3.5
Doctor Who: Royal Blood
ByPublisher Description
An original adventure tying in to the ninth season of Doctor Who, the spectacular hit series from BBC Television, featuring the new 12th Doctor as played by Peter Capaldi.
“The Grail is a story, a myth! It didn’t exist on your world! It can’t exist here!”
The city-state of Varuz is failing. Duke Aurelian is the last of his line, his capital is crumbling, and the armies of his enemy, Duke Conrad, are poised beyond the mountains to invade. Aurelian is preparing to gamble everything on one last battle. So when a holy man, the Doctor, comes to Varuz from beyond the mountains, Aurelian asks for his blessing in the war.
But all is not what it seems in Varuz. The city-guard have lasers for swords, and the halls are lit by electric candlelight. Aurelian’s beloved wife, Guena, and his most trusted knight, Bernhardt, seem to be plotting to overthrow their Duke, and Clara finds herself drawn into their intrigue...
Will the Doctor stop Aurelian from going to war? Will Clara’s involvement in the plot against the Duke be discovered? Why is Conrad’s ambassador so nervous? And who are the ancient and weary knights who arrive in Varuz claiming to be on a quest for the Holy Grail…?
“The Grail is a story, a myth! It didn’t exist on your world! It can’t exist here!”
The city-state of Varuz is failing. Duke Aurelian is the last of his line, his capital is crumbling, and the armies of his enemy, Duke Conrad, are poised beyond the mountains to invade. Aurelian is preparing to gamble everything on one last battle. So when a holy man, the Doctor, comes to Varuz from beyond the mountains, Aurelian asks for his blessing in the war.
But all is not what it seems in Varuz. The city-guard have lasers for swords, and the halls are lit by electric candlelight. Aurelian’s beloved wife, Guena, and his most trusted knight, Bernhardt, seem to be plotting to overthrow their Duke, and Clara finds herself drawn into their intrigue...
Will the Doctor stop Aurelian from going to war? Will Clara’s involvement in the plot against the Duke be discovered? Why is Conrad’s ambassador so nervous? And who are the ancient and weary knights who arrive in Varuz claiming to be on a quest for the Holy Grail…?
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesDoctor Who: Royal Blood Reviews
3.5
“Read this review, and many more on my blog http://octobertune.foreverislie.nl !
After finishing this book, I started to wonder whether there are any BAD Doctor Who books at all. Though I wasn’t really a fan of Hunter’s Moon, I did enjoy it, but other than that I really loved all the DW books that I’ve read until now. Sure, I haven’t read ALL the DW books in the world yet, there are about 51 New Series Adventures books, of which I have only read seven. And then there are the Classic Series still, which have about 156 books. I’ll just go and read as much DW books as I can, so I can find out if there really are bad Doctor Who books.
But now onto this one. I haven’t made a lot of notes for this book, because I was really into it (I finished it within twenty-four hours). I really, really loved it, and I would love to have seen this one as an episode. I liked the way it was written, and like I’ve probably said earlier, I don’t mind the changing POV’s at all with the Doctor Who books; because in this way you find out more of the story through other people’s eyes.
This story was mostly written from both Amy and Rory’s POV’s, seeing as the Doctor spend most of his time in a cell at the Police station. At first I suspected the Weeping Angels to be the reason why people disappeared, and I actually hoped they’d be (even though they weren’t on the cover of the book), but alas, it turned out to be a different alien (which sounded awesome to me as well).
There is one part in the book, that I just really loved, and I am just going to quote it. It does have a tiny spoiler in it, but it’s not a very big part of the story.
Rory was thinking about how he spend two-thousand years waiting and protecting the Pandorica (in the episode ‘The Big Bang’), because Amy was inside that box. And this quite is just wonderful, because Amy and Rory are my favourite fictional couple, and this sentence just reminds me why I love them so much, because they love each other so much they couldn’t bear to live without each other.
I loved how in the end everyone got their happy end, and yeah I just really loved it, I haven’t got much more to say about it.”
“This story had such a good premise, Knights of the Round Table show up on an alien planet hunting for the Holy Grail, but the execution left much to be desired. They seemed like an afterthought, a plug for a plot that was going nowhere. The characters were flat and uninspiring. Although Clara had some funny lines, she was one dimensional, no depth to feel like the reader really knew her. The Twelfth Doctor was never my favorite but I enjoy some of his rants on the show, the rants that uncover a sad man raging for peace. This book just took a stock grumpy old man and threw him in the story. The book has a beautiful cover but, unfortunately, there’s nothing inside worth the time.”
“Any books that let me pretend like my favourite television show character isn’t dead (or hasn’t regenerated) is immediately going to be great. I loved this one and all the others in the series.”
About Una McCormack
Una McCormack is a New York Times bestselling author. She has written two Doctor Who novels featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory: The King's Dragon and The Way through the Woods, as well as several audio dramas for Big Finish. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, Matthew, and their daughter, Verity.
Other books by Una McCormack
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