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smitchy 's review for:
Doctor Who: The Ruby's Curse
by Alex Kingston
Convoluted.... That is the word that best describes this whole situation. I know, I know, it's Doctor Who so of course it has to be convoluted but this one is on another level.
So this is a book written by Alex Kingston who played River Song in the TV show. So far so good, she knows the character well. This is also book about River Song writing a detective novel featuring her own alter ego Melody Malone (who was a character in the episode "The Angels take Manhattan" - the one where Rory and Amy get angel-ed back in time to 1930s New York and get stuck there unable to be rescued and then have to live out their lives from then on). Melody Malone is a pulp-fiction private detective in the best gumshoe style, a classy dame and all round kick-arse femme fatale.
River decides the best place to get some peace and quiet to write her novel is back in her cell in Stormcage in the 52nd century but a little quirk of the ventilation system leads her to speaking with a new prisoner, Ventrian. Ventrian is in prison for finding a device that gives ultimate power but also corrupts your soul at the same time. After accidentally (sort of) destroying lives and worlds he realised that it had to be hidden and destroyed but only got as far as hiding it before being caught. Now there are very bad people wanting to get their hands on it. In between chapters of River and Ventrian, we get Melody Malone in the book River is writing chasing a missing artifact for her client. People are dropping dead all over the place and the ruby Melody is said to be cursed!
As the book progresses things get a bit, well, meta would be the right word. As the device Ventrian is hiding mixes fiction and reality and Melody and River meet face to face in both real life and the fictional world of Melody Malone while moving between 30BCE, 1939CE (real and fictional). We have perspective change from Melody to River and back again. Melody becomes a cat and also River's twin sister. So like I said at the start, it is convoluted.
There is one point where I think Kingston herself got confused because Melody mentions how she has spent so much time in the New York Library researching detective novels but Melody is a detective and it should be River is researching.
This is one for the fans.
So this is a book written by Alex Kingston who played River Song in the TV show. So far so good, she knows the character well. This is also book about River Song writing a detective novel featuring her own alter ego Melody Malone (who was a character in the episode "The Angels take Manhattan" - the one where Rory and Amy get angel-ed back in time to 1930s New York and get stuck there unable to be rescued and then have to live out their lives from then on). Melody Malone is a pulp-fiction private detective in the best gumshoe style, a classy dame and all round kick-arse femme fatale.
River decides the best place to get some peace and quiet to write her novel is back in her cell in Stormcage in the 52nd century but a little quirk of the ventilation system leads her to speaking with a new prisoner, Ventrian. Ventrian is in prison for finding a device that gives ultimate power but also corrupts your soul at the same time. After accidentally (sort of) destroying lives and worlds he realised that it had to be hidden and destroyed but only got as far as hiding it before being caught. Now there are very bad people wanting to get their hands on it. In between chapters of River and Ventrian, we get Melody Malone in the book River is writing chasing a missing artifact for her client. People are dropping dead all over the place and the ruby Melody is said to be cursed!
As the book progresses things get a bit, well, meta would be the right word. As the device Ventrian is hiding mixes fiction and reality and Melody and River meet face to face in both real life and the fictional world of Melody Malone while moving between 30BCE, 1939CE (real and fictional). We have perspective change from Melody to River and back again. Melody becomes a cat and also River's twin sister. So like I said at the start, it is convoluted.
There is one point where I think Kingston herself got confused because Melody mentions how she has spent so much time in the New York Library researching detective novels but Melody is a detective and it should be River is researching.
This is one for the fans.