This week I finished my first Doctor Who book: Touched by an Angel. Written by Jonathan Morris — the man behind the official Doctor Who Magazine comic strip — this book was an effortless read. The writing style is breezy, and the story itself is fast-paced and surprisingly poignant in a couple of spots.
The story revolves around a man, Mark, who is sent back in time by the Weeping Angels. But instead of being blasted back to another generation, he shoots back to the 1990’s and is able to watch his younger self fall in love with his future wife. The dilemma? Although he’s not really supposed to interfere with his former life, many of the incidents in his life happened because his older self helped out his younger self. So, to keep the timeline intact, he has to perform certain tasks for young Mark, or the Weeping Angels win. (There must be a reason they sent him back, after all…)
Thinking about time travel makes my head hurt, but this novel plays with the concept in all the right ways. The first scenes, filled with flashes of the Weeping Angels, are genuinely chilling. I also applaud Morris for nailing the characters of the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, and there were at least two notable scenes — one that involves time traveling to get a bride to her wedding on time, and another that involved a fez — that made me laugh and felt like they were pulled straight from a real episode of the show. I appreciated the short scenes and romantic story, which kept me turning pages long after I should have gone to bed. And not to give anything major away, but Rory fans can get excited about an ingenious bit of time traveling toward the end of the book, which lets Rory be something of a hero and ties everything together nicely.
Overall, the book is an incredibly fun romp that is easy to run through in two or three sittings. Sure, the writing is simplistic, there are a few odd descriptions, and reading Doctor Who can never come close to the experience of watching it… but I would still highly recommend this book to fans looking for an engaging read. I’m counting the days until Christmas, so this helped tide me over until “The Snowmen” finally airs…
— Ashley
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