Heart and Head - Rated 
Although a long-term Doctor Who fan, I have not always read the books, mainly because there are so many of them. However, I have kept up with the books since the new series started and, although they have been patchy at best, the most recent three have been the best so far.
The Doctor and Martha arrive on a space ship which seems to be filled with the corpses of prisoners on whom unspeakable experiments have been performed. Returning to the TARDIS, our intrepid duo find that a forest has mysteriously appeared where there was nothing previously. Entering the village, they find the locals in the grip of fear: the children are disappearing and there are monsters in the forest.
This is a gripping, well-written and ingenious novel which avoids the usual clichés of monsters on the rampage to present a character-based story with a good dash of "hard" science fiction ideas. The monsters in the forest reminded me of the film The Village, although the solution is very different. The main characters are well-presented and behave in character as we know them. All in all, very enjoyable.
Heart of darkness - Rated
Another novel in the bbc books range of doctor who stories, this one featuring the tenth doctor as played by david tennant, and his new companion martha jones.
The first batch of novels of each year have always faced the problem of writing for a new character - new doctors last two times and a new companion this time - who hasn't yet been seen on screen at the time of writing. In this case, writer martin day captures martha as a character pretty well. We are privy to a lot of her thoughts at first, and less as the book goes on, but this works fine and her dialogue, although perhaps not that different from rose at times, feels in keeping with the character based on what we've seen of her on television.
Plot wise, the tardis crew arrive on a deserted spaceship, and find a forest has suddenly appeared and is blocking their route back to the tardis. Their attempts to find what is going on lead to a page turning read. It's an intriguing mystery plot and I really wanted to know how it was going to turn out. The various supporting characters who appear in due course are quite well drawn. And the plot does bring in various issues of morality, which may go over the head of some younger readers, but are well handled and do make you think about them. And that's how it should be, rather than force the writer's opinion on the reader.
The resolution of the mystery doesn't hold too many surprises, but it was a good read getting there. A very strong entry in the range
If you go down to the woods today... - Rated 
The ninth in BBC Books series of 10th Doctor novels has the Doctor and Martha stumbling across a bizarre primitive villiage in the middle of a deserted spaceship, with children dissapearing and strange monsters patrolling the woods...
The story is admirable in it's attempt to tell a slightly different Doctor Who story - there's no villain here for a start - and has an intruiging central mystery to keep the pages turning, though this is somewhat offset by some rather heavy-handed moralizing and quite a slow story. Diverting enough, but not one of the better new series novels.
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