Books Read in 2026 - No. 2
Greetings Fellow Readers!
It's been a while since my last blog post. It's also been ages since I last read a Doctor Who novel. The last one was in March 2024 as I missed last year.
I'm getting close to finishing the books in the second box set I have.
So The Pirate Loop by Simon Guerrier starts with the Doctor and Martha crashing the TARDIS into the star cruiser The Brilliant. It's full of aliens, human crew and badger creature pirates who have boarded the ship to capture an experimental drive running the ship.
The only problem is the Brilliant and everyone on board including The Doctor and Martha are stuck in a time loop. So snacks are replenished straight away and no one can die, they just keep coming back.
This is a problem as the energy will implode the Brilliant as the loop isn't complete. Can the Doctor get everyone out of the loop. Can Martha make friends and teach the Badger Pirates what is the right thing to do?
Overall - At the start of The Pirate Loop I almost gave up and the book would have been my first ever DNF.
It started slowly and not much seemed to happen for the first few chapters, only the three Badger Pirates learning not to be bad and how to eat party food.
The characters were written fine by Simon Guerrier including the Doctor, Martha and the Badger Pirate Archie.
I couldn't help thinking I'd grown out of Doctor Who books. The Badger Pirates reminded me of Rocket Racoon but this novel came out in 2007. Seven years before the first Guardians of the Galaxy film. The first time I knew of Rocket Racoon.
Just before half way the story moved along more, as we learnt what was happening to the Brilliant and the Badger Pirates and my score for the book kept going up especially towards the end where we meet Captain Florence, the leader of the Pirates who kills everyone she can.
Near the end, the novel got darker and had quite a bit of action. Although obviously the Doctor solves the problem quite easily and quickly, there is a good moral message at the end and your left wondering who decided to stay in the loop having a party on the Brilliant forever, and who left with the Doctor and Martha.
The story reminded me of one of the final Peter Capaldi stories where he's on the Cyberman ship and the back runs at a different time to the front of the ship.
An OK novel with a slow start and silly premise at the beginning with the Badger Pirates, although it gets action packed and darker at the end.
Score - 6.5/10
Goodreads - 3.5/10
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