Which of the companions wrote the best book about themselves?
- The Ruby’s Curse
- At Childhood’s End
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voters
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Sorry Alex Kingston you are great, but maybe not quit your acting career to pursue a literary career…
Sophie Aldred did a great job 
really captured a grown up Ace.
Ian Marter and John Barrowman has also done a really good job with writing for their characters.
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I need to read those. Maybe it will be a second round of this. Also thought about adding Tom Baker’s book but I have not read that one.
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I started The Ruby’s Curse but ended up dropping it pretty early. Didn’t really have any problem with it, I just only had access to the audiobook at the time and didn’t have the attention span for it. Need to go back to it at some point.
I enjoyed At Childhood’s End a lot but of course I do have my heavy 13 bias here and it did also have one insanely good Thasmin chapter. Do hope to re-read it whenever I get through my Classic watch and have seen all of Ace’s episodes.
I am always curious with these actor-written books how much is actually written by the actors and how much is handled by the other authors
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I really enjoyed Tom Baker’s “Scratchman”.
Surprising and eerily atmospheric.
I would definitely recommend trying that one out👍
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I was wondering the same. I think that the editor probably does a lot more than on a regular book.
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We need @shauny in here to defend Rivers honor 
I may be wrong but I believe Mike Tucker ‘aided’ Sophie Aldred on her book.
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I haven’t read either!
But will definitely listen to The Ruby’s Curse at some point 
And yes I’m sure they would have been ghostwritten…
Mike Tucker and Steve Cole. And some of the other actor-written books also have other established Doctor Who authors involved (I believe James Goss for Scratchman and Jacqueline Rayner for The Ruby’s Curse)
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I thought that you had seen all of River 
Not yet!
My obsession with listening to everything in order and getting the full context means it’s a much bigger job than just listening to the specific stories.
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I really enjoyed At Childhood’s End and went to one of Sophie Aldred’s book signings for it which was fun. I also enjoyed The Ruby’s Curse but couldn’t tell you a thing about it now
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Gareth David-Lloyd’s Torchwood audios are always brilliant!
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I find it a bit dishonest of these actors to put their name on the cover when the books are basically ghost written by more established authors or at least heavily edited. I get that having the actors name on the cover is a good selling point, & it would be more cluttered to have mutliple authors names but I think we all know so why hide it?
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Ruby’s Curse is possibly my favorite new-series book. It’s complex and bold and bizarre and very cleverly structured. It’s a wild, genre-hopping adventure that still has time for interesting character stuff.
At Childhood’s End felt like it was trying to tell a story about how “trust is good” no matter how the events of the story actually played out (you can tell because there’s multiple separate monologues about the theme of trust). Ace leaves 7 because he pushed her too far, tried to manipulate her into something without her knowledge and consent. She’s in the right, he’s in the wrong. Then the book ends with her following through with 7’s plan anyway? His manipulation worked, and her rejection of it only made things longer, more painful, and generally worse. Is that really the message this book wants to send? Was Ace wrong for not trusting the doctor when he kept pushing and manipulating her? It also does a thing that I personally don’t like in media generally (and doctor who especially), where the climax is a big epic war-battle fight scene. I find them generic in most visual mediums and boring in books/audios. I like bits of it, and Sophie Aldred’s voice acting on the audiobook is fantastic, it just doesn’t work for me nearly as well as The Ruby’s Curse does.
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Interesting perspective and I agree with a lot of the things you said, especially the part about big battles in the end. That is such a boring thing.
While I agree that RC is bold and tries a lot. I unfortunately found it kind of boring. I wanted to like it more than I did.
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