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Rating: 
Summary: Not a great sequel, but still a good book
Review: For me, there's an almost certain way to write a Doctor Who novel that disappoints: take a well-loved TV serial and write a sequel. Authors doing this seem to get caught up with adding new and "interesting" facts, which somehow manage to detract from the original. They aren't original enough where they should be, and do not play to their original's strengths to the extent they should. Having said that, 'The Sands of Time' isn't as bad in that respect as, say, 'Twilight of the Gods'.A sequel to the classic 'Pyramids of Mars', this book starts when the TARDIS materialises in the British Museum's Egyptian wing. The TARDIS crew are obviously comfortable with travelling, as they take their collective eye off the game for a moment and Nyssa is kidnapped. The Doctor and Tegan then meet a man who has met them, but whom they have never met, and end up at the unwrapping of a mummy. It is Nyssa, and she has been entombed for 4000 years... While I'm not terribly impressed with its tie-ins with 'Pyramids of Mars', this book does have quite a number of redeeming features. The plot itself has very carefully thought through time travel aspects, relates closely to the milieu of the Fifth Doctor, and doesn't pull rabbits out of hats - the reader is handed several important pieces to the resolution of the story at the beginning, and their actual role becomes plain late in the book. More importantly, the characters and their relationships are central. There are some occasions when you may wonder why some the people who have travelled in the TARDIS continue to do so. In this book, the importance of the characters to each other shows through very strongly. Not a great sequel, but still a good book.
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