David Llewellyn

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2612517.html

I had high hopes for this collection of novellas, since James Goss and Justin Richards, on form, are the best regular Who writers for print, and Jenny Colgan (here adopting a Banksian middle initial as Jenny T. Colgan) is one of the most visible of the big name writers who have been brought in of late - a generally successful initiative.

And I wasn't disappointed. Goss in particular inserts Ashildr into the Thousand and One Nights,in a story that both show more respects the original tradition of nested and linked narratives, but also throws in some gender subversion. Colgan's story of the Black Death is surprisingly bleak. Llewellyn mashes up Columbus and the Hunger Games. Richards wraps it all up at the end. It's a good collection, perhaps aimed at a more mature readership than is immediately apparent. Let's hope for more. show less

Fifth Torchwood tie-in novel, and the middle one of the trio released for the second season. This one has a couple of references which place it late in second season, but no spoilers, and you don't need to know anything but the basics about the universe to enjoy it.

Michael Bellini's a Cardiff dockhand, part of a workgang waiting to unload a ship late one night in 1953. A ship whose cargo includes a crate marked "Torchwood". A strange explosion leaves him in hospital, the only one of his show more mates to survive. But that's not the worst of his worries. There are the men who say they're from the union, but who are clearly government agents. They're not nearly as frightening as the men in black suits and bowler hats, who aren't men at all.

In the present day, a quiet Sunday in the Hub is interrupted by the intruder alarm. A young man has suddenly appeared in a locked room, and he's riddled with a strange form of radiation. It doesn't take long for the team to establish that he's a local boy, but out of time. Not so strange for Torchwood, but there's a twist -- they've all encountered Michael before. Owen was a junior doctor, learning the necessary art of forgetting about his patients at the end of the day. Tosh was a little girl in Japan. Gwen was on her first day with a new partner, and somehow feeling as if it was her first day in the police force. Ianto was in his second week at Canary Wharf, making friends with another recent starter called Lisa.

And Jack? Well, Jack's been with Torchwood a long, long time. His own encounter with Michael was out of hours, but he still knows something about Michael's first encounter with Torchwood, and the alien artefact that sent Michael leaping through time. And a few more things besides.

This is a beautifully constructed novel, which uses Michael's leaps back and forth through time to tell a solidly plotted story around Michael and the artefact, while giving some lovely backstory and characterisation for each of the main cast. Something I particularly liked is that we see the characters when they were younger, and in those scenes they feel like younger versions of themselves, before various things happened to them. There's also some good characterisation in the present-day scenes. The nature of the book means that all of the main cast get a good share of the word count.

This is my favourite of the novels so far. That's partly because it plays to things I like, but it's also because it's well written. And while the canonicity of the Whoniverse tie-in material is ambiguous, I think this one adds a little more depth to the Torchwood world, not just another monster-of-the-week story. show less

It’s pleasing to see the imaginative approach to Doctor Who books continuing; concentrating on characters such as Ashildr or River expands the possibilities of the stories you can tell in the Doctor Who universe – different moral choices and approaches can be deployed. This collection largely settles for simply showing us the Ashildr we got on screen without greatly developing her; James Goss, creative as ever in his narrative choice, entertainingly places Ashildr into the world of the show more 1001 Nights; David Llewellyn puts her into a story which appears to be one thing but switches sharply and entertainingly into quite another in a way very typical of modern Who and Justin Richards uses her in a ghost story. These all paint her as a growingly resourceful character; often a pseudo-Doctor and where Goss and Llewellyn manage entertaining stories Richards’s is a nice idea which falls down somewhat when needing to convey the requisite terror and where a rationale is needed.

By far the most successful of the stories is Jenny Colgan’s The Triple Knife which uses the framework to deal with the terrors of motherhood and the worst consequences of having children. It’s a bleak tale with some lovely imagery which fits perfectly in developing the character from the Ashildr of The Girl Who Died to the Me of The Woman Who Lived; it adds extra resonance to Cath Tregenna’s Highlander-done-right story. A highlight of a generally entertaining volume. show less

This is a spin-off Doctor Who novel featuring the 10th Doctor as played by David Tennant. In a future earth colony orbiting Saturn, a version of the Chelsea flower show featuring alien flora is about to open. But the exhibition is a cover for an invasion by the Rutans who have been taking over colonists as part of their never-ending war with the Sontarans, who in turn invade the colony to hunt down their Rutan enemies. With the aid of two children Jake and Vienna, the Doctor manages to save show more the colony. The tone of this story is rather light and I didn’t think the 10th Doctor worked as well here in print as he did on TV. A decent story though. show less