The twelfth novel in the Virgin New Adventures series of Doctor Who books sees the Doctor and Bernice landing in a planetary system which was known to have mysteriously disappeared. As you might imagine, this is a premise which leads to disaster for them.

The story jumps between several different threads that are all taking place within the same planetary system. One small niggle that I have comes from the fact that the Doctor and Bernice become separated near the start and spend most of the novel having separate but connected adventures. This is something Doctor Who stories do a lot for some reason, but I think it’s a bit disappointing, because I always love to see the interactions between the Doctors and their various companions.

Having said that, my disappointment about the separation was relatively short-lived, because the Doctor spends most of the novel teamed up with the historic poet and artist, William Blake. In fact, that’s him on the front cover. I never would have seen that coming, but I thought it was a pretty cool pairing. Together they travel through a monster-filled wasteland, and even nineteenth century London.

Bernice, meanwhile, is teamed up with an android named Spike, who is technically trying to hunt her down because he thinks she is a shapeshifting fugitive, and the two have to survive navigating a vast jungle together. Though I liked William Blake more, I did think that Spike was a really cool standalone character too. Later a bunch of space criminals show up too, and they were pretty interesting.

What was most interesting to me about this one is that it was very different from your typical Doctor Who adventure (or most of them, anyway). The Doctor and his companion aren’t here to beat an enemy and save the day, rather they’re getting caught up in a series of horrible events and just doing their best to stay alive. In the end, I thought it was definitely one of the bleaker Doctor Who novels that I’d read, but not in a really horrible way.

So while this is a pretty edgy Doctor Who book, it’s also not too on-the-nose about it. I wish the Doctor and Benny got to interact more (they’re great when they’re together), but their solo adventures were pretty great too. Most importantly, it was paced well and made me want to keep reading throughout (some Doctor Who novels drag a bit), so it’s definitely one of the better New Adventures and I think it’s well worth reading (it even has some ancient Time Lord secrets!)

Rating: 8.7/10

This, one of Charles Dickens most iconic novel, provides a human-level perspective of the French Revolution. The story spans the two cities in the title (London and Paris) and shows how the impacts of the revolution were far reaching enough that people living in England could have felt their ripples.

As Dickens always does, he goes to great lengths to highlight the struggles of poor people. He’ll show people living in the absolutely worst levels of poverty, then contrast it against overly decedent affluent people, and illustrate how ignorant, or even downright unsympathetic they are of the people around them.

Of course, he shows us the poor people struggling in France before the revolution, but he also shows the struggles of the poor in England too. He doesn’t shy away from the terrible realities of the revolution, and how a lot of the worst off people ended up in equally horrible situations afterwards. He does a good job of illustrating the parallels with English life, and how the country can hardly be said to be any better.

I have come to associate Dickens with satire. A lot of what I’ve read by him before has shone a light onto social injustices, but with a smidgen of comedy. While I appreciate that style, A Tale of Two Cities is much grittier, and there’s significantly less humour that I expect from him. He is indignant about awful situations, and rightfully indignant too. It was different, but in no way worse off for it.

The main story is about a man named Dr. Manette who, after being imprisoned for years in France, is freed to live with his daughter in England, who then marries a man named Charles Darney. The circumstances of their birth, and their family history, all end up causing them significant problems. As changes begin to happen on the world’s stage, it’s ordinary people who are left to suffer. There are several other people in their life too, who all get a pretty decent amount of time in the spotlight, but it’s their story that everything else is built around.

I became invested in the whole cast, and as it built to its climax, I was genuinely anxious for the wellbeing of all of them. What actually happens at the end (which I won’t spoil) is one of the most emotionally powerful things I’ve ever read. I won’t deny that certain parts of the story were a little on the dry side, but it’s well worth sticking with for the profound human drama and the fascinating history lesson.

Rat9jg: 9/10

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This children’s novel tells the story of the author meeting an alien prince after crash landing in the Sahara desert, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. Often I read children’s literature and I enjoy it, but I find it to be missing a certain level of emotional depth that I need as an adult, and The Little Prince is the perfect example of how children’s literature doesn’t have to be that way. It’s extremely deep and meaningful.

On his way to the Earth, the Prince encounters various characters who inhabit their own little worlds – these include a king who rules over nothing, and a businessman who wants to own all the stars, among many others. Each of them represents one of the less pleasant aspects of humanity, and the Prince, as an outsider, highlights how ridiculous all of these things are. He has a childlike innocence to him, and his perspectives are untainted by the less wholesome values of many ‘adult’ eyes.

