Doctor Who: The Blood Cell by James Goss is one of three new novels to be released featuring the Twelfth Doctor. I received this eARC through Blogging for Books via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. I am a life long Doctor Who fan and this marked the first time I've actually read a Doctor Who novel. Having seen every episode of the tv series featuring Peter Capaldi so far, it was quite easy to picture him in the role. The author did a splendid job of writing the character of the Doctor, as well as Clara.
The entire book focuses on the first person point of view of “The Governor,” in charge of an asteroid prison in which the Doctor is Prisoner 428. I liked the idea of a first person pov story of a character that wasn't the Doctor, it really gave us a passable mystery.
My only issue with this book was the solving of most of the who/what/whys towards the middle of the book, with one last mystery that kind of felt wonky. By time we reach that part of the book, I was just anxious for it to end. Overall, not a bad book though.
I'm so glad this book was recommended to me, I have already recommended this book to numerous people. If you love geeky culture (tv, movies, games, music, etc), then you'll most likely love this book.
-Potential spoiler for those who haven't read?-
First I've had a chance to read this novel and I somehow have managed to avoid hearing about what this story is about. Part of me expected the dinosaurs to fill up the entire plot line after they reached the plateau, I didn't expect this to story to swerve into a telling of a battle of an indigenous people and anthropoid ape-men.
This story is definitely a product of its time, with instances of racism and sexism towards various characters. On a positive note, there's quite a bit of science related to botany and zoology that I ended up going to Wikipedia to read up on as I read this story.
Overall, this story reminds me of several others where the adventure is the main focus and not the action (though this is obviously present) and I can appreciate stories like that.
This was my second time reading this. I last read it shortly before the movie came out and I felt like I didn't give this enough attention past the surface level story. I read this in tandem with a book club video series and thoroughly enjoyed the depth with which this whole story was constructed by both Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
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