Except, we’d also like a good story, please. Replace horses for space ships, swords for laser guns or sonic screwdrivers – and voilà, Doctor Who fans will eat it up. And this is a trend that continues through many of these stories. With so little originality, I wasn’t very impressed. There is a Doctor Who monster in this story, but other than that, it’s simply Sleeping Beauty in space. Sleeping Beauty is asleep because, well, her space ship landed but the cryogenic chambers/beds didn’t wake up their inhabitants. The Sleeping Beauty tale, for example, “Frozen Beauty”, doesn’t do anything original. While some are quite wonderful and deliver just what I had hoped for – such as the first story “The Garden of Statues” which features the Weeping Angels – others feel like cheap paint-by-the-numbers merchandise material, put in simply to add some meat to the book.

Justin Richards doesn’t just stick to the Grimm brothers either, but rather delves into lesser known or lesser loved fairy or folk tales.

Written by Justin Richards and illustrated by David Wardle.Īs in any good fairy tale collection, you will find a range of well-known stories in here. Originally told to young Time Lords at bedtime, these twisted tales are an enchanting read for Doctor Who fans of all ages. These captivating stories include mysterious myths and legends about heroes and monsters of all kinds, from every corner of the universe. The content, however, left a little to be desired and felt more like a cheap holiday stunt than properly thought-through fairy stories with the Doctor in them.įirst sentence: Once upon a time, there was a house at the edge of a town.Ī stunning illustrated collection of dark and ancient fairy tales from the world of Doctor Who. It’s much prettier in real life, with the metallic gold bits shining in the light. I discovered this while browsing online and was mostly struck by the cover.

Doctor Who and fairy tales – two things I love combined in one book? Of course I needed to have it.

Doctor Who by Justin Richards