Class - from the Universe of Doctor Who: What She Does Next Will Astound You

It was with a heavy heart that I picked up this book to read - as I knew this was going to be my last chance to spend time with April, Ram, Tanya, Charlie, Matteusz, and of course, the devilishly sadistic Quill.  The television show on BBC was short-lived (only one season), but it showed so much potential, had some excellent (and good looking!) actors, and was yet another spin-off from Doctor Who that expanded on that growing universe of characters and shows.  Now, after having read the previous two books, I picked up the third book, ready to enjoy this last bit of time with the stars of Class.

Sadly, What She Does Next Will Astound You fell flat, and it was a disheartening final farewell to the show and its characters.  Author James Goss has written a lot of BBC material - from Doctor Who to Torchwood to Being Human.  He has even written a fairly decent audio story for the Dark Shadows series from Big Finish Productions.  So I really expected more from the story than what I got.

The premise was not altogether bad.  Students have been disappearing from Coal Hill School, but everyone is so caught up with the crazy internet challenges to help stop the disease known as Skandis that no one notices.  No one except April.  She realizes something is off.  The oh-so-handsome Seraphin, who has a vlog online that urges people to take up the challenges, seems to be placing hidden messages in his videos.  And the teenagers who are doing the challenges are becoming more and more reckless, with some getting seriously injured and others putting their lives in mortal danger - all for what?  To help raise money for a disease no one has heard of?  When April gets frustrated that no one is listening to her, she places her own online challenge - and ends up in the Void.

What is the Void?  Well, it's someplace.  A place with white walls, white floors, white furniture, white ceilings, where the doors blend into the walls, and it is challenging to find your way around.  What is more challenging, though, is the truth - the truth about Skandis.  The truth about the internet challenges.  And the truth about where those teenagers have been disappearing and what they are being forced to do.

Sounds interesting, right?  Well, it might have been, if it had been written as a normal prose novel.  Instead, for reasons unknown (perhaps because he thought it might appeal to the teenage audience?), Goss decided to tell the story in an unusual way - a sort-of stream-of-consciousness, changing points of view, sudden interjections of news flashes or memory blips, every day conversational style of writing.  And for me, this did not work at all.  It is not until page 119, when April wakes up in the Void, that the writing begins to be a little more straightforward storytelling.  The first 118 pages, though, jump around so much, it is jarring, in places disjointed, and quite frankly, annoying.  It does nothing to provide characterization, it doesn't garner any sympathy for any of the characters, and it leaves the reader (well, at least me) feeling rather bored.

Which is not the way I wanted to feel reading the final story of Class and its characters.

But, it is what it is, and so the final tale does little to build any of the relationship among the characters, provides no character growth for any of them, and while it was admittedly fun to watch Quill enter the Void to discover she is able to kill the enemy (she still can't kill Charlie, though), which she then does with relish and enjoyment, by the end of the book, I was left only with a feeling that I was glad it was over.  It's a shame that this is my final farewell to Charlie and the gang, but at least I have the DVDs I can go back and watch again - - and who knows, maybe BBC will be brave enough to allow authors to venture into the world of Class again in the future and take Quill and her students beyond that first season, so we can see what happens next (although I just discovered that Big Finish Productions has gained the rights to do audio stories to continue the adventures!  Yay!!!)

RATING:  5 bowls of bland porridge-stew out of 10 for pointing out that society's addiction to the internet and technology could very well be their downfall.