The Forever Trap [AUDIO/2008.10.9]

★★★☆☆

  I think I'm an ideas person first and foremost; most grievances I have about pacing, performances, and a number of other things that normally bother other people go out of the window whenever an adventure has a really fun and imaginative idea at the core. The Forever Trap is exactly that, an audiobook that's perhaps a bit too long for its own good (I can definitely see the second half given a good do-over by cutting away some of the repetitive escape schtick; the first half, though... as long as it is, its atmospheric buildup is crucial for the creep factor of th estory) but is still carried a lot by the strength of its ideas. Listen, Dr. Who's been around for 60 years, and dimensionally impossible prison spaces/hotels have been touched on before... but Dan Abnett has such an obviously fun time writing it, and Catherine Tate brings it to life with such confidence that it doesn't really matter in the end. Just take a listen at how Abnett describes the outer shell of the Edifice, and how terrified Donna is of the sheer scale. It's a moment of beautiful, evocative writing on Abnett's part, and an equally brilliant job by narrator Tate in bringing it alive. She's a dab hand at portraying Donna at any time of the day, but it's her shockingly accurate turn as David Tennant's Tenth Doctor that I'd like to point the attention to. She gets his mannerisms and tones down to a T; it's a joy to listen to, and it adds another enjoyable level to the already packed audiobook. The Forever Trap's exactly the sort of adventure fit for the consumption of children whose imaginations are burgeoning; sometimes, as slow and methodical as it is, a largely fun mystery of an infinite hotel with secrets within is exactly what the creativity doctor called for.