A Doctor Who novel written by the great Micheal Moorcock? Sounds good doesn't it? I wanted to like this but it kept annoying me..
I havn't read any Doctor Who fiction since the Target novelisations in the 1980s but I did spend a of chunk of the 90s reading the omnibus editions of some of Moorcock's better known work, so I had high expectations.
Unfortunately I bounced hard off the first section - its written as a 1920s style, 'jolly hockeysticks' P. G. Wodehouse style farce. The titular Terraphiles are a group of like-minded people from the distant year 50,000 (or something) who share a special interest in old earth customs and sports etc. The 'hilarity' comes from their mangled ideas of the games and language of our time - ie they play a sport which is a weird mix of archery and cricket..and so on. The basic plot is The Doctor (the Matt Smith version) and Amy must join one of the sports teams and win a trophy that will save the universe..and thats about it.
The second section where they travel (sans TARDIS) to the centre of the universe(?) is mildly better but it suffers from Moorcock trying to shoehorn his existing fictional 'multiverse' into the Doctor Who one and ending up just being weird and enigmatic for the hell of it.
We eventually get to the big game but the Doctor doesnt even save the universe personally, instead one of the better minor characters is sacrificed to achieve that goal.
Overall it just dragged, the author got the Doctor about right but everything else probably belonged in another book.
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