The novel “First Born” by James Goss was published for the first time in 2011.
Gwen Cooper is pregnant but she and Rhys Williams are being hunted by practically every secret agency in the world. They manage to escape when their hideout is discovered and among what are at least in theory Torchwood’s safe places is the small Welsh village of Rawbone, where the couple hopes to raise their recently born daughter Anwen.
Some strange reactions of the inhabitants of Rawbone towards the new arrivals lead Gwen to suspect that something strange is happening in the village. The presence of abnormally calm teenagers and the absence of children make the situation disturbing.
“First Born” is part of a series of novels connected to the TV show “Torchwood“, a “Doctor Who” spinoff. The size is the same as “Doctor Who” books starting from the Eleventh Doctor. In the first books, the font was smaller while in the following one the font is the same size as in “Doctor Who” books.
“First Born” is labeled as a prequel to “Miracle Day” and is one of some novels that actually take place before the final season of “Torchwood” which, at least in this case, also means after “Children of Earth”. The opening events take place when Gwen Cooper is pregnant with Anwen and the rest of the novel takes place shortly after the baby is born.
As is told, Gwen and Rhys’ initial escape seems genuinely successful more due to the lack of skill of the pursuers than the skill of the two protagonists. Let’s just say that it starts off requiring a nice suspension of disbelief.
The story becomes decidedly more interesting in Rawbone, a small Welsh village where nothing is expected to ever happen. The fact that the new family is considered very special by the inhabitants, with some extreme reactions, immediately shows that there’s something strange.
The presence of a group of teenagers who don’t behave as people of their age brings to mind John Wyndham’s novel “The Midwich Cuckoos“. Perhaps James Goss took some inspiration from this science fiction classic but he develops the story in a very different way. Something about those kids is easy to guess but there’s room for surprises and twists that make their presence a strong point of the novel.
A peculiarity of “First Born” is to offer the points of view of Gwen and Rhys told in the first person. This allows James Goss to tell not only the protagonists’ science fiction adventure in Rawbone but also the personal, common and realistic story they live as new parents with all the problems that this entails. Being parents is a central theme throughout the novel but Rawbone’s inhabitants experience it as adoptive parents of the strange boys with all the complications that come with it.
Some additional points of view appear in some chapters and follow characters created for this novel. This allows to better develop those characters, who otherwise would have been seen only from Gwen and Rhys’s point of view. James Goss also uses them to offer some insight into the situation of Rawbone’s inhabitants and to gradually reveal what is behind the strange events that marked the recent history of the village.
All this, in my opinion, makes “First Born” a well-constructed novel that concerns a period of time not covered by the episodes of “Torchwood” produced for the TV show. For these reasons, I recommend reading it to fans of this series. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
