Shining Darkness

"Nothing made of circuits and cogs and metal could really feel, could it?"

Writer: Mark Michalowski
Format: Novel
Released: September 2008
Series: NSA 27

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Donna

Synopsis

For Donna Noble, the Andromeda galaxy is a long, long way from home. But even two and a half million light years from Earth, danger lurks around every corner...

A visit to an art gallery turns into a race across space to uncover the secret behind a shadowy organisation.

From the desert world of Karris to the interplanetary scrapyard of Junk, the Doctor and Donna discover that appearances can be deceptive, that enemies are lurking around every corner – and that the centuries-long peace between humans and machines may be about to come to an end.

Because waiting in the wings to bring chaos in the galaxy is The Cult of Shining Darkness.

Verdict

Shining Darkness was an excellent novel to continue my reading of the New Series Adventures! I thought this one started well and never really let the quality drop. The writing of both the Tenth Doctor and Donna was terrific, but they were separated pretty much from the start which allowed for very different situations throughout the book for our two lead characters. The humour that came with the difference between being two and a half million light years from Earth instead of billion was great and I loved the early feeling of this story being somewhat representative of The Chase. Donna being kidnapped along with the art piece was good and from there the Doctor was joined up with a team after the Cult of Shining Darkness to save her. I really liked the action and the pace was fantastic. There was always a lot going on and the jumping around from locations in the search of different segments of the black hole device was really good. It was in danger of being too resemblant to the Key to Time or The Keys of Marinus, but with the novel format there was more than enough time between the retrieval of each segment. The different species we met along the way with a number of the characters was brilliant and the standout for me were the Jaftee. The concept behind their entire being was just magnificent and so strange and unique that I adored it. The idea of them only believing in something if there was no proof of it because of the power that showed was just extraordinary. I have never considered that so I loved it. It was really fun and pretty humorous on a number of occasions. Mother made for a really great character and the whole battle between organics and machine was really intriguing. The idea of some machines being sentient was good and I liked Donna's reaction to her being accused of essentially being racists against robots because of how she was judging by appearance. Mother's moment where she also tapped her head and revealed how she knew as well that she was real was fantastic and very powerful. Garaman made for a good villain and I liked how the moment he was going to reveal the extent of the plan to the Doctor was constantly delayed. I also really liked the switch just over halfway into the book with Donna and the Doctor swapping ships and the crews they were with. That freshened things up really well. Mesanth was another very good character and his trepidation about killing organic life when it came to the activation was understandable. Garaman wanting to do more than just turn all of machine life off in the Andromeda galaxy was a terrific plan as he wanted to utilise the resource and control them. The Doctor's speech that was indirectly appealing to Mesanth about the galaxy ending up with just a species of Garamans was outstanding. The characterisation of David Tennant's Tenth Doctor was superb in this one. The moment where he was shot dead by Li'ian was extremely sudden and her turn was something I really didn't anticipate. The way things ended for the Cult of Shining Darkness and her was also sublime and something I never anticipated as it turned out that the bomb within Mother had actually been removed by the Doctor as the object that couldn't be got into quite some time earlier in the novel and obviously in the wrong hands as far as the Cult were concerned. I thought that was really clever. The moment where Donna and company had their ship struck and they headed for the TARDIS, only for it to have been at the point of impact and lost was fantastic as well. There was a lot of greatness in this one. Donna getting to reference The Runaway Bride and The Doctor Trap when it came to her robotic experiences was fantastic and I also loved the Doctor harkening back to Sick Building with Barbara the vending machine getting a mention. Despite all that had gone on, I liked how the story finished with something of a feel good factor. Overall, a tremendous read!

Rating: 9/10