Wednesday 13 February 2013

Doctor Who ebooks

I haven't downloaded many ebooks since I started off with ePub and Kindle - partly because I live in the Town of Secondhand Books, Hay-on-Wye, and work in one of the biggest bookshops there, so I always have plenty of reading matter all around me.
Having uploaded two novels onto Smashwords, though, I did feel that I had to at least put my toe in the water - and there are lots of books out there which are unavailable in print form, such as the Alex Beecroft books Bomber's Moon and Dogfighters (which I very much enjoyed).

The Doctor Who Christmas episode, The Snowmen, was fun, and I think Madame Vastra and Jenny and Strax are great characters, so I was very easily tempted by the BBC ebook The Devil in the Smoke by Justin Richards.
It was obviously put out very quickly after the Christmas episode, and stars Madame Vastra and her team without the Doctor. Most of the action is seen through the eyes of a young workhouse lad, so it's very much a juvenile adventure. It was fun and I enjoyed it - but I did get quite concerned about Madame Vastra's carriage horses. Do they never unharness them? Or feed them?

Having read that, I looked at another book by Justin Richards, The Angel's Kiss. This looks like the Melody Malone mystery that the Doctor was reading in Central Park and throughout the Angels Take Manhattan episode, but it actually isn't. It's a prequel starring River Song as Melody Malone in a mystery surrounding movie stars, and it's very different from Devil in the Smoke. You can hear River Song's voice steaming off the page - it's very well done. For instance: "I don't often need rescuing, but it's nice when it goes well and doesn't involve great heights."
The blurb describing the author is fun, too: "She is possibly married but lives alone usually, and is older than both her parents. Sometimes."

If I see more Doctor Who ebooks by Justin Richards, I'll probably give them a try.

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