Doctor Who: The Blood Cell by James Goss

"Release the Doctor — or the killing will start."

An asteroid in the furthest reaches of space - the most secure prison for the most dangerous of criminals. The Governor is responsible for the worst fraudsters and the cruellest murderers. So he's certainly not impressed by the arrival of the man they're calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor.

What does impress the Governor is the way the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape. And keeps trying. Finally, he sends for the Doctor and asks him why? But the answer surprises even the Governor. And then there's the threat — unless the Governor listens to the Doctor, a lot of people will die.

Who is the Doctor and what's he really doing here? Why does he want to help the Governor? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards?

When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins to get his answers...

A very strange Doctor Who story, The Blood Cell is told entirely through the eyes of a secondary character – the Governor – who encounters the Doctor and Clara when a strange old man is incarcerated in the prison he runs. As strange things begin to happen and the prison turns against the inmates and the guards, the Governor is forced to turn to the Doctor for help…

As a Doctor Who story told through the eyes of a secondary character, The Blood Cell works. As a science fiction story disassociated from the Doctor Who franchise, The Blood Cell works even better.  The Governor is an interesting narrator, full of contradictions and secrets that beg to be revealed. The situation - an inescapable prison where prisoners are disappearing - dealt cleverly with some basic sci-fi tropes. As the story progresses and the stakes mount, I for one found the story gripping, wondering who was behind the prison's problems, who the Governor really was and how the whole thing was going to resolve itself. 

Unfortunately, as a Twelfth Doctor story, The Blood Cell fails at one vital hurdle – the Doctor himself. While I could definitely see the Eleventh or Tenth Doctors acting in the way this Doctor does, what we have seen of Capaldi so far just does not gel with this wise-cracking, pop-culture spouting character. This Doctor does not have the darkness that Capaldi has brought to the role and while his relationship with Clara does share some of the antagonism of the on-screen partners, there was definitely something essential missing. If you can tell yourself that this is a lost Matt Smith story, great. If not, you may have the same problems with The Blood Cell that I did.
 
I gave The Blood Cell 3 stars. 

The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld

This is an enchanted place. Other's don't see it but I do.

From his cell, the narrator of The Enchanted tells us the story of the inmates, guards and other inhabitants of the ancient stone prison where he is being held on death row. Through his sometimes almost supernatural sight, he tells us of the Lady, an investigator hired by lawyers to try and get death row inmates out of their death sentences, the Fallen Priest, who struggles to make sense of the tragedy that caused his fall from grace, the warden whose wife is fighting a losing battle against cancer, and York, a brutal killer with a heartbreaking past of his own. As his own execution draws closer, the narrator draws all of these characters together in the enchanted place where wild horses run...

An Amazon pick of the month, The Enchanted has received quite a lot of attention in the past couple of months. After reading the blurb, and hearing the comparisons to such great books as The Green Mile, I added it to my To-Read list, unsure quite what to expect but looking forward to discovering what it was all about. What I found was a heart-wrenching literary fantasy, definitely worthy of the positive vibes that have been rippling through the blogosphere recently.
Told by a nameless narrator - whose identity is hinted at throughout but not fully revealed until the very end - The Enchanted brings together a number of disparate characters, all of them with dark secrets in their pasts, all of them struggling to make sense of the world around them and such concepts as justice, forgiveness and morality in a place where morals are a commodity and not a necessity. As our narrator skips between the characters, we get a fully rounded glimpse into the enchanted place that is this prison: a dark place where guards turn a blind eye to murder and rape in return for drug-money kickbacks, but also an enchanted place where the slightest act of goodwill can shine like a star gone suddenly nova.

Combining fantastical elements with a harrowing examination of the penal system and an investigative subplot surrounding the Lady and her attempts to see York escape the death penalty, the novel is able to constantly surprise and astonish, drawing out revelations about characters that turn monsters into victims without shying away from the dark truths. While examining something as sensitive as the death sentence and the way we treat men and women in prison, The Enchanted never goes for the easy answer or the simple emotion, forcing the reader to make their own minds up or at least go away from the book asking themselves questions.

Denfeld's writing combines short, sharp sentences with a poetic turn of phrase at times that culminates in a final scene that I defy anyone to read without at least a lump in their throat. Told mainly in the first person, the story moves skillfully between the characters, giving them all space to breath and develop despite the short length. While there are a few truly villainous characters (one each especially amongst the guards and the prisoners), most of them are far from simply cardboard cutouts - every single one of them has a story to tell.
The ending is bitter sweet, depending on the characters, but most of the story questions posed by the novel are answered while the more philosophical conundrums are left - as I said above - to the reader to make sense of. The fantastical elements, while present, are left in the background and again it is left up to the reader to decide how much of them are real and how much of them are wish fulfillment on the part of the narrator.

Harrowing and yet uplifting, dark and yet full of hope, The Enchanted is one of my books of the year so far and I imagine that it will be somewhere in my top ten by the end. Filled with real people and brimming over with beautiful, dark imagery, the book is a thought provoking novel that doesn't forget that the first job of any novel is to tell a story. I will most definitely be looking out for Rene Denfeld's next work. I gave The Enchanted 5 flibber-gibbets out of 5.

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Author's Website

From the Blogosphere:
The Lost Entwife
My Shelf Confessions
Fantasy Book Critic

From the Author's Mouth:
Interview at Foyles.co.uk