Doctor Who: Dead Of Winter Review (3/5)

Refreshing as it is to have the Doctor Who novel range back alongside Series Six, I can't help but feel as if Dead Of Winter is a missed opportunity for author James Goss- though it strives to be a haunting yarn of deadly mists and living waters, the menagerie of forgettable characters whose diaries form the often eerie narrative make for uninspired reading at times. Take, for example, Maria, the innocent girl who is depicted on the front cover; were her narration of events more detailed and subjective (Goss portrays her as a child rather than the young adult we see here), the final, debatably harrowing twists used at the end of the piece would be altogether more unsettling and thus effective, whereas the simplistic way she actually writes makes her closure no more emotional than any of the sub characters unsuccessfully woven throughout the plot. Indeed, another problem that plagues Dead Of Winter on several occasions is due to the lack of realism or our capacity to believe, in that some events are similar to and/or contradict events that have already happened on the televised season (I presumed that the three novels were set inbetween Day Of The Moon and Curse Of The Black Spot, but the authors don't seem to know what happened in the former) and so we know they are either fake or not to be considered as canon. However I am being a bit harsh on what is in other respects an accomplished novel with a great storyteller in Goss, fairly accurate renditions of the Doctor, Amy and Rory and a disturbingly effective climax despite the flaws that mar it. Certainly, you could do far worse than Dead Of Winter, but while it is a shame it has to be said that you could also do far better.