I am surprised H Beam Piper wrote it. It is more of a culture story than a science fiction.

Jack Holloway comes home to his place in the mountains to find a little person with a furry body and endearing personality hiding in his shower. He feels a paternal need to look after this little guy and begins teaching him things and gives him a home. He even gives him the name little fuzzy. Little fuzzy then moves his entire family into Jack's house.

This happy family situation doesn't last for long, however, because the planet is 'owned' by a company that has a vested interest in keeping fuzzies from being declared sapient, or self-aware, beings.

Things turn nasty when one of Jack's fuzzy children is brutally murdered by a scientist. Jack beats the living snot out of that scientist and kills his bodyguard. Now the battle moves into court. Are fuzzies little people or just animals?

Regarding the comments about dialect and pronunciation, I say blah, most of the books here have that to some extent. The only grouch I had was that the sound of the recordings tended to vary, sometimes too loud, sometimes too soft, so I spent a lot of time adjusting it, but the story was so endearing I overlooked it. Also, the reader was very expressive and clearly got into the story line. It made for a very enjoyable book.

Although the pronouncement of sapient is technicaly correct, the out of context accent use of sapient is mildy annoying. It distracts from of the story and disrupts the atmosphere set by both the author and the reader...
Other than that she's a great reader, and the book itself is great! And it IS free so....5 stars minus 1 for being slightly annoying....

Both "sap-i-ent" and "sape-i-unt" are correct pronunciations in American English, as you would find out if you consulted Merriam-Webster.

In my dialectal area, so many dialects mingle that it is nearly essential to pronounce words in all possible ways. If you don't say it both "wash" and "warsh", that is your verbal poverty and not mine. So there. :)

Thanks to everyone for their kind reviews!

Despite the constant mispronunciation or sapiens, sapient, and sapien, this reader did a wonderful job telling a fantastic story.

I thoroughly enjoyed not only the story but the reader. She does an excellent job with vocal variation and voice differentiation between characters. Very well done interpretation of an obviously classic piece of writing!