[Short Story Review] Doctor Who: The Bog Warrior By Cecelia Ahern & Exotic Earth Coffee Raise The Dead Blend

Title: Doctor Who: The Bog Warrior
Series/Universe: Time Trips
Author: Cecelia Ahern
Publisher: BBC Digitial
Publication date: May 8th 2014
Page Count: 42 pages
Age Rating: All Ages (mentions of death and resurrected dead people)
How I got my hot little hands on it: Received a copy to review
Publisher’s page: Doctor Who: The Bog Warrior

Arriving on the planet Cashel, the Tenth Doctor witnesses a strange masked ball. To guarantee peace, Prince Zircon has to choose a bride from the Bog People – dead men and women who have been resurrected as slaves. Or as warriors. But Zircon is in love with the enslaved Princess Ash, whose parents were deposed and executed by the current Queen. As usual, the Doctor has walked right into trouble, and it’s up to him to sort it out.

My Review

Doctor Who: The Bog Warrior is a Cinderella retelling with a classic Doctor Who twist.

Princess Ash is a displaced royal forced into servitude by her evil stepmother, Queen Xenotime, who gained control of the kingdom after resurrecting the dead from the bog and ordering the former rulers killed. Prince Zircon is the foreign prince who wishes to wed Princess Ash, but the evil Queen stands between them with her own plans – wedding the prince to a royal bog woman as a way to appease the bog people, who understandably are rather put out for having been raised from the dead and turned into slaves and warriors for the queen. The situation is coming to a head when the Doctor arrives (he does have quite a knack for timing 😉 )

If you don’t know anything about Doctor Who – the short of it is it’s a British science fiction show about a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey called the Doctor, who regenerates into a completely different person when mortally wounded, and his adventures across time and space. Although we aren’t given a timeline of where this story fits in to the Doctor Who universe, we are told it’s the Doctor in his 10th regeneration and he’s currently traveling alone while feeling rather melancholy and lonely.

The story is extremely short and reads like a really good fanfiction, but it’s well-written and fits perfectly in the Doctor Who world – in fact I wish this was an actual episode of Doctor Who, it could have easily been one of my favorites.

I used to be a huge Doctor Who fan, but haven’t really watched the show for the last few years. Having found this little gem in the depth of my to-be-read pile (deep in my Kindle app, lol), I’m reminded how much I love the whole Doctor Who universe and the unique storylines. If you’re someone who likes Doctor Who, fairytale retellings, or both (like me!) Doctor Who: The Bog Warrior is definitely worth a read.

Doctor Who: The Bog Warrior is a very earthy story – not only with the bog people, but also with the important characters all being named after elements and stones, so of course I’m going to recommend a nice, earthy coffee like Exotic Earth Coffee Raise The Dead Blend – a deep, full-bodied, earthy dark roast that compliments the story perfectly.