Novel recommendation: Beautiful Chaos
I was fortunate enough to get some Doctor and Donna novels for my birthday last week, and immediately dived in to read one highly recommended by catsfiction:Beautiful Chaos by Gary Russell. My expectations were not high: I've read all the Rose-era novels, and for the most part they're forgettable. I did enjoy some more than others - Jacq Rayner's Winner Takes All stands out for snarky Nine and Mickey, and some rather nice Nine and Rose segments, but the Jack novels were mostly awful because of very poor Jack characterisation - no more than a caricature. The Ten and Rose novels were mostly readable, but I've read far, far better fanfic.
I think overall my issue with the novels is something that isn't really the authors' fault: they're aimed at a teenage audience, for the most part. The focus isn't intended to be characterisation or character development; for the most part, the audience wants familiar characters and a plot that has enough twists and scary bits to keep them interested. Personally, I tend to need a bit more than that to keep me interested, in particular character development and relationship development - and I stress that I mean relationships of all kinds: family and friendship above all.
Beautiful Chaos gave me all that and more, and above all characters I could recognise, whose dialogue leaped off the page such that I could hear it in my head as I read, and really developed Sylvia and Wilf, and Donna's relationship with them, beyond what we see on-screen and made the Mott/Noble family so very much richer as a result.
The book actually starts post-JE, with Sylvia visiting Wilf up at the allotment, and we get to see the impact on the two of them of what the Doctor did to Donna - whether or not any of us feels that he had a choice, it can't be denied that he left Wilf and Sylvia with an enormous burden and didn't do anything to help them cope with it. This prologue, and the epilogue, are close to heartbreaking.
The main story is set some time before that, after The Doctor's Daughter and before the Library episodes (not sure where Agatha Christie fits in). The Doctor brings Donna home for the first anniversary of her dad's death, and of course he gets caught up in an adventure. It's a rattling good alien adventure - the Mandragora tries to take over Earth - but there's the backdrop of Donna's family dynamics, her conflicted relationship with her mum, the secret of what she's really doing with the Doctor which she and Wilf are keeping from Sylvia - and Wilf's lady friend, who is an Alzheimer's sufferer.
The Doctor, surprisingly, even seems willing to play domestic, at least a bit - but Russell gets him perfectly as well, including his manipulative side. And the Doctor-Donna close friendship is played perfectly, as is Wilf's love and protectiveness for Donna. He and the Doctor understand each other perfectly on that one, which make the post-JE bookends even more poignant.
catsfiction said that this book gave her a much better understanding of, and even sympathy for, Sylvia. She's right.
I'm expecting that the other Donna novels won't live up to this standard. Whether they do or not, this one should be added to your reading-list post-haste.
I think overall my issue with the novels is something that isn't really the authors' fault: they're aimed at a teenage audience, for the most part. The focus isn't intended to be characterisation or character development; for the most part, the audience wants familiar characters and a plot that has enough twists and scary bits to keep them interested. Personally, I tend to need a bit more than that to keep me interested, in particular character development and relationship development - and I stress that I mean relationships of all kinds: family and friendship above all.
Beautiful Chaos gave me all that and more, and above all characters I could recognise, whose dialogue leaped off the page such that I could hear it in my head as I read, and really developed Sylvia and Wilf, and Donna's relationship with them, beyond what we see on-screen and made the Mott/Noble family so very much richer as a result.
The book actually starts post-JE, with Sylvia visiting Wilf up at the allotment, and we get to see the impact on the two of them of what the Doctor did to Donna - whether or not any of us feels that he had a choice, it can't be denied that he left Wilf and Sylvia with an enormous burden and didn't do anything to help them cope with it. This prologue, and the epilogue, are close to heartbreaking.
The main story is set some time before that, after The Doctor's Daughter and before the Library episodes (not sure where Agatha Christie fits in). The Doctor brings Donna home for the first anniversary of her dad's death, and of course he gets caught up in an adventure. It's a rattling good alien adventure - the Mandragora tries to take over Earth - but there's the backdrop of Donna's family dynamics, her conflicted relationship with her mum, the secret of what she's really doing with the Doctor which she and Wilf are keeping from Sylvia - and Wilf's lady friend, who is an Alzheimer's sufferer.
The Doctor, surprisingly, even seems willing to play domestic, at least a bit - but Russell gets him perfectly as well, including his manipulative side. And the Doctor-Donna close friendship is played perfectly, as is Wilf's love and protectiveness for Donna. He and the Doctor understand each other perfectly on that one, which make the post-JE bookends even more poignant.
catsfiction said that this book gave her a much better understanding of, and even sympathy for, Sylvia. She's right.
I'm expecting that the other Donna novels won't live up to this standard. Whether they do or not, this one should be added to your reading-list post-haste.