Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Sick Building [Abridged] by Paul Magrs (Audiobook) * * *

I listened to this book as an audiobook.

The story is about the Doctor trying to help people on a planet about to be eaten by a sort of space monster. It reminded me of how the Doctor and the monsters are never too far from each other. He genuinely wants to help, but of course, he ends up in a pickle. There are robots, talking wending machines and sunbeds. It's a rather fun story, but there are two things that bothered me about it. One was that in the beginning, when he arrives, the people are already preparing to leave. It may be the audiobook's fault, but it feels kind of strange that he stays. Not un-Doctor like, but clearly he is not wanted. The other thing is the ending, which made me ask; "Why didn't they do that in the first place?" It felt like the author wrote himself into a corner, and used the plan B to get out of it. However, it was such a plan B, that to any reasonable person it would have been plan A.

The story is read by Will Thorp, who plays Toby Zed from "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit". As I noted in my review of Forever Autumn, he does the job really well.

The star of the story is Barbra, the wending machine. I read that she makes appearances in other works by Paul Magrs, so that is probably why she feels like a prominent character.

Overall, a fun story.

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