficult to continue. This was partially because nothing was solved in the course of the book. Everything had to wait until the end. Things that seemed like they should be important (because of the time devoted to them in the book) became dull because they would be trivial in real life and had no import until the absolute end of the book. Additionally, the novel didn't focus on or utilize the Doctor and Amy very well. They did not function like main characters and instead seemed like equals with a huge cast of what would normally be minor characters. This would be acceptable if the other characters were as interesting as the Doctor and Amy typically are. I enjoyed the idea of the Terraphiles; in fact they reminded me of Mr. Copper from Voyage of the Damned. It was interesting to see their strange meld of 1920s England and Robin Hood, particularly since I enjoy both those eras. However, the characters themselves seemed rather predictable and almost stock characters. The rich, but still realistic heiress, the hopelessly in love poor boy, the not-too-bright nobleman with a heart of gold, the rich overprotective father, the demanding and overbearing rich mother. They all came off as a bit cardboard to me as did the villains. In fact Cornelius was the only character that intrigued me and we found out almost nothing about him. Additionally, despite the opening featuring Cornelius he does not reappear for a very long time and he really doesn't do that much in novel.

Though I enjoyed the book as someone who likes Doctor Who and science fiction in general it was certainly not the best thing I've read and I wouldn't buy it for myself or someone else, knowing that there are better Doctor Who novels out there to be read.

I unfortunately found Coming of the Terraphiles to be an incoherent mess. The characters were irritating, one-dimensional and the already-existing ones were out of character. The plot was nonsensical and plain boring for the most part, and the tone and writing style was vague and seemed mostly an attempt at a strange humour which fell completely flat. Apparently this is more an extension of his own universe than the Doctor Who one, and so I am going to ignore that it ever pretended to be.

Recent Reads: The Coming Of The Terraphiles. Michael Moorcock channels Douglas Adams' Kirikketmen as The Doctor meets Captain Cornelius, ready to restore balance to the multiverse by playing silly games. Jeux sans frontieres in the Second Aether indeed.

I approached this book as a fan of Moorcock, who has also watched most Doctor Who episodes since the mid seventies, without being a real fan. It's a poorly put together crossover, basically, between Doctor Who, Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories, and PG Wodehouse (of all things). It's not really worthy of any of its components; Whovians are likely to be particularly cross at the completely different characterisation of Matt Smith-era Doctor Who and companion Amy Pond - the impression is that Moorcock had never watched it but based the characters on a one page summary sheet from the Doctor Who production team. By a long way the poorest novel by Moorcock that I have ever written.

Moorcock is one of the grand old men of British Sci-Fi, something I wasn't fully aware of until I was about a quarter of the way through this book with it's bombastic, florid, poetical writing style and I went and looked him up after a "who the hell IS this person?" kind of moment. This accounts, at least in part, for his melodramatic bordering on comic opera style, and his flights into the fantastical, when a description of a thing can go on for twice as long as the action performed on or with it. Moorcock has also used this book to integrate some of his "second aether" characters, and if you're not previously familiar with them, they will seem somewhat stitched on. All that said, this was an engaging read, but not really like a Doctor Who book, which seem to have somewhat of an established "house style." This one would rank near the top of a list of literary Who books, but gets low marks for accessibility and faithfulness to character. In short, you'd almost have to be a fan of fantasy/sci-fi from the 1950s through the 1980s AND a Whovian to really get into this one. A quality, but complicated, read.

Moorcock's The Coming of the Terraphiles -- a full-scale hardback novel visibly marketed with the view that the words "Michael Moorcock" on a book are just as much of a draw as the words "Doctor Who" -- is fast, bold and colourful. Indeed, it reads quite breathlessly at times, as if it were written in a tearing hurry in one draft, but by a genius. Which is quite likely to be true.

Moorcock's career has effortlessly embraced high and low art, and The Coming of the Terraphiles links his Doctor Who source material with all kinds of other British popular culture, from Robin Hood to P.G. Wodehouse, from sea-tale and space-opera to public-school cricketing story. Indeed, the mishmash is part of the point, the "Terraphiles" of the title being sincere but hilariously confused Ancient Earth reconstructionists of the distant future, whose hybrid of cricket, archery and tourneys has become the galaxy's most popular sport.

The novel is unapologetic about its series affiliations, foregrounding the Doctor and Amy Pond throughout, and making conspicuous use of the rhinocerid alien Judoon, with whom Moorcock's obviously rather taken. (There are also some nicely quirky references to the Daleks and the Time Lords.) Equally though, it's a Moorcock book through and through, part of his massive, multi-million-word Multiverse / Eternal Champion saga. (In particular, there's a character called Captain Cornelius, a space-pirate who wears iron commedia dell'arte masks, whose original conception suggests some interesting connections between the vaguely messianic characters in Moorcock's and the Doctor's universes.)

Admittedly everything Moorcock's written has been tied to this gigantic metaseries one way or another, but the connections here are explicit and inextricable, to the extent that Moorcock has actually recommended The Coming of the Terraphiles to a reader as a source for some of the background informing his series work. From the point of view of Doctor Who continuity, this is a sabretooth amongst the pigeons, upsetting huge swathes of the established history, physics and metaphysics of the Doctor's universe, but from the point of view of even a casual Moorcock fan it's a thing of glory, beauty and wonder.

In plot terms, the novel is pretty much bonkers, with entirely new elements, characters and ideas cropping up nearly every chapter, apparently at random. The ideas are huge, intricate and very silly, and their wild profligacy would keep most writers of the standard post-2005 Doctor Who tie-in range in book proposals for a decade. While the plot manages to be recognisably pulpish (which is also to say, given Moorcock's habitual concerns, archetypally mythic) it also mostly eschews Doctor Who cliche in various refreshing ways.

If I had to choose one aspect of this book to improve, it would be allowing Moorcock to work with a Doctor he was already familiar with, rather than having to learn the character of Matt Smith's eleventh Doctor. I love Smith's mercurial portrayal, and Moorcock writes him well, but I can imagine that a version of this book with William Hartnell's Doctor in central position could be utterly majestic.