Next time I have a bit more money in my ITunes account, I will check out the audio book to see if it is done better than bard. This is summing that I remember. Ender's game alive is basically an abridged version of ender's game in play form. Think of it as an seven hour long movie of ender's game. Give's a slightly different point of view that you do not get in the book. As you gather, I went on and got it from ITunes. One major drawback I saw right from the first is that they did not use the right casts for the kids. Having adults playing the part of six year olds draws you out of the story per say. The sound effects were ok. They were good enough for what it is. It is also worth noting that they do everything that they can to have no narration. This means that the instructors are continually taking apart what the kids are doing from what they can see. This often means that you get the instructor’s and the ones in charge points of view and stead of just seeing for yourself what is going on. As far as I can see, this should be extra to the book. From what I can tell, you better off reading the book first. I personally had no problem following the scenes seeing that I had read the book first. I really do not like the fact that ITunes gave it to me as a 64K 22.33KHZ AAC file. Yes, it was a M4B file for those who are wondering. It is in stereo and yes they got it from audible. I would love to see something like this done in 5.1 or 7.1 audio at some point. It would make it a bit more interesting.