Doctor Who's Alex Kingston brings us a novel about her fictional alter ego River Song, and River's own fictional altar ego, Melody Malone. It starts off alternating River's adventure with chapters of the novel she's writing, but as the story goes on, the two turn out to be inextricably entwined.

It's a fun romp, featuring a cursed jewel, a reality-warping doomsday device, ancient Egyptian history, hardboiled detective action complete with murder mystery, time travel paradoxes, space gangsters, and lots of River being River. Most of it is probably completely ridiculous if you stop to think about it for two seconds, but why would you when you can just sit back and enjoy the ride? Especially as a certain level of complete ridiculousness is surely only appropriate both for Doctor Who and for 1930s pulp detective pastiche. ( )

Audiobook

I like Alex Kingston's voice, but in this particular instance I might have been better reading the Kindle version myself. What I found very distracting was when Melody Malone, in River's voice, used low-class American slang and bad grammar. It just did not gel, and I found it distracting and then increasingly irritating. The writer does give a reason for the change in speech patterns, but the change does not go with the accent, Kingston i certainly capable of matching the accent to this type of speech, as is demonstrated with other character voices. Why she doesn't with Melody, I don't know, unless she felt that Melody's voice would become less recognisable to the listener. It did however spoil my enjoyment of the story. ( )

In The Ruby’s Curse: A River Song/Melody Malone Mystery, Alex Kingston crafts a tale of the Doctor Who character she made most famous, River Song. The story goes meta quickly, with River writing a new Melody Malone story as a way to generate income for her parents, who have been living in 1939 New York City since the events of “The Angels Take Manhattan.”

While using the quiet of Stormcage for writing, she meets a fellow inmate who found a sentient machine that sought to eradicate all life. The inmate, named Ventrian, successfully deposited it on a world with no life or technology, thereby limiting its power, but fears that someone might find and use it. The device, a McGuffin of sorts, reminds River of the McGuffin in the story she’s writing: a ruby famed to have come from Cleopatra’s tomb. She shares stories from history with Ventrian, so that when some criminals break into the prison to capture Ventrian in the hopes of finding the weapon, he uses River’s vortex manipulator to hide it in the history of Cleopatra and Cesar, leaving clues so that she can find and destroy the device. He also adds clues within the novel River’s writing, titled “The Ruby’s Curse.”

Without giving away spoilers, the result is a fantastic tale for fans of River Song that revels in metatextuality. Kingston works in many subtle references, including foreshadowing her own future in “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” (pg. 25) as well as the Land of Fiction from “The Mind Robber” (pg. 200) and “Kill the Moon” (pg. 249). All of these are naturally in addition to the more necessary references, such as the aforementioned “The Angels Take Manhattan.” Finally, she offers a way for River to meet – if only psychically – the Thirteenth Doctor (pgs. 252-253). A delightful, adventurous story blending the best of history, science-fiction, and hi-jinks that River Song’s fans have come to expect of the character! ( )

This book is by Alex Kingston with some assistance from experienced Doctor Who novelist Jacqueline Rayner. As you might expect from a story featuring River Song, this is delightfully timey wimey in a way that I like: past selves setting up clues for future selves and ensuring that the time streams aren’t crossed. I also really liked the ancient Egyptian storyline. For these reasons I compared the book to Sands of Time; if you liked that one, you might like this one. And you’ll probably like it if you like River and her parents. There are probably spoilers if you haven’t seen the Eleventh Doctor episode “The Angels Take Manhattan”. Overall, this was well done and a relatively fast-paced read. I imagine it would be just as fun in audio, because Alex Kingston reads it. ( )

I loved this book! River Song is one of my favourite Doctor who characters and references to my most favourite/saddest episode “Angels take Manhattan” makes me love this book even more.

There characters are well written and and the story line and plot were easy to follow even with the forwards and backwards through time. I’m a huge fan of ancient Egypt so this book was right up my alley!

Alex Kingston I congratulate you on a fantastic book and I hope you write more! ( )