The Prince’s visits to all the tiny little planets are rather strange when put in the context of the much more grounded element of meeting the author crashed in the desert. In a way though, this works well too. It helps make the Prince’s existence feel more removed from our own, and underlines that his reality is one where love and childlike logic rule, rather than adult rationality.

As the author worries about what’s going to happen if he can’t get his plane working and leave the desert, The Prince is more worried about the rose that he loves at home. A lot of the time, children are told that the things they think and feel are not important, and that the interests of adults are what really matter – this book turns that on its head, but making The Prince’s perspective the one that’s really important.

The Little Prince is ultimately a book that’s about loving people, and appreciating them (and the world around you) and I love this little alien character for embodying such beautiful ideals. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it was really moving. The whole book is so wonderfully written, and a reminder of what really matters in this life. (This is based on the translation by Ros and Chloe Schwarz).

Rating: 9.5/10

Buy it here.

Something about finding progressive values in really old pieces of work always puts a smile on my face. It can be a reminder that what may be considered new and radical today, has probably actually been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Utopia is a great book for this kind of thing, though it does have its fair share of dodgy beliefs thrown in too.

The book is written as if it were a piece of non-fiction. Writing as himself, Thomas More describes the circumstances in which he came into contact with a man named Raphael Hythlodaeus. At first they discuss many of the ills of their society (for example, talking about how severe punishments for thieves won’t stop the crime, when it’s largely caused by poverty, which is just as relevant now as ever), before getting to the really interesting bit: Raphael’s home region of Utopia.

One of the most interesting features of Utopia is that it is a communist society. Though the country has money for use in its international relationships, it has none for its citizens, who have all their needs provided for, and can access any additional materials from public storage buildings that anybody can access. I was particularly fascinated by the argument made by Raphael that the concept of money and ownership is inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus.

It also has a comical aspect to it, talking about how gold and jewels are given to people as punishments and considered shameful things, to discourage people from coveting them. That then leads to wealthy people from other countries to come and visit and be considered a laughing stock for looking so ridiculous (in the eyes of the Utopians) in their splendour. I liked that there was a sense of humour too it. The dialogues near the start can be quite witty as well, and there are jokes about not remembering where Raphael said Utopia was.

Another aspect that I liked was the notion of religious tolerance – something that was definitely not a mainstream view at the time. In Utopia, all religions are seen as different paths to an overall God – another belief which, even today, a lot of people would do well to adopt. Unfortunately, the religious tolerance does not extend towards those who do not have religious beliefs, and the atheists in Utopian society are second class citizens.

Speaking of the negative aspects of this society, it also places huge restrictions on the citizens’ sex lives, with pre-marital sex forbidden, and enforced life-long celibacy used as the punishment. Meanwhile, if you commit adultery, you’re forced to become a slave. And while this society does have slavery, which isn’t great, at very least, in Utopia, it’s a temporary state of being (usually a punishment) and people have the opportunity to gain their freedom again afterwards.

Citizens also need to have permission from the government if they are going to go anywhere, though he says that they all like it so much, they never want to go anywhere anyway – but would that ever really happen? Then there’s also the fact that people of certain jobs all have to dress in the same way. Women are allowed to have all the same jobs as men, yet are still expected to take care of all the housework. Of course, same sex relationships aren’t acknowledged at all. There’s no denying that Utopia has its list of flaws.

The whole book is a strange mixture of really cool, progressive ideas, and really awful ideas that sound like they’d make people miserable. For me, the progressive ideas shine so brightly, and are so impressive for their time, that it makes me like the book a lot overall – though, of course, you may find yourself less willing to focus on the positives. I reckon everyone should give it a go, and it’s written in quite a nice style (or at least, the Paul Turner translation is, anyway).

Rating: 9.1/10

Buy it here.

This was another of the books in the Reclaim Her Name series, where works by female authors which were published under male pseudonyms are finally released under the author’s real name. Keynotes was originally published under the name George Egerton, and is an example of early modernist work.

As someone who’s not the biggest fan of modernism, I was wary of starting this. I wanted to read all the Reclaim Her Name books, so I did get around it eventually, but I was concerned it might be similar to be experience of Ulysses, which I really struggled with. Fortunately, it was more like my experience with Virginia Woolf (who’s work I quite enjoy).

While I expected this to be a novel, it’s more like a collection of untitled short stories – but none of the pieces really feel like a cohesive whole. They’re glimpses into the lives of several characters, with the emphasis usually on relationships between men and women. Each piece paints a beautiful, vivid picture, and the feelings of the characters as they, for example, contemplate an affair, or consider the waning love in their marriage, come across really well.

