I Am a Dalek, by Gareth Roberts

I've been a fan of Doctor Who since I was in elementary school. It's probably been about twenty years now since I first watched the series. I loved the Tom Baker episodes. I started watching the new series as soon as it was downloadable via bit torrent (once it was broadcast in the US, I started watching on SciFi).

I was always a fan of the Doctor Who books too. I have a largish selection of the novelizations. I have (what I believe is) a complete set of the Virgin Missing Adventures. I have a few of the Virgin New Adventures too, but I never liked that series as much. When the BBC started publishing the books themselves, I picked up one novel, didn't like it very much, and stopped reading the books.

Flash forward to January, 2007. I got about $80 worth of Borders gift cards for Christmas, and was having some trouble finding $80 worth of books. So, when I saw I Am A Dalek for only $5.99, I decided to give it a chance. I thought the author's name was familiar, and after a quick search through my collection, I found that he wrote three of the Virgin Missing Adventures.

The book is pretty well written, though I thought the opening was a bit off. The plot is original, but true to the series. The characters seem like their TV counterparts. Style-wise, it's everything I'd expect from a Doctor Who novel, and it's a good book.

Sadly, I have to give it a mediocre rating because of the price. $5.99 is cheap for a book, but I think it's a bit much for a hundred-page book that I read in about an hour. I couldn't recommend a book of this size unless it was at least a dollar cheaper in price. So, with it being no reflection on Mr. Roberts' writing, I can only give I Am a Dalek three yo-yos.