For all fans of Dr Who - this read exactly like an episode of my favourite show. It was quick moving and easy to follow. It has been written for a younger audience and is appropriate to be read by 12+.

I just love this doctor and her team. As someone who’s been a fan of doctor who since I was a small child I love reading the books that accompany the series.
Getting to see more of the gang was fabulous.
Overall this book was a bit hit and miss for me. The humour like the tv show was spot on but I found it just lacked... muster I guess. Everything was solved super easily and the stakes were pretty low.
Would read more like this in future!
3/5 stars

Lightweight media tie-in for children, featuring Jodi Whittaker's 13th Doctor and her usual helpers. Expect several types of maze, a futuristic mechanical minotaur, a downed alien spacecraft in Ancient Crete, Daedalus and Icarus, modern London, and a monster in the underground. This reads pretty much like a self-contained TV episode with no major revelations.

DOCTOR WHO – THE MAZE OF DOOM

AUTHOR: DAVID SOLOMONS / PUBLISHED BY PUFFIN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

“There’s a Minotaur loose on the London Underground!” Only in Doctor Who. David Solomons follows up last year’s The Secret in Vault 13, a lively, Galaxy-hopping romp that occasionally buckled under the weight of all the fan-pleasing continuity reference-crammed into its text, with another breathless scramble of an adventure. This time, it mirrors the globetrotting tone of the most recent version of the show on TV. Largely Earth-centric, Series 12 saw the Doctor and her ‘fam’ fighting aliens and assorted extra-terrestrial odd bods in locations as diverse as London, Australia, 1940s Germany, New York in the early 1900s, Hong Kong, Madagascar, and 19th-century Lake Geneva. Similarly, Solomons sends team TARDIS hurtling across the planet in another breathless high octane yarn. After a prologue featuring the return of a long-forgotten old enemy set on Crete circa 2000 BC, it kicks off in the near future at the Palace of Whitehall in Westminster, before moving to a secret underground base in the Alps, and a crashed alien spaceship at the bottom of the Aegean Sea.

Back in the 1970s, Doctor Who was occasionally given to borrowing from classic myths and legends in its quest to find new ways to tell its adventures in Space and Time. In The Maze of Doom, Solomons has chosen to revisit one of the era’s less well-regarded stories - 1979’s creaky, cash-strapped Horns of Nimon. A massive starship comes to Earth in Crete in 2000 BC and the wreckage becomes a source of interest for the scientist Daedelus and his son Icarus. The repercussions not only of the crash but also the curiosity of those keen to explore and exploit its bizarre and unfathomable secrets reverberate down through the ages. This culminates in a desperate race against time in the year 2028 as the Doctor and her friends confront the rampaging metallic Minotaur and two ambitious 21st-century philanthropists and their plan to provide a new and enduring energy source for the world at any cost.

The Maze of Doom is aimed squarely at younger fans (assuming that there are any younger fans left). Still, Solomons never writes down to his audience, and he’s kept the tiresome references to a minimum too, this time. His story bounces along at a decent pace, is packed with incident, scares, nasty monsters, and a little bit of tame body horror here and there. Once again, Solomons captures perfectly the relationship between the Doctor, Ryan, Yaz (who gets a bit more to do here than she ever does on TV) and Graham, who provides most of the dry, laconic humour. Frothy, flippant stuff, but hugely readable even for those of more advanced years, The Maze of Doom is commendably tightly-plotted. It makes good use of its mythological origins, offering some neat contemporary twists on classic Greek myth while delivering a propulsive, expansive yarn entirely in keeping with the style of the current series. Stubborn old-school fans, as ever, won’t want to touch this with a bargepole but this is a thrilling little read for any youngsters invested in the antics of the Timeless Child and her chums.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Puffin for an advance copy of Doctor Who: The Maze Of Doom.
I really enjoy this story, full of action and adventure with some really funny lines along the way. This is my first Dr Who book and it it so much more enjoyable than the TV series. The description of what’s happening is really clear.
This author is fabulous.

I've been a fan of Dr Who forever and have watched every single episode. I've never read a tie-in though, so I was keen to read this. I really enjoyed it - it was much simpler than the TV series and I found it much easier to follow. The characters came across well and were exactly as I think of them from the TV series. A good, entertaining read.

