Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The woods hold an allure over the minds of humanity that no concrete jungle can ever be seen as being able to convey; a building in darkness may have the element of danger attached to it, even perhaps an ingredient of peril, of intruding into the majesty of the mind which first envisioned the structure, yet a wood holds mystery that cannot be tamed, that cannot, unless we butcher our surroundings, be completely seen, the wood has many eyes and each one of them is trained upon the stranger who knows not where the traps are laid.
Cavan Scott’s Doctor Who novel The Shining Man plays with that fear with an air of wonderful lyrical sadism, of probing the innate and primal panic, the feeling of natural claustrophobia that eats away at your nerves and asks of you could you spend a night looking into the heart of the enticing wood or would you seek out the loneliness that comes from sitting behind bricks and mortar; cold and soulless, finding ways to entertain as the dark comes in or at least taking the weight off your feet as you convene with a more instinctive path.
Cavan Scott takes the 12th Doctor and his companion Bill into the focal point of the forest, of myths and legends, those small flashes of brilliance that we see out of the corner of our eyes, the search for the fairy, for the fae and the inexplicable shudder when something gets lost in the heart of this strange but so close at hand world. It is a place in which if lost, can seem like the most terrifying land in which to be and yet as with all good Doctor Who stories, it is the investigation into what is truly a mystery that makes it come alive.
The Shining Man is a story that is not frightened of putting the Doctor into a situation that is seemingly out of his control, relying on wits, spirit and justice rather than a gadget that can get you out of almost any situation, this is a time for trust and reason and one that gets under the skin of the primal thought of how we are almost alien to our modern day surroundings, so much so that nature has become a beast in which we must steer from.
The illumination we seek is not always of enlightenment, but one that will shelter us from the dark, to stop the creatures from following us, from seeing us as food; it is to the shining man and old tales that Cavan Scott thrills the reader.
Ian D. Hall