Doctor Who: Keeping Up with the Joneses (Time Trips)

by Nick Harkaway

Deep in the gap between the stars, the TARDIS is damaged by a temporal mine. It’s not life-threatening, but the Tenth Doctor will need a while to repair the damage. But he’s not alone. The strangely familiar-looking Christina thinks the Doctor has arrived in her bed and breakfast, somewhere in Wales. In fact, the TARDIS seems to have enveloped Christina’s entire town – and something else is trapped inside with it. A violent, unnatural storm threatens them all and – unless it’s stopped – the entire universe.

• ISBN10: 1448141877
• ISBN13: 9781448141876
• Publish Date: 6 February 2014
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Ebury Publishing
• Imprint: BBC Digital
• Edition: Digital original
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 80
• Language: English

Reviews

[Rinn]

I received a copy of this book for free from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. Also posted on my blog, Rinn Reads.

I didn’t actually take too many notes whilst writing this one – firstly because it’s such a short book, and secondly because I just couldn’t really think of much to talk about… needless to say, this will be a short review.

Serves me right for not reading the blurb of this one properly: I saw a Doctor Who book with the word ‘Jones’ in the title, and assumed it was about Martha. Unfortunately not, although this is a Tenth Doctor adventure. Our favourite Time Lord is companion-less on this particular adventure, as he has been with the other Time Trips stories so far. However, unlike the previous Time Trips, this one features a familiar character: the Lady Christina de Souza. If you don’t recognise the name, she was featured in the episode ‘Planet of the Dead’, where a double decker bus somehow got transported from London to the desert planet of San Helios.

Whilst it contained some ‘typical’ Ten moments (he finds brushing his teeth fun, I can definitely imagine that for Ten), this book just felt really… weird, even for Doctor Who. It felt like there was no real consistency to it, flitting from one bit to the next and it never really gripped me. I read it in one sitting, and I actually struggled to finish it because, quite honestly, I was bored.

I don’t know if it was the advanced copy I had, or if this is pretty much the finalised version, but some of the sentences felt really mangled. The structure was very odd, and that made it really hard to picture things.

Sadly, although I’ve enjoyed all the Doctor Who books I’ve read so far, this one was quite a let down. I would say read it if you’re a hardcore fan (for completionist purposes!), but if you’re just looking to read some of the DW books then there are plenty more enjoyable ones out there.