Anyone that has listened to me long enough will know that I am a proponent of audio book, hell audio anything. Beam Me Up has from the start supported the audio format. I really believe that some stories just seem to come alive with someone else reading them to you. Not always...but sometimes. I think I have found just such an example. A few weeks ago Ron and I tag team slammed OSC's newest Ender book. For me at least the story was clumsy and felt like another pen was being used. Ron was no less gentle. Now however Jesse Willis at SFFAudio has come across the audio recording of Scott's "A War of Gifts' and has given it a good review. In Jesse's wordsA War Of Gifts will not set a new high standard for Card or for Science Fiction, but it wasn’t intended to either. It is a modest story, well written and like all of the recent “Ender tales” about the Ender’s Game primarily about the minor characters. What card does is take a complex person and decode them into psychologically understandability. He does it with a humane and unjaded eye. If you come at it without a lot of preconceptions I think you can quite enjoy it - as I most certainly did.
So that being said...the audio version may very well have more legs than the printed. Jesse has a great deal more to say on the subject, points that I can not disagree with. Its well worth taking a trip over to SFFAudio and reading Jesse's review.
