Ender’s Game Alive: The Full-Cast Audioplay
This was mostly a “curiosity” listen as its only available on Audible.
Having read Ender’s game almost 2 or 3 decades ago, I wanted to see how well a fully casted version of the book would sound like, and I have to say, its mostly…disappointing. Entire parts of the book was cut, although mostly the boring parts (Locke & Desmondena), and a lot of things got abridged. The actual audiobook of the original book is 11 hours and this is only 6.5 hours.
The script was heavily edited by Orson Scott Card himself, so its not a matter of someone butchering his work. Its what the book would have sounded like if it was a radio edit, but I feel like it missed a lot of nuances and clues that the original book gave you.
The reveals seems heavily anti-climatic as compared to what I remember, but this could really just be a case of rose-tinted glasses.
Its still a 4* becuase it holds the best part of the book, battle school, but the action flys by a bit too fast and you lost all the introspections that the book naturally has. I’d still recommend reading the book instead, but the performances aren’t all bad.
One issue I had with the voices was that all the kids voices sounded the same to me. This is…unfortunately a bit realistic, but still.