All three of these are rather good, and all seemed to me to succeed by not trying too hard. The Eyeless has the Doctor on his own, the other two feature Donna. In all three cases I listened to an abridged audio version, but I imagine that the full dead tree original is also worth picking up.
A rather effective story of the Doctor landing on a devastated planet, with confused and conspiring human factions, deadly robots and a young girl who is a lot more sinister than she first appears to be. Read by Russell Tovey who is very good at characterising the different speakers.
This I think is the best New Series Adventure I have yet come across. The audiobook is narrated by Bernard Cribbins, and Wilf Mott is a central character in the story which takes the Doctor and Donna back to contemporary London, dealing with the Noble family’s complex dynamics, and also with an old enemy (who also featured in the excellent second series of Sarah Jane audios, and whose presence is signalled by the introduction of a character called Dara Morgan). The astronomy is a bit off, but this is not a textbook. Strongly recommended.
Another pretty decent story featuring Ten and Donna, this time in India on the eve of independence, encountering Gandhi and competing aliens trying to take over and use the locals for their own purposes. I’m not totally familiar with Indian history of the period but this didn’t seem to me to have any obvious howlers. Two minor irritations: Morris continually refers to the sonic screwdriver as the “sonic”, and David Troughton reading it is not totally sure of Ten’s accent. But it’s generally good.
I believe he’s changed his mind a lot since writing that book, but a bit of googling can’t find any evidence, so I don’t know where I got that.
Do you know he’s also a musician? This is my favourite.
It’s in Afrikaans.
I read “My Traitor’s Heart” in high school. I don’t remember it very well, but I remember it had a profound impact on teenage me, growing up in “the new SA”.
I have a copy sitting in my bookshelf waiting for a reread. Maybe it’s time. 🙂