I won’t deny, it’s a book that’s hard to follow sometimes. There’s a lot of information on thoughts and histories and so forth, that the lines between past, present, and future, can feel blurred. What is specifically happening in the moment is often unclear, and you may find yourself re-reading certain passages over and over to make sense of them. No doubt this will be off-putting for some, but I still think it’s a beautifully written book.

I don’t think there’s a real, narrative-based connection between the stories, but it is very possible that it simply went over my head. There are certain themes (for example, the relationships between men and women) that run through all of them, but I think that’s the only real connection. If you’re a fan of classics, and especially modernist works, then you might well enjoy this, but I think it’s a book of rather niche appeal.

Rating: 7.7/10

Little Women and its follow-up Good Wives (which are often just considered as a singular piece of work, collectively called Little Women), make up one of my favourite stories in classic literature. The third book in the series, Little Men, doesn’t ever seem to get quite as much attention, and now having read it, I can see why. While I definitely enjoyed this and wouldn’t want to suggest it was bad, it doesn’t feel like much of a meaningful continuation of what came before.

A few of the characters from the first two books appear, but the ones with the biggest role are Jo and her husband. Of all the characters to be a focus for a third book, I am glad that it was Jo, because she was my favourite of the Little Women and what she’s doing at this stage in her life is really cool: helping to run Plumfield – a school for underprivileged children.

Though the thing about this novel is that it is told from the point of view of the children at Plumfield. At the start, a boy named Nat comes to stay with them, and we get the story of him getting used to his new life in the school, getting to know the other kids. Together they all share various little adventures, which prompt them to learn important life lessons (much like the girls did in the original novel), but it feels like a new story in the same setting, rather than strictly being a continuation of the old story – a ‘next generation’ type thing.

It’s a very episodic novel, which each chapter telling a different story, but I actually like that style of storytelling. It gives different characters a chance to step into the spotlight at different times, and means they all get developed quite well. The cast of new characters is pretty great too. Some examples include Nan (one of my favourites), who is a young girl who has too much confidence (which leads to sticky situations), Dan, a boy who grew up on the streets and struggles to adapt to polite society, and Daisy (who is Amy’s daughter), who for a while, is the only girl there.

It’s a wholesome novel that I enjoy for much the same reasons as I liked the first two books, though it felt closer in style to Little Women than to Good Wives, which is a bit of a step down, after how good the second book was. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to be admired here, and I think it’s good for fans to view this as a kind of spin-off, rather than a true sequel, as that will alleviate any disappointment somebody may feel in expecting a third book in the series.

One of my favourite things about the book was the fact that it was generally pretty progressive. Jo thinks that it’s important for boys and girls to be educated together (which was ahead of its time) and also understands that individual students have individual needs. Obviously, there’s the odd bit of dodgy nineteenth century values every now and then, but I think it’s very good for it’s time, and it always makes me happy when authors I like are on the right side of history.

If you’re looking for a cosy read which manages to embrace the darker side of life without losing its positive ethos, then this is a must-read. Fans of Little Women in particular should give this one a go.

Rating: 8.3/10

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In this sequel to Batman: The Long Halloween, we’re given an account of how Batman and Robin first met, and of how the events of the first story took lasting tolls on all the characters involved. In many ways, it’s the perfect sequel, because it feels like a natural continuation of the event in the previous one – although I suppose it’s overall story is quite similar to the first one, which might be disappointing for some.

So, basically, what happens is that the killings which coincide with holidays start happening again, and of course, Batman is on the case to investigate it… the problem is, that since everything that happened with Harvey Dent, Batman has become even more isolated than he was before, and it’s effecting his capabilities. He needs someone by his side, so it’s lucky that he happens to meet Robin through the course of his investigation.

What I really liked about this story was the fantastic atmosphere that comes from Jeph Loeb’s writing style and Tim Sale’s art. Some comics are all about the action and the fights, but, like the last part, this is genuinely written with all the depth that you’d find in a murder mystery novel. There’s a moody feeling that runs through all of it, almost like a more modern day noire style, and it gives a strong impression of life in Gotham City.

The setting is just part of it, the biggest thing for me was the fantastic cast of characters. Obviously, there’s Batman and Robin, who are always great, but then there’s also various members of the Falcone crime family, commissioner Gordon, and loads of iconic Batman characters like Catwoman, The Joker, The Riddler, and more.

I think what I liked most of all was the way that it had so many different characters who all had their own unique motivations, and then drama ensued from the way in which their different trajectories through life intersected. I was invested in all of them, and for that reason, several moments throughout the story felt really shocking. If you’ve read The Long Halloween, I definitely recommend following it up with this.

Rating: 9.1/10

Buy it here.