Review: At Childhoods End by Sophie Aldred

When I learned from a friend and fellow Whovian that Sophie Aldred, the actor who had played teenage rebel Ace, had recently penned a Doctor Who novel, I knew that I had to read it. Ace has always been one of my favourite companions, and the teaming of Ace and the Seventh Doctor (or Professor as she always called him,) was always a brilliant bit of casting. I share the opinion that the era of the Seventh Doctor was one of the finest and that many of the serials, especially Remembrance of the Daleks point to where the show was headed and sync in perfectly with the contemporary version of Doctor Who, which, as we all know has been going for an impressive sixteen years. Of course, it never should have been axed in the first place but ...

Anyway, At Childhood's End is another perfect link between the old and the new Doctor Who. Set in present day, we meet Ace, or Dorothy as she now prefers to be known, who is well and truly an adult and heads the global organisation, A Charitable Earth. (Ace, it turns out, did not part on good terms with the Doctor.) Anyway, Dorothy is being plagued by nightmares that all link back to when she first left earth after a supposed chemistry experiment went wrong. And there seems to be a surprising number of teenage runaways who are disappearing from earth. Is it possible that the two events are in some way connected? Let's just say, Dorothy thinks so. And then things take on another twist when she finds herself face to face with the Thirteenth Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Gary. Together, and along with some other colourful characters, they find themselves on an action packed adventure as they try to get to the bottom of things.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one. Sophie Aldridge leverages her inside knowledge of the character she played to deliver a novel that is entertaining, intriguing and blends in perfectly with the current Doctor. For me, a good number of the Thirteenth Doctor's adventures have been a bit of a letdown, whether they be on television or in print, but this one is a lot of fun. And like a number of the best Doctor Who novels, this one seeks to explain some of the things we didn't see on screen.

Recommended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more

Who Else Writes Like V.C. Andrews?

Image
Are there any other authors out there who write similar novels to V.C. Andrews? This is a question I see asked frequently in excellent fan run V.C. Andrews Facebook groups like Attic Secrets and The Dolls Club. In times gone by, The Complete V.C. Andrews webpage (which is no more, but the best bits are archived by Lorraine at the Attic Secrets blog,) had a comprehensive list. Today, I thought I would put forward a few of my own thoughts and recommendations. (Note: This will focus mainly on the series and novels written by the actual V.C. Andrews and not ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman, who has a distinctive writing style of his own.) The Classics This is probably the best place to start, as it is likely that some of these novels influenced V.C. Andrews herself. Andrews was a fan of Charles Dickens, mentioning the author in the prologue of her most famous novel Flowers in the Attic. I have yet to read all of Dickens novels (I've read about half,) but I can feel a slight V.C. Andrews vi
Read more