Jenny T. Colgan
BBC Books
All over the world,
people are venting their fury at one another on social media. Dropping
their friends, giving vent to their hatred, and everywhere behaving with
incredible cruelty. Even Donna has found that her friend Hettie, with
her seemingly perfect life and fancy house, has unfriended her. And now,
all over the world, internet trolls are dying...
As more and
more people give in to this wave of bitterness and aggression, it's
clear this is no simple case of modern living. This is unkindness as a
plague.
From the streets of London to the web cafes of South
Korea and the deepest darkest forests of Rio, can the Doctor and Donna
find the cause of this unhappiness before it's too late?
Colgan has got to play in the Doctor Who sandpit a few times now, most notably with her 11th Doctor novel 'Dark Horizons' which had it's charms but if a good Viking story exists I've yet to read one. This time out though you can tell she's living the dream and getting to play with her favourites, the 10th and Donna Noble. Right from the off you can feel Colgan's enjoyment of these particular characters; their voices are perfect and Donna especially seems made for Colgan's pen.
Plot wise an alien conspiracy that is pushing internet trolls to greater and greater levels of vitriol is pretty silly but no more so than that episode about the Adipose that brought Donna back to the series after ' The Runaway Bride'. What we get is a globe trotting romp - minus the TARDIS - with much banter and bluster which seems to lose focus as it progresses into it's fairly overblown final third.
I'm not entirely sure I was the target audience for this book. I've always preferred the more gothic end of the Doctor Who spectrum and the Tennant / Tate era was never a favourite but it's an OK and occasionally amusing read that very much revives that era and I'm sure it's fans will find much to like here.
Buy it here: Doctor Who: In the Blood
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