Damaged Goods is my introduction to the Virgin New Adventures novels and I'm happy with where I started. I didn't know anything about Chris and Roz going into this story and besides a few references to places and people, I didn't feel like I was missing out on context. The story also doesn't rely on prerequisites besides a reference/idea from another story but you don't need to watch that story to understand what this story is trying to achieve. To my knowledge, this is Russell T Davies' first contribution to Doctor Who and he didn't disappoint. Like everyone says, this book is dark and there are a few gruesome moments that you would never see in the show. RTD also spends a long time (the first half of the book) building his characters up and giving you reasons to care for them and understand them. At first, I enjoyed it, especially the gay representation in a couple of the characters, but I had no idea when things would start paying off. I was starting to get a bit disappointed until things really started coming together and I realized why RTD had spent so much time with these characters. He's also great at creating the setting. The story revolves around the Quadrant and you get a good sense of the people living there and what it's like living there. I'd say read this if you haven't already.

SPOILERS:
For context, I've been on a journey to understand RTD and his writing habits by watching, reading, and listening to everything he creates. I can see what his vision for Doctor Who is from just this book. The main series Doctor Who shows us companions, their families, and their lifestyles which hadn't really been done in the classic era. Similarities I found in this book were with Rose and her home being similar to this Quadrant. I forgot the name of the character but one of them reminds me of Jackie Tyler and the way she talks about her friends and neighbors. The Tyler family in Damaged Goods (Bev, Winnie, Gabriel, and Carl) slightly reminds me of Rosie Lyons and her family from Years and Years if anyone's seen that. Eva Jericho reminds me of Ritchie's mom from It's A Sin, another RTD drama and his best imo. Both Winnie and Eva are very well written and I ended up caring a lot for both of them by the end. Especially the bit where Winnie and her kids die, I thought that was tragic. And Carl too, even tho we didn't see much of him throughout the book, it still shocked me reading this: "Across the Quadrant, Carl banged his head to Bon Jovi and his head fell off". My god, is this still Doctor Who?? The only thing I was surprised not to see in this book was more politics and stuff about politicians and voting because that tends to be something RTD likes to write.

Things I liked:
The characters are all amazing. I have a hard time reading, I'm a very slow reader and it took me 7 weeks to get through this, I have a hard time comprehending what I read, but I can remember every main character and give you a summary of what they're like.
The Doctor is pretty cool here. I'm a huge 7th Doctor fan and I think he works very well in this story. He gets to be very serious throughout the book and always feels mysterious like he's scheming something. His interactions with Mrs. Hearn were interesting to read.
Chris and Roz were nice. I don't think they made a big impression on me, but I also haven't read Original Sin yet. Chris seems like a fun companion being able to have funny moments while also being strong and independent, he reminds me of Steven from the first Doctor's era. Roz is cool too, she's a badass who gets things done, I enjoyed her part in the story. The only thing is that while I understand they're a couple, I found myself needing to remember that they're a couple because they just didn't interact in a couple way.
Eva Jericho is a great antagonist and RTD does a good job of showing that she really is crazy but she's also broken and I really sympathized with her. She's scary at times too, especially when it involves her kid, you really believe there's nothing that's going to stop this mother from doing what she thinks is best for her kid.
Winnie Tyler is tragic and she does not get any breaks. I did get pretty sad when she died because she spent the whole book believing she was a terrible mom just to have Mrs. Jericho make her feel even worse about it in the end. She sorta got to save Gabriel and died believing that she tried, but then Gabriel died too. EVERYONE DIES lol.
That brings me to the two who survived, David and Harry. David was fun to read. I think I appreciated his little moments with Chris on a relatability level. Harry tho, Harry is where all my attention went. I think Harry is an incredible character and is an amazing exploration of how internalized homophobia and societal homophobia affects gay men. I think RTD has used this type of character in a lot of his other shows like Ritchie from It's a Sin, Henry Best and Daniel Coltrane from Cucumber. They share the shame that is brought upon by internalized homophobia. For people who don't know, internalized homophobia is basically a shame or hatred that someone feels about themself and it's the cause of so many issues within the LGBTQ community. For Harry, it impacts him by separating him mentally from other gay men; he believes that he CANNOT allow himself to be gay the way people like David are. It causes him to isolate from David, his roommate, and that group of gay men at the cemetery. Harry ends up going to unsafe places to satisfy his needs and ends up getting cut, nearly killed, and avoiding medical attention out of fear of having other people know he's gay. There's a lot more I could say about Harry as a character but I just think he was the best character in this book.
I also liked the brief mention of vampires. I'm a sucker for vampires in Doctor Who and it was a great surprise seeing that reference to State of Decay.

Things I disliked:
I don't think I was able to fully appreciate The Capper, Simon Jenkins. His story in the beginning was interesting but after that, it seemed like RTD couldn't find a way to satisfyingly use him. He just wasn't as memorable as I'd hoped he'd be. He looks cool on the cover tho.
The book did feel really slow for a bit, I'd say chapters 2-5 were really slow, but it spent all that time building up characters which paid off for me. I just wish I saw somewhere that chapter 6 is where things start coming together because once I finished chapter 6, I really couldn't put the book down and I was looking forward to reading every page.
The end was a bit short and felt rushed, a lot of RTD's endings tend to feel like this, but I was satisfied by the ending.
One thing I was disappointed in was Harry's impact on the plot and story. I love this character, but his story took up a large portion of the book but he really didn't have much impact on it. He got to witness the N-form in the beginning, but that wasn't Harry who caused the N-form to exist or anything. And later he got to drive Gabriel to Steven, but was that really that important to the story? For Mrs. Jericho yeah, but it totally could've been any other neighbor from the quadrant to drive him since they all seem to have something Gabriel could blackmail them with. Harry also didn't die when everyone else was because Sylvie's ghost, I think, protected him. That was cool and hopeful but I think I was just upset at the little impact that Harry had on the plot since his story took up so much of the book.