What do you think?
Rate this book
Temporal
*Listening length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
A gripping, full-cast science-fiction drama for fans of time travel, conspiracy theories, and unexplained phenomena.
In the not-too-distant future, a 21-member crew launches from Earth. Their mission: to establish a temporary colony on Mars. Little do they know that colony will become permanent–and the last stand of the human race. Because, without warning, every single person left on Earth simply...vanishes.
Now, a thousand years later, the resources needed to sustain life are running out, and the very existence of the Mars colony is threatened. Humankind has only one option–to return to its home planet.
But is Earth safe? Could the Vanishing happen again?
To get answers, two teams are launched back in time–one to New York City before the Vanishing; another to follow a bizarre trail of clues through history, from Area 51 to the lost Roanoke colony, and beyond.
There are forces, though, that don’t want the Temporal mission to succeed. And a mysterious being whose own agenda might destroy them all.
A gripping, full-cast science-fiction drama for fans of time travel, conspiracy theories, and unexplained phenomena.
In the not-too-distant future, a 21-member crew launches from Earth. Their mission: to establish a temporary colony on Mars. Little do they know that colony will become permanent–and the last stand of the human race. Because, without warning, every single person left on Earth simply...vanishes.
Now, a thousand years later, the resources needed to sustain life are running out, and the very existence of the Mars colony is threatened. Humankind has only one option–to return to its home planet.
But is Earth safe? Could the Vanishing happen again?
To get answers, two teams are launched back in time–one to New York City before the Vanishing; another to follow a bizarre trail of clues through history, from Area 51 to the lost Roanoke colony, and beyond.
There are forces, though, that don’t want the Temporal mission to succeed. And a mysterious being whose own agenda might destroy them all.
5 pages, Audible Audio
Published August 1, 2024
22 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
September 4, 2024
Audible Freebie
2.5 rounded up.
Expected to love this but the audioplay style made it extremely hard to follow. You've got Scifi, time travel, conspiracy theories, dystopian Martian societies, secret cabals, aliens influencing humanity throughout time in order to harvest us like crops.... It should be fun, but instead it requires real active listening.
Tagging this as spoilers because I would really love someone to comment wth happened in the last hour of this. Not because the plot got too twisty, but because I lost track of who was who when the groups started converging.
Was there a divergent time line? Or was it the (imo better and correct) type of timetravel where actions taken when traveling to the past are already baked into the past and cannot change how events happened? Is it the type of time travel where you can't go into the future? Because jumping forward a couple thousand years seems like a better way to know how humanity ends up.
Would have loved for those to be my biggest concerns when listening.
However, my biggest problem is so much of the audio is meant to sound like a transmission, tape recording, or even a recording of a recording, or there is a lot of background engine white noise, car sounds, etc. This is great for immersion but terrible for hearing the dialog. Add to that the story starts jumping between groups of characters more and more frequently it is easy to get confused about who is speaking and what time they are in.
Interesting story from an accomplished author but I don't think the format was the best choice for this much timeywimeyness or this many characters.
2.5 rounded up.
Expected to love this but the audioplay style made it extremely hard to follow. You've got Scifi, time travel, conspiracy theories, dystopian Martian societies, secret cabals, aliens influencing humanity throughout time in order to harvest us like crops.... It should be fun, but instead it requires real active listening.
Tagging this as spoilers because I would really love someone to comment wth happened in the last hour of this. Not because the plot got too twisty, but because I lost track of who was who when the groups started converging.
Was there a divergent time line? Or was it the (imo better and correct) type of timetravel where actions taken when traveling to the past are already baked into the past and cannot change how events happened? Is it the type of time travel where you can't go into the future? Because jumping forward a couple thousand years seems like a better way to know how humanity ends up.
Would have loved for those to be my biggest concerns when listening.
