You Get What You Pay For

Another pre-virus road trip earlier this year was another opportunity to listen to another Audible audiobook exclusive. This time, it was a Interview With the Robot, by Lee Bacon. A 12-year-old girl named Eve is taken into custody for shoplifting, where she proceeds to unspool an amazing tale to the child services worker who questions her. Eve is a robot, and recounts her creation in a secretive lab, the scientist with a particular motivation for building her, and how she came to be on the run.

Audible has a program where you periodically can receive a free original audiobook. I've found that most of them have been better than you'd expect for "they're just giving this away." Interview With the Robot was not. For 3 hours and 42 minutes, it filled our long drive, and was entertaining enough to stick with. But that was probably about the extent of it.

It starts interestingly enough, with an engaging opening chapter that gets you interested in the main character Eve and her story. Once you're in that far, if you're like us, you're probably in for the duration. Still, the story is rather predictable. There are twists and turns, but you're likely to see many of them coming.

This is a fully cast drama without a narrator, different actors voicing the different characters. This has mixed results. Some of the cast is pretty good, particularly the soothing-yet-creepy scientist who is Eve's "father." But the directing leads others in the cast astray: robots early in their development speak in monotone voices that are quite grating. (And you will hear them a lot.) Another actor, playing a teenage boy, adopts a Josh Gad style voice that mostly sounds like the affectation it is.

But all the actors are working to overcome some really awkward dialogue. Lee Bacon has written a story that's engaging enough (even if you anticipate the plot), but he's quite awkward at integrating description into the dialogue in this audio drama format. Characters often describe their surroundings and their actions in ham-fisted ways. It often shows a lack of faith in the audience, because the context alone is usually enough to get you there.

We've listened to some Audible freebies I would gladly have paid for. Interview With the Robot isn't one. That said, we did have other options for listening on hand, and yet still we kept with it to the end. So it really couldn't have been that bad. I'd say it's about a C+. If perhaps your podcast queue is empty and you too can get your hands on it for free, it might be worth a listen. Otherwise, I wouldn't seek it out.