Review: Shining Darkness

Donna Noble's third print outing comes in Shining Darkness, by Mark Michalowski. The author's debut, Relative Dementias, remains my favourite Doctor Who novel to date; and this, his second Tenth Doctor book, is just as stunning.

The Doctor and Donna arrive in the Andromeda galaxy, and pay a visit to an alien art gallery. Within minutes, one of the exhibits has been transmatted away, and Donna with it. Stuck on two different spaceships, she and the Doctor have no idea whether they'll ever see each other again, and they're faced with bigotry and discrimination in a society where people are polarised over the subject of robotic intelligence.

Tonally, Michalowski's writing is an excellent representation of the TV series, making for a very enjoyable read indeed. All the emotion and energy and colour you'd expect from a typical episode are there, but I was especially impressed by some of the story's more humorous moments. The short passage which describes the Jaftee's first visit from the Gods of Shining Darkness was my favourite part of the entire book, and is quite possibly the best single section from any New Series Adventure to date. And Donna's subsequent declaration of herself as The Ginger Goddess is just as inspired and brilliant. Without being laden with too many one-liners or clumsy punchlines, this story is consistently very, very funny, and some of the older readers who have turned away from these novels for various reasons might find they have a bit more to enjoy here.

But, laying the humour to one side, there are moments when this book is genuinely quite thought-provoking. Michalowski has placed a moral and ethical debate at the centre of the novel without allowing it to dominate, and he never comes close to being preachy and heavy-handed. The Doctor and Donna both spend time in the company of the robots, and the Cult of Shining Darkness - the group who refuse to recognise machines as possessing intelligence - and we meet characters from both sides. Whilst things are made simple enough for a younger audience to comprehend, though, it's not all black and white: we're led to sympathise with characters in both groups, and there's a particularly brilliant section in a later chapter where Donna's beliefs (and, by extension, those of the reader) are challenged.

The portrayal of Donna in this novel is absolutely spot-on, which is something I couldn't quite say for the previous two books. Michalowski's is the most polished and well-crafted depiction of her character that we've seen, incorporating more of her emotional side and her thirst for adventure than other novels have shown us, rather than just relying on those early Runaway Bride characteristics. Improvising in front of the Jaftee, she's at her absolute best, and it's easy to hear Catherine Tate's voice performing the sparkling dialogue.

The author also writes the Tenth Doctor very well indeed. Most authors seem able to reproduce Tennant's larger-than-life performance on the page with impressive accuracy, but many seem to focus their attention on one or two dominant aspects of his personality, whereas Michalowski gives us one of the most full-blooded and rounded interpretations of the character that I've read. The supporting characters - robot and human alike - feel almost cartoon-like: they're all relatively simply-drawn, but every single one leaps vividly off the page. Characterisation, it seems, is one of this writer's strengths.

Usually, when characters have a bond as strong and entertaining as that shared by the Doctor and Donna, I'm disappointed to see them separated for significant portions of a story, especially when they're this well-written. In Shining Darkness, the pair do spend the majority of the tale apart, but it was only after the first hundred pages had passed that this dawned on me. Michalowski's plot moves at such a pace, and his writing is so engrossing, that their separation didn't even register.

Shining Darkness is a great read, balancing a disarmingly serious subject with some laugh-out-loud humour, which is offset by good character work and a brilliant plot. On the whole, this is probably the strongest of this new batch of novels, and it's definitely the best use and most faithful depiction of Donna Noble. A superb book.