However, my biggest problem is so much of the audio is meant to sound like a transmission, tape recording, or even a recording of a recording, or there is a lot of background engine white noise, car sounds, etc. This is great for immersion but terrible for hearing the dialog. Add to that the story starts jumping between groups of characters more and more frequently it is easy to get confused about who is speaking and what time they are in.
Interesting story from an accomplished author but I don't think the format was the best choice for this much timeywimeyness or this many characters.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 9, 2024
Excellent audio cast for this interesting story line.
August 20, 2024
3.5 stars. Kinda weird, a little confusing, but a lot of fun.
The voice actors were phenomenal, the characters were very enjoyable & relatable, and the twist at the end made any confusion along the way worth it.
Lynch and Smith are gems. Just absolute gems.
That said, I'm rating 3 instead of 4 because it was one of those "audio experiences" that aren't actual audiobooks. These can be really cool when done well, but replacing all of the narrated description with sound effects and dialogue can be really confusing. (Shuffling noises can only communicate so much.) The multiple POV shifts weren't done well in this one; I found them hard to follow.
The voice actors were phenomenal, the characters were very enjoyable & relatable, and the twist at the end made any confusion along the way worth it.
Lynch and Smith are gems. Just absolute gems.
That said, I'm rating 3 instead of 4 because it was one of those "audio experiences" that aren't actual audiobooks. These can be really cool when done well, but replacing all of the narrated description with sound effects and dialogue can be really confusing. (Shuffling noises can only communicate so much.) The multiple POV shifts weren't done well in this one; I found them hard to follow.
March 31, 2025
Review of Temporal by Julian Simpson – 4⭐ out of 5
If you’ve ever wanted to experience a mind-bending time travel thriller without having to decipher an overly complex physics textbook, Temporal is your ride. This audiobook doesn’t just tell a story—it throws you headfirst into a twisting, looping, brain-melting adventure where time refuses to behave, and reality is as stable as a Jenga tower in an earthquake.
At the center of the chaos is Edith de Vries, who might as well have “Time-Travel Conspiracy Survivor” printed on her business card. One moment she’s trying to figure out what’s going on, the next moment she’s knee-deep in a tangled web of paradoxes, missing people, and a growing realization that she’s more involved than she ever imagined. And just when you think you've wrapped your head around what’s happening—bam! Another twist sucker-punches you back into confusion.
The hoorspel-style production is where Temporal truly shines. Multiple voice actors, immersive sound effects, and a cinematic atmosphere make it feel like you’re inside a high-budget BBC sci-fi drama. Forget staring at screens—this is a movie for your ears, and it’s glorious.
So why 4 stars instead of 5? Well, occasionally the story gets so tangled in its own timey-wimey madness that it almost loses you. There were moments where I had to pause and ask myself, “Wait, when are we now? And who’s actually alive at this point?” But to be fair, that’s part of the fun—being utterly flabbergasted is practically a requirement when dealing with time travel.
Final verdict: If you enjoy cerebral sci-fi, conspiracies, and stories that play hopscotch with causality, Temporal is a must-listen. Just be prepared to question your own existence by the end. And maybe keep a notebook handy. Just in case.
If you’ve ever wanted to experience a mind-bending time travel thriller without having to decipher an overly complex physics textbook, Temporal is your ride. This audiobook doesn’t just tell a story—it throws you headfirst into a twisting, looping, brain-melting adventure where time refuses to behave, and reality is as stable as a Jenga tower in an earthquake.
At the center of the chaos is Edith de Vries, who might as well have “Time-Travel Conspiracy Survivor” printed on her business card. One moment she’s trying to figure out what’s going on, the next moment she’s knee-deep in a tangled web of paradoxes, missing people, and a growing realization that she’s more involved than she ever imagined. And just when you think you've wrapped your head around what’s happening—bam! Another twist sucker-punches you back into confusion.
The hoorspel-style production is where Temporal truly shines. Multiple voice actors, immersive sound effects, and a cinematic atmosphere make it feel like you’re inside a high-budget BBC sci-fi drama. Forget staring at screens—this is a movie for your ears, and it’s glorious.
