This book was amazing! I love anything to do with Ancient Egypt and if you throw in Doctor Who with it is like heaven!

I loved how throughout the book there were mini chapters where it was like flashbacks in time. I could see the story play out like an episode of Doctor who in my head which tells me it was written really well!

Tegan was a really good character for the Doctor to be with because I felt she was the complete opposite to him she was emotional and straight to the point where the doctor kept his cool and played around with his meanings and plans.

I loved how the original Egyptian gods were aliens lol that was ace! I can’t explain how good this book was! I loved it that much! ( )

This is a spin-off Doctor Who novel, a sequel to Pyramids of Mars, the classic Tom Baker TV story from 1975. This features the fifth Doctor, played by Peter Davison, accompanied by Tegan and Nyssa. After a dramatic start in a late Victorian British Museum where Nyssa is kidnapped, the action takes place across several different time zones, in London and in Egypt, featuring an attempt by Nephthys, Sutekh's sister-wife to restore herself to power and wreak havoc. The action was quite varied and felt very reassuringly "Doctor Who-ish", unlike some spin-off novels, though I found the flitting between time zones and some of the plotting sometimes a bit confusing. ( )

With Tegan rejoining the Doctor and Nyssa on their travels, the trio travel to the British Museum in 1896. No sooner does the TARDIS materialize in the Egyptian Room, however, then Nyssa is kidnapped. The Doctor and Tegan give chase, only to lose their quarry outside — whereupon they are met by a butler with an invitation to the unwrapping of a mummy. The arrive to find to their astonishment that Nyssa is underneath the bandages, having somehow been transported 4,000 years into the past for the nefarious goals of one of the most dangerous foes the Doctor has ever faced.

This is the second of Justin Richards's many Doctor Who novels that I have read, and in many was it reads like the previous one, Dreams of Empire, in that it starts with disparate threads that are then woven together over the course of the book. It's not a writing approach that I particularly enjoy, yet Richards pulls it off well and sticks the proverbial landing nicely. Yet I finished the book feeling as though the author was a little too ambitious in his designs. His book serves as a sequel of sorts to the Fourth Doctor serial Pyramids of Mars, which is regarded as one of the best of the original television series. It's admirable that Richards takes it on, and while his story measures up well I feel as though he doesn't quite pull off the degree of menace conveyed by Sutekh in Lewis Greifer and Robert Holmes's original story. Perhaps such a comparison is unfair, but it's one that Richards himself invites by taking on such an iconic tale and can't help but influence any judgment of the book. ( )

This is a Doctor Who novel featuring the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa. (Well, except for how it doesn't really feature Nyssa, since she spends pretty much the entire book unconscious and playing the part of a plot McGuffin.)

It's a sequel of sorts to the Fourth Doctor episode "The Pyramids of Mars." Or maybe a prequel? The question is a bit complicated, as the story hops back and forth in time from ancient Egypt, to the 1890s, to the 1990s, looking in on a few other times in-between. It also features some time travel shenanigans, with the Doctor and friends arriving somewhere their future selves have just been and learning about things they haven't done yet. Which is something that was unusual for Doctor Who back in 1996, when this was first published; for a show with time travel at its heart, the original series did very little with it as a concept. These days, of course, the show deals with that sort of thing a lot more, so the novelty value has pretty much worn off.

The story that remains when you subtract said novelty value is not bad (aside from a lot of stuff about "pyramid power" that's annoyingly pseudoscience-y even by Who standards), and there are some clever ideas in it, but it really didn't grip me very much, I'm afraid. It does capture the Classic Who feel pretty well, and I suspect I would have gotten a lot more into it if it had somehow been done as an episode of the TV series, with actors and sets bringing it to life. But I'm not sure this kind of story works nearly as well on the page, especially not decades later. ( )

Faithful sequel to The Pyramids of Mars, this time pitting the Doctor against the sister-wife of Sutek. Richards creates a great companion with the butler Atkins, often overshadowing Tegan. Nyssa is relegated to the back for the entire novel, asleep in a coma which will bring about Nephertyis. Only sour point is the truly silly ending (I can just picture it). Note: Mentions are made of events from City of Death (Scaroth), Black Orchid, (Ann Talbot), Earthshock (Adric's death), The Visitation, and of course the Pyramids of Mars (Marcus Scarman arrives at the end of the story) ( )