The Book Report #132
Episode #131
Doctor Who – The Slitheen Excursion by Simon Guerrier
The Book
In 2009, BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing, published this book. Ebury Publishing is a division of Penguin Random House.
My copy is a first edition hardback. It has 258 pages and includes acknowledgements and advertisements for other books in the series.
When I was not at home, I used a digital copy on my phone.
What Did I think?
June is taking one more look around Greece before she has to go home. She is studying ancient Greece and is loving the Colosseum.
She notices something wrong, and a lanky man is chasing something or someone. Following the lanky man, she finds him dealing with an alien in a cave. June ends up helping the Lanky man, who later tells her who he is and rewards her by showing her what life was like in ancient Greece.
But there is a problem. Mankind is stuck. They have no way of moving forward; the “gods” have taken control of their needs. They have lost the knowledge to grow food and other things they would need. All the knowledge has been taken away by being looked after.
The “Gods”, the Doctor would later find out, are the Slitheen. They have turned the human race into an attraction for the rest of the universe. The humans are expected to entertain and die for them.
The Doctor and June must stop the Slitheen from destroying the human race and altering history beyond repair.
From what I have read, this is June’s only written-down adventure with the Doctor. This is the first time I have read about a companion getting injured as badly as she does.
The reason the Slitheen are doing this is connected to a war that threatens to wipe the human race from existence, thousands of years in the future.
This is what sets this story apart from many of the others. The human race is genuinely in danger. They will have to start from scratch. Relearning everything they have lost.
The book was enjoyable and a nice break between all the other books I have to get through. I am glad I have it in my collection.
Would I Recommend?
As always with a Doctor Who adventure, the book would have to be really bad for me not to recommend any of the Doctor Who books. But yes, I do recommend this book.
Please give this a go.
Would you like to purchase your very own copy?
You could try these online stores: Amazon (UK/USA), Waterstones, AbeBooks (UK/USA), Barnes and Noble, eBay (UK/USA).
Alternatively, you could try your local bookshop or your local library.
