The book ENDER’S GAME (first published in 1985) propelled Orson Scott Card to the front ranks of science fiction/fantasy authors. He remains there today with a wide body of publications, including a series of video games. A film adaptation of ENDER is underway for 2013. The present novel is a prequel that describes the first contact between earth and an alien civilization and the violence that ensues. A mining ship in the Kuiper Belt, far beyond Pluto, detects an incoming starship traveling at immense speed. The somber basso voice of Stefan Rudnicki and two well-chosen players march through the story, with Vikas Adam's young voice particularly effective in segments featuring an angst-ridden teenager. This is an outstanding job, with more to come.
Pub Date: July 17, 2012
Duration: 14 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781427221551
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Eric Flint's series has been running for 12 years, and this is the book that started it all. A small mining town in West Virginia is teleported through time and space to Germany during the Thirty Years War, and its inhabitants must learn to survive in this brutal age. Narrator George Guidall brings a quiet gravitas to the often gory proceedings. He uses regional accents lightly, preferring to portray the characters through cadence and the solid pronunciation of difficult Germanic words and phrases. His best moments come in the many scenes of dialogue when the characters banter and shout. Guidall never lets the dialogue get ahead of him, reading deliberately to keep even the most emotional scenes on an even keel.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2012
Duration: 19 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781464018282
Publisher: Recorded Books Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Dick Hill is a talented narrator, beloved for his renditions of the classics and action novels by Lee Child and Michael Connelly. Hill has gravitas; the man knows how to impregnate a pause. Movies by Albert Brooks, such as LOST IN AMERICA and DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, show actors—himself prominent among them—in circumstances so humiliating that they’re hilarious. Having chosen a futuristic setting for his first-ever novel, Brooks has upped the ante. The future is where many of us—all those unsaved—expect the worst. The combination of Hill’s deep voice and Brooks’s dark comic vision pushes hard at the line between what’s funny and what’s only sad. But hang on, because there’s a happy ending, or happyish.
Pub Date: May 30, 2011
Duration: 14 hrs, 30 mins
Publisher: Tantor Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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