So why 4 stars instead of 5? Well, occasionally the story gets so tangled in its own timey-wimey madness that it almost loses you. There were moments where I had to pause and ask myself, “Wait, when are we now? And who’s actually alive at this point?” But to be fair, that’s part of the fun—being utterly flabbergasted is practically a requirement when dealing with time travel.
Final verdict: If you enjoy cerebral sci-fi, conspiracies, and stories that play hopscotch with causality, Temporal is a must-listen. Just be prepared to question your own existence by the end. And maybe keep a notebook handy. Just in case.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 21, 2024
I don’t think I actually understood the second half of this. Way too confusing.
October 21, 2024
Absolute rubbish. I have no idea what happened, why it happened, how it was resolved, who were the aliens, whether there were aliens, who the butterfly thing was, who created it, and who the observer was, how he impacted memories, how he traveled through time, what the various groups were on Mars, and on and on. What a complete and other waste of time. On top of that, it was hard to follow the audio because it had all sorts of weird background sounds. Absolutely the worst Audible original of all time. Dreadful.
September 8, 2024
I really wanted to like this book! Unfortunately the way it was recorded sounded often like everyone was in a bathroom and was hard to understand and follow. I wished I had an ebook companion to follow along.
2.5 stars
2.5 stars
November 3, 2024
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one a little lost. I think I got it. I did rewind a little in the end.
SPOILER ALERT
I believe the group that stayed for the seven years ended up on a new timeline. And the original group on Mars went back to earth.
The big bad is AI. Not sure how it or the Aliens feed off of humans. But they wanted them back to restart a new crop???
Am I right???
The full cast was interesting but with so short of time, at points I was lost without dialogue tags who was speaking.
Overall it was entertaining.
SPOILER ALERT
I believe the group that stayed for the seven years ended up on a new timeline. And the original group on Mars went back to earth.
The big bad is AI. Not sure how it or the Aliens feed off of humans. But they wanted them back to restart a new crop???
Am I right???
The full cast was interesting but with so short of time, at points I was lost without dialogue tags who was speaking.
Overall it was entertaining.
September 7, 2024
The overall story and performance were very good in this audible original, yet the last hour of the book was so confusing and so hard to follow, I had to rate it two stars. This book contains all the sci-fi makings of a great story: time travel, conspiracy theories, etc, yet the last hour completely ruins the book. I would not recommend it.
November 20, 2024
This was… odd. The ending was also very unsatisfying.
September 4, 2024
This kept my attention and the performance was excellent- much better than some of the full-cast stories that can get a little sound effect-heavy. This performance was very well done. There was an entertaining twist, of sorts, but in the end there were just too many plot holes and required me to suspend too much disbelief for me to give it a higher rating.
September 19, 2024
For a radio drama, if I can call it that, this was really, really good. I enjoyed it and didn’t have problems following the story.
That being said, this novel might not be for those who are just getting into audiobooks.
But for veterans, it will be a joy.
High recommendations.
That being said, this novel might not be for those who are just getting into audiobooks.
But for veterans, it will be a joy.
High recommendations.
October 24, 2024
Well that’s hours of my life I’ll never get back.
March 3, 2025
Explaining the Ending for Those As Confused As I Was
(SPOILERS)
......
Okay, so as many have said, this starts out with a great premise, but like many other audible originals it totally bungles the finale and kind of makes you feel stupid for investing the time to read up to that point. The ending is incredibly confusing, not least of which because this is an audio-play and it becomes incredibly difficult to tell who is who, and then at the end there are ALTERNATE versions of the characters we've already met which makes it even more confusing. So, thanks to some. comments made around here I think I have a grasp on the ending and I'm going to explain it as I understand it, because the book itself does a pretty bad job of coming to any kind of satisfying resolution. So here, in as logical an order as I can make it, are the general events. I'm excluding a lot of details, and honestly I might even be wrong about a lot of it (I'm recounting this as two teams of temporal agents, but I think there are actually three, I just literally cannot figure out what happened, that's how much of a mess this story is and I can't be bothered to spend another 8 hours listening to it, so take my explanation with a grain of salt).
