Doctor Who – The Legends of Ashildr by James Goss, Jenny T. Colgan, David Llewellyn and Justin Richards
Hardback by BBC Books, £9.99
The BBC have been quick off the mark here with four stories of the Woman who Lived.
We first met Ashildr (played by ‘Game of Thrones’ star Maisie Williams) in a Viking village in the Doctor Who episode ‘The Girl Who Died’, where she did in fact die. But The Doctor injected some alien technology into her which gave her immortality, and she returned the week after in ‘The Woman Who Lived’.
Hundreds of years have passed by in between the two episodes and Ashildr has lived many lifetimes.
These four stories are brief glimpses into her life inbetween.
All four authors are well-versed in the Doctor Who saga, having penned many books featuring The Doctor and also Torchwood.
The first two stories are penned as tales about Ashildr, one based on the Arabian Nights and the other is a search for pirate treasure.
The other two stories are from Ashildr’s own diaries and has her surviving the plague (but sadly, her three children do not), and helping out an isolated village.
They are all good tales in their own right, but I feel that the book has been rush-released to cash in on the popularity of Maisie Williams and her ‘Game of Thrones’ connection.
Perhaps we could have stories of other characters from the worlds of Doctor Who, those that only seem to exist in audio adventures.