The reader does a really good job with it. No annoying FX or music, and he doesn't do silly female voices. Spreading the story out to 9+ hours improves it a great deal. I loved the between-chapters technical and historical info-blurbs on the history of the world, the tech specs of the Jaegers, the various monsters, etc. While the fight scenes do not have the giant screaming impact overload of the movie version, they are clearly explained and easy to follow, which actually made them tenser for me because I didn't suffer that "drift" effect I get from CGI overload. The Hong Kong bay battle was killer. Other aspects were improved by the expanded format as well, particularly the sense of time passage at the beginning and the political situation. More world details are cool, including such oddities as the Church of the Kaiju, with people who believe the kaiju are messengers from god and who assemble to pray at the bodies of fallen monsters. 
 My absolute *favorite* detail of the book over the movie? The descriptions of drift aftereffects, particularly the stories of haunted Jaegers. I totally dug the idea of there being a weird connection between pilots and Jaegers even after being disconnected, and thought it added a sense of the classic Showa-era feel that made the Jaegers seem a little bit magical and "personality-ed" instead of big vehicles. The images of Jaegers twitching in the launching bays when their pilots have troubled dreams far away, that was very cool. The idea of Jaeger psyches being haunted by the leftover ghosts of dead pilots was beyond cool. 
 My only demerit is that Raleigh is just as much of a plank in the book as he is in the movie. Seriously, Luke Skywalker may have been a whiner, but at least he had a personality. Raleigh is just... there, to move the plot along. I actually think the whole story could have been improved if they'd told it entirely from Mako's perspective instead of Raleigh's. Bitch bitch. 
 Still, GREAT audiobook, IMHO. Well worth the listen if you liked the movie, but even more so if you were meh on the movie.