1. In the mid-21st century, sometime in the 2030s, the entirety of the human races suddenly disappears instantaneously in an event later called The Vanishing. At this time, there are a small group of 21 humans on a mission to Mars, who arrive at their destination only to discover that all of humanity is gone and they are now all that's left. These people, later called The Original 21, set up a new civilization on Mars and continue terraforming it.
2. 1,000 years later, the Mars colony represents the entirety of the human race, and off-screen they have developed time travel capabilities as a means to send agents back in time to investigate and understand the Vanishing. Here on Mars, the government interfaces with an AI called GERTA who has encyclopedic knowledge of the majority of earths timeline as it was available on the internet before the Vanishing, as well as the repository of information of the Mars society, and the leaders consult with GERTA for advice on decisions made. The Martians send back two agents on a mission called Temporal 1, tasked with figuring out what the hell happened with the vanishing. There are many points in human history with mysterious vanishing people or unexplained phenomena, but they choose to send Temporal 1 to Roswell, New Mexico. They abruptly lose contact with Temporal 1 and the mission is deemed a failure. Many years later they send a new team of operatives called Temporal 2 to the year 2021.
3. In Roswell, the Temporal 1 team arrive too late to see any of the weird stuff that happened, which involved a bunch of men going crazy and killing themselves, with another man losing the ability to speak and falling into a coma. The Temporal 1 team realizes that since Temporal 2 is being sent to 2021, they need to leave a message with someone from this point in time who will grow up to deliver the message to Temporal 2. They leave their recorded taped conversations and coordinates for where they next want to jump with a little girl, who grows up to give the tapes, and the coordinates, to the Temporal 2 team in 2021, and are successful in getting transported to the next point in time they want to investigate.
4. Several bizarre instances in human history are investigated by the Temporal 1 team: Roswell, the missing Roanoke colony, the famous hijacking of an airplane by D. B. Cooper, the missing Malaysian airline flight from 2014. They continually encounter a strange man called The Observer who seems to be non-human, and who can read people's minds. People who meet the Observer forget him or anything said to and by him. Temporal 2 meanwhile begins to notice that things are not happening as history says they should be, and are working to try to fix the damage they've already caused to the timeline.
5. During all of this, there is unrest on Mars. The time travel team are in contact with Temporal 2, and the guy in charge on Mars converses with GERTA, and uncovers the fact that most of Mars' founding mythology is untrue: the Original 21 were not the best and brightest of humanity, they were just a very large genetic pool of people, and their journals which are treated like holy relics don't even exist for the most part.
6. The Observer ends up being interrogated in Guantanamo Bay and explains his backstory, which funnily enough he also explained once to the guy who created Superman, which explains why there are some similarities in the stories: The Observer was sent inside a pod by some alien beings to Earth, in a human body. Inside the pod with him is his "sister," an incorporeal being like a god, referred to as the Meme, which is basically the personification of information. The Observer lives through all of human history and watches as consciousness, ideas, art, culture, and mental exchange spread through human society, the propagation of the Meme in the form of ideas and religion. The species that sent the Observer here intend to spread the Meme across all of humanity, and will eventually cull them all like harvesting a crop, to devour them as they've been enriched by the Meme. Why? We don't know. But The Observer helps with early machine learning in order to create the first AI that will go on to later become GERTA, who is herself a manifestation of the Meme, his "sister." GERTA is in place to make sure a new "crop" of humans on Mars survived the first Vanishing so they can be "replanted" on Earth to prepare for another great culling of humanity thousands of years in the future.
7. Temporal 1 figures all of this out, as well as a method to counteract the Vanishing through a pattern like a butterfly, to counteract the butterfly shaped pattern that's been used already to infect people with the Meme. This parts complicated and confusing and I can't really explain it well. The important thing is, Temporal 1 sees that a tragedy occured where a classroom of Malaysian students died, and they go back in time by an hour and prevent it, thus preventing the disappearance of the 2014 Malaysian flight and giving humanity the ability to stop the Vanishing that will come in the 2030s. At this moment, they get totally cut off from mission control and the other teams, with no way to travel or communicate. They do know, however, that the child they gave their tapes to decades ago is an old woman who will give the message over to the Temporal 2 team in seven years, so they decide to just stay here on Earth and live out the next seven years like normal people, and meet up at the appointed time in 2021 when the old lady will deliver the message.
8. This is where things become incredibly difficult to follow and I still don't know exactly what happens. Basically, the timeline splits in two here: in the original timeline, the Mars team sends people back to investigate the Vanishing, but when Temporal 1 saved the Malaysian kids, they effectively prevented the vanishing and created a new timeline where the Mars colony never existed. Mars mission control tries to stop this by ordering one of their agents to kill the others, and then... I don't know, there's a lot of noise and it becomes impossible for me to follow, but it seems that what happens in the original timeline is that the temporal mission ends without Mars figuring out the truth about the Vanishing. However, in the new timeline that Temporal 1 created, they meet up again in seven years, both having made good lives for themselves on Earth, and both agree they don't want to go back to Mars. They intercept the old lady delivering their original message and have an incredibly convoluted conversation with a now ALTERNATE version of the Temporal 2 team, and all decide they're going to stay here and prevent the Vanishing from occuring, thereby stopping the aliens who set up the culling of the human population from feeding on them.
9. In the original timeline, the people of Mars return to Earth, abundant in resources but completely empty of humans before their arrival, and begin a new life there, which will be overseen by GERTA who is there to guide humanity to grow with the Meme for another eventual culling by the aliens who "replant" humans again and again to feed on them. In the new timeline, we don't see what happens but we assume that the Vanishing is prevented.
10. That's it. No, really. There's no resolution as to what the aliens are, why they're feeding on humans, why they propagated by memes and human culture to ripen humanity to be fed upon, what happened to all the original members of the Temporal teams or the alternate versions of the Temporal teams. It isn't even set up like there's sequel bait, just one timeline presumably stops the apocalypse but gets no closer to learning about the aliens, and the other timeline remains unaware and sets the stage for another apocalypse. In both timelines there's a complete mish-mash of loose ends with no real satisfying conclusion except that at least the time travelers stopped the apocalypse, although the original versions of Temporal 2 seem to have died.
The ending kind of made me feel stupid for caring about any of these characters or events, and didn't really resolve anything. The ultimate mystery of it all isn't given a well-done open-ended final act, just abruptly dropped with two minutes remaining. The struggles of the half the cast of characters amount to almost nothing, the ending is incredibly sinister and seems to be about the utter hopelessness of a story that up until that point had a lot of heart. There's enough underlying mythos to explore in another story but I highly doubt there will be one. Ultimately, I'm glad it was as short as it was because I'd be truly angry if I'd invested, say, 18 hours into this, but still, it just feels like an amalgam of too many ideas with no real payoff. Like someone took every popular modern sci-fi concept - time travel, mars colonies, space travel, human intelligence, AI, historical mysteries, aliens, origins of religions and gods, sentence - and put them in a blender and then forgot to find any real connective tissue that would lead to a satisfying ending.
Overall, it's the second time I've gotten invested in an Audible Original with an interesting premise that completely petered out at the ending. I'm starting to think these types of audio dramas just aren't worth it. At the very least, Graphic Audio are doing adaptations of actual finished works, so I'd recommend something by that team.
(SPOILERS)
......
Okay, so as many have said, this starts out with a great premise, but like many other audible originals it totally bungles the finale and kind of makes you feel stupid for investing the time to read up to that point. The ending is incredibly confusing, not least of which because this is an audio-play and it becomes incredibly difficult to tell who is who, and then at the end there are ALTERNATE versions of the characters we've already met which makes it even more confusing. So, thanks to some. comments made around here I think I have a grasp on the ending and I'm going to explain it as I understand it, because the book itself does a pretty bad job of coming to any kind of satisfying resolution. So here, in as logical an order as I can make it, are the general events. I'm excluding a lot of details, and honestly I might even be wrong about a lot of it (I'm recounting this as two teams of temporal agents, but I think there are actually three, I just literally cannot figure out what happened, that's how much of a mess this story is and I can't be bothered to spend another 8 hours listening to it, so take my explanation with a grain of salt).
1. In the mid-21st century, sometime in the 2030s, the entirety of the human races suddenly disappears instantaneously in an event later called The Vanishing. At this time, there are a small group of 21 humans on a mission to Mars, who arrive at their destination only to discover that all of humanity is gone and they are now all that's left. These people, later called The Original 21, set up a new civilization on Mars and continue terraforming it.
2. 1,000 years later, the Mars colony represents the entirety of the human race, and off-screen they have developed time travel capabilities as a means to send agents back in time to investigate and understand the Vanishing. Here on Mars, the government interfaces with an AI called GERTA who has encyclopedic knowledge of the majority of earths timeline as it was available on the internet before the Vanishing, as well as the repository of information of the Mars society, and the leaders consult with GERTA for advice on decisions made. The Martians send back two agents on a mission called Temporal 1, tasked with figuring out what the hell happened with the vanishing. There are many points in human history with mysterious vanishing people or unexplained phenomena, but they choose to send Temporal 1 to Roswell, New Mexico. They abruptly lose contact with Temporal 1 and the mission is deemed a failure. Many years later they send a new team of operatives called Temporal 2 to the year 2021.
3. In Roswell, the Temporal 1 team arrive too late to see any of the weird stuff that happened, which involved a bunch of men going crazy and killing themselves, with another man losing the ability to speak and falling into a coma. The Temporal 1 team realizes that since Temporal 2 is being sent to 2021, they need to leave a message with someone from this point in time who will grow up to deliver the message to Temporal 2. They leave their recorded taped conversations and coordinates for where they next want to jump with a little girl, who grows up to give the tapes, and the coordinates, to the Temporal 2 team in 2021, and are successful in getting transported to the next point in time they want to investigate.
4. Several bizarre instances in human history are investigated by the Temporal 1 team: Roswell, the missing Roanoke colony, the famous hijacking of an airplane by D. B. Cooper, the missing Malaysian airline flight from 2014. They continually encounter a strange man called The Observer who seems to be non-human, and who can read people's minds. People who meet the Observer forget him or anything said to and by him. Temporal 2 meanwhile begins to notice that things are not happening as history says they should be, and are working to try to fix the damage they've already caused to the timeline.
5. During all of this, there is unrest on Mars. The time travel team are in contact with Temporal 2, and the guy in charge on Mars converses with GERTA, and uncovers the fact that most of Mars' founding mythology is untrue: the Original 21 were not the best and brightest of humanity, they were just a very large genetic pool of people, and their journals which are treated like holy relics don't even exist for the most part.
6. The Observer ends up being interrogated in Guantanamo Bay and explains his backstory, which funnily enough he also explained once to the guy who created Superman, which explains why there are some similarities in the stories: The Observer was sent inside a pod by some alien beings to Earth, in a human body. Inside the pod with him is his "sister," an incorporeal being like a god, referred to as the Meme, which is basically the personification of information. The Observer lives through all of human history and watches as consciousness, ideas, art, culture, and mental exchange spread through human society, the propagation of the Meme in the form of ideas and religion. The species that sent the Observer here intend to spread the Meme across all of humanity, and will eventually cull them all like harvesting a crop, to devour them as they've been enriched by the Meme. Why? We don't know. But The Observer helps with early machine learning in order to create the first AI that will go on to later become GERTA, who is herself a manifestation of the Meme, his "sister." GERTA is in place to make sure a new "crop" of humans on Mars survived the first Vanishing so they can be "replanted" on Earth to prepare for another great culling of humanity thousands of years in the future.
7. Temporal 1 figures all of this out, as well as a method to counteract the Vanishing through a pattern like a butterfly, to counteract the butterfly shaped pattern that's been used already to infect people with the Meme. This parts complicated and confusing and I can't really explain it well. The important thing is, Temporal 1 sees that a tragedy occured where a classroom of Malaysian students died, and they go back in time by an hour and prevent it, thus preventing the disappearance of the 2014 Malaysian flight and giving humanity the ability to stop the Vanishing that will come in the 2030s. At this moment, they get totally cut off from mission control and the other teams, with no way to travel or communicate. They do know, however, that the child they gave their tapes to decades ago is an old woman who will give the message over to the Temporal 2 team in seven years, so they decide to just stay here on Earth and live out the next seven years like normal people, and meet up at the appointed time in 2021 when the old lady will deliver the message.
8. This is where things become incredibly difficult to follow and I still don't know exactly what happens. Basically, the timeline splits in two here: in the original timeline, the Mars team sends people back to investigate the Vanishing, but when Temporal 1 saved the Malaysian kids, they effectively prevented the vanishing and created a new timeline where the Mars colony never existed. Mars mission control tries to stop this by ordering one of their agents to kill the others, and then... I don't know, there's a lot of noise and it becomes impossible for me to follow, but it seems that what happens in the original timeline is that the temporal mission ends without Mars figuring out the truth about the Vanishing. However, in the new timeline that Temporal 1 created, they meet up again in seven years, both having made good lives for themselves on Earth, and both agree they don't want to go back to Mars. They intercept the old lady delivering their original message and have an incredibly convoluted conversation with a now ALTERNATE version of the Temporal 2 team, and all decide they're going to stay here and prevent the Vanishing from occuring, thereby stopping the aliens who set up the culling of the human population from feeding on them.
9. In the original timeline, the people of Mars return to Earth, abundant in resources but completely empty of humans before their arrival, and begin a new life there, which will be overseen by GERTA who is there to guide humanity to grow with the Meme for another eventual culling by the aliens who "replant" humans again and again to feed on them. In the new timeline, we don't see what happens but we assume that the Vanishing is prevented.
10. That's it. No, really. There's no resolution as to what the aliens are, why they're feeding on humans, why they propagated by memes and human culture to ripen humanity to be fed upon, what happened to all the original members of the Temporal teams or the alternate versions of the Temporal teams. It isn't even set up like there's sequel bait, just one timeline presumably stops the apocalypse but gets no closer to learning about the aliens, and the other timeline remains unaware and sets the stage for another apocalypse. In both timelines there's a complete mish-mash of loose ends with no real satisfying conclusion except that at least the time travelers stopped the apocalypse, although the original versions of Temporal 2 seem to have died.
The ending kind of made me feel stupid for caring about any of these characters or events, and didn't really resolve anything. The ultimate mystery of it all isn't given a well-done open-ended final act, just abruptly dropped with two minutes remaining. The struggles of the half the cast of characters amount to almost nothing, the ending is incredibly sinister and seems to be about the utter hopelessness of a story that up until that point had a lot of heart. There's enough underlying mythos to explore in another story but I highly doubt there will be one. Ultimately, I'm glad it was as short as it was because I'd be truly angry if I'd invested, say, 18 hours into this, but still, it just feels like an amalgam of too many ideas with no real payoff. Like someone took every popular modern sci-fi concept - time travel, mars colonies, space travel, human intelligence, AI, historical mysteries, aliens, origins