As a Whovian it's strange to think that I haven’t read a Dr Who story for many years. I can’t think why not but it never occurred to me. However I really enjoyed reading this story featuring the 13th Doctor and her companions. It reflects the TV characters well with many light touches of humour. Graham always makes me laugh. Throw in some Greek myths and dubious characters as well as a few aliens and the threat of death and it’s a well concocted story. The only downside is that I thought it ended rather abruptly. I wanted to stay with the story but had to let it, the Dr and companions continue on their journeys in the Tardis. Maybe that’s a good sign?

A good Dr Who story, which will appeal to young fans, the current doctor is well written and I can certainly “hear” her and the rest of the assistants. It’s certainly true to character.

All in all, a good story!

My thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House UK Children’s for the copy.

Well, this proved to be a pretty satisfactory adventure, whatever the reader's age or experience with The Doctor. It's definitely the current one, featuring the latest multi-ethnic iteration of the TARDIS crew – with a brief allusion to lesbian affection at one point, as if the BBC's social engineering experiment isn't enough already. It also alludes to an adventure from the distant past, as far as we see it, when the fourth Doctor had what seemed to be a certain Mediterranean-based enemy of ancient myth. And that's what I liked about this, the way it seemed to have a handle on bringing in so much from multiple myths – there is a mention of zombies at one point, but you could also see The Golem in these pages, and even the Antikythera Mechanism is evoked in the thingummy that the baddies are trying to use. The narrative manages to do quite a bit the series wouldn't, with almost a Bond-styled travel round the continent (and attendant big set where the baddie can just stand there and say to everyone what he's doing) upping the scope. Now, I haven't watched the TV series since they replaced The Good One with The Ugly One, but I found the book tallied with what I've learnt about the characterisation of the companions and this generation, and even if that was not the case I think the action is breathless enough to make this a most satisfying page-turner. Of course it comes with a major slip-up when the timey-wimey stuff is used, tying itself into Terminator-styled knots, but that's par for the course. The quality of this, though, isn't.

Some of my earliest reading memories are of the ‘Doctor Who’ tie in novels written by the late, great Terrance Dicks. In an age before video recorders, the books allowed me to enjoy the adventures of the eccentric, alien time traveller and his assistants outside of his Saturday evening appearances on TV. Skip forward forty years and several regenerations and the Doctor is still going strong. To the consternation of a handful of morons, he is now a she (if gender even matters to Time Lords), the special effects are a lot better and the show is broadcast on a Sunday rather than a Saturday. Aside from that little has changed, ‘Doctor Who’ continues to mix inventive, family friendly sci fi with the occasional scare and a very British sense of humour.
Whilst I’ve continued to watch the programme, it’s been a very long time since I’ve read one of the spin off books, so I was excited to read this one from popular children’s author David Solomons. I’m pleased to say that it lived up to my nostalgic expectations.
‘The Maze of Doom’ sees the thirteenth Doctor and assistants Yaz, Ryan and Graham in an adventure involving ancient Greeks, alien minotaurs, robotic dogs, a near future London and a submarine. The story is told with all the energy and humour you could hope for. The writing has a playfulness that makes it a joy to read and I laughed out loud more than once. Solomons throws in numerous enjoyable references to British culture and does a great job of capturing the character of Doctor’s latest incarnation. The plot is solid Who-fare, it twists and turns and is packed with cliff-hangers. Yes, it’s silly, but who cares when it’s this much fun.
‘The Maze of Doom’ is brilliantly faithful to the spirit and feel of the show and a perfect antidote to the long wait for the next season. If you like the show, whether you’re young or old, you’ll find this a diverting and entertaining read. Be warned though, it will leave you with a ‘Do You Want to Build a Snowman’ earworm.

Loved this Doctor Who book, which was a fun and fast paced read. Although this is a children's book, I would say that under 9's might find it a bit on the scary side.

The characterisation of The Doctor and her companions were spot on. I really enjoyed this book and will be recommending to all my doctor who friends.

This was a lot of fun and such a quick paced and exciting read. I loved the interaction between the doctor and all her companions. This was such a fun book and I would pick up more like this!