Ender's Game Alive: The Full Cast Audioplay

Short Review: I am a HUGE Ender's Game fan. I have read the book probably a dozen times in paperback, kindle and audiobook. So initially I was going to skip this because I thought it was just going to be a full cast version of the audiobook. But I got sucked in because Card wrote it as a radio drama with some different text. There is no narrator, so the only action is in dialogue, which makes for a few odd places because someone has to describe the action in dialogue form and it doesn't quite fit.

I also was put off by the voices. Because this is acted out (by voice if not visually) it really feels odd that there are no children's voices here. There are only adult voices even though most of the characters are 6 to 12 years old. I understand it is easier to get adults than kids, but it felt jarring.

The final issue is that this is a pretty severe abridgement. Ender's Game Alive is just over 7 hours and the unabridged audiobook is just short of 12. That is a lot of cut content and for a true fan like myself, I feel it. Maybe others would not feel the abridgement quite so much but I thought it was too much and it hurt the character development.

On the whole I think you should skip this and get the unabridged 20th Anniversary Audiobook instead if you want an audio version. This is done well, but I don't think it is as good as the full audiobook.

My full review (which is mostly the same as above) is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/enders-game-alive/