A review by rebelbelle13
Doctor Who: The Face-Eater by Simon Messingham

3.0

I still don't understand why Who authors feel the need to make their stories so convoluted. Is there something wrong with a straightforward, easy to follow narrative? The nearest I can figure with this book, it goes something like this: so the native telepathic fuzzies of this planet that Earth has colonized in the future came together and created some half organic/half machine shape shifting person draining monster that escaped from a mountain and killed the colonized earth people by reading their thoughts and dreams and then assimilated them. I think. The Doctor is barely in the story. He and Sam spend 95% of it apart. She's a nasty piece of work at the beginning and then terrible things happen to her throughout the novel. After the last few adventures I honestly have no idea why Sam is even still traveling with the Doctor. She's got several lifetimes' worth of PTSD at this point.
The good stuff? It reads quickly. The side characters aren't so bad, and part of it rather feels like a noire detective story. We're not on Earth, which is a plus, and we get to see the Doctor stretch his telepathic muscles.
The basic idea of the story is good, but the extra twists and turns and mental leaps added just aren't necessary. There are many questions at the end left unanswered and the story just all in all feels forgettable. Final score is 2.5. It's fine, could be better, but not as bad as some of the others in this series that I've come across.