Audible lets you chat with audiobook characters

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Ever wanted to crack the creme bruleé of Mr. Darcy’s stoicism? Or give Humbert Humbert a piece of your mind?

If so, you’re in luck. This Thursday, Audible announced a series of features that will let readers solve what’s historically made for a pleasant mystery.

According to TechCrunch , three new AI-supported tools will allow audiobook listeners to “explore a book’s characters, engage in interactive stories, and view additional imagery and bonus information about landmarks or places” mentioned in a given book.

The character guide has promising applications for stories with many players. This accessibility-minded feature will “display who’s speaking in real time directly on the player page so listeners don’t get lost.”

I imagine such a tool could really help one keep their bearings in sprawling multiverse or polyphonic novels, like One Hundred Years of Solitude . Middlemarch . War and Peace .

But Amazon believes in baby steps first. You can soon use the guide in an audiobook of Orwell’s 1984 . Presumably to keep track of the :checks notes: three main characters.

Likewise, the “spoiler-free character cards, which showcase the narrator behind the voice,” should be useful for those of us with Swiss cheesy memories or auditory aphasia.

That’s assuming you don’t believe that constantly paging or scrolling back to the top of a book is a crucial part of the epic-reading experience.

But enough yum-yucking! Given that so many of us do listen to audiobooks while multitasking, maps and reminders will surely have their use.

This analog curmudgeon will stay skeptical about the looming interactive feature, which will allow listeners to “ask questions about the story as it unfolds.”

Powered by generative AI, this new tool will let listeners speak to characters, on side-quests of sorts.

Though Amazon assured press this feature will only appear where sanctioned by an author, a pilot version is launching in a new Audible Original of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (Cry, the public domain!)

Soon, readers unsatisfied with Stoker’s version of events can chat to Renfield and hear that creepy familiar react in real time. You know, because we’ve always wanted to hear his side.

Though the interactive feature is in Beta testing, Amazon aims to expand it. IP being just a jumping off point in this economy.

At least we know the vampyr would approve.

(P.S. A memo to Real Transylvanians, who love to be read aloud to—might I suggest a tour of the Libro.fm offerings?)