Ender's Game Alive: The Full Cast Audioplay

If you’ve never read Ender’s Game, I certainly wouldn’t recommend this be your first experience of the story, but it’s definitely a fun listen. All of the voices are nicely distinct so you know who’s talking and the background sounds really help with the ambiance. My only real complaint is that there were some jarring transitions. Overall, worth snagging if you’ve got nothing better to listen to and just want something relatively mindless.

Allows me to begin with a disclaimer. This is my first introduction to Ender's Game in any form. Perhaps after reading the unabridged novel I will think differently about it.

First of all, I thought the story was well edited for this audio drama of the story. It was easy to follow each character and I thought the writers did a good job of writing descriptors into character dialogue, which is often difficult and cumbersome.

I rated this at five stars because this is a book that made me think. In part, it affirms some of my beliefs and perspectives about leadership. That may a failing of logic on my part, but it does inspire me to be more the kind of leader I believe to be a good leader at this point in life.

One downfall of this edition is that it is difficult to think of the characters as children, done as young as six years old, due to casting. That being said, it would be a bit disturbing to me to think of kids that young going through these experiences.

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/