This is one of three novels published by the BBC which feature The Thirteenth Doctor for the first time (the other two are Combat Magicks by Steve Cole and The Good Doctor by Juno Dawson).
Team Tardis (the Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham) land on Adamantine, a planet on which nothing ever seems to have happened, nor ever seems likely to . But nothing is what it seems (is it ever in the world of the Doctor?)
The best travellers – the very best – aren’t fooled by surfaces. The best travellers know that if they want to find treasures, they must dig, dig deep, below the surface, down to the heart. And below the surface this world – Adamantine – indeed has many treaures to show. Many trearures, and some terrors, and always, always adventure. The best travellers always find adventure.
The time and space travellers do indeed find adventure, coming across a beautiful city. This is how Yaz sees it;
Sheer white towers shot skywards.Anywhere else, Yaz might have thought they were glass skyscrapers, but not here.These were like huge stalagmites, hollowed out, a whole city of crystals. They seemed to shine from within, and here and there white jewels and pale gemstones – sapphire and ruby and topaz and emerald – had been set into the crystal structures to make patterns and decorations., beautiful and intricate mosaics. Light bounced off these from every angle. The whole City shimmered, as if the stone was gently swaying to an alien rhythm.
The city’s inhabitants (some friendly, some not) are even more remarkable: the Doctor and her friends quickly find themselves caught up in a power and philosophical struggle whose outcome will determine the future of the planet.
A key theme in the book is how people (whether humans or aliens) respond to challenges to existing thinking. Some will accept new knowledge which overturns orthodoxy, others will violently reject it as heresy.
Nobody is truly evil in this book. There are people making the wrong decisions from fear or ignorance, but not from malevolence.
In conclusion, a excellent addition to the canon of Doctor Who novels which stretches back to 1964’s Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks written by David Whittaker (and which I can remember reading as a child )
Fantasies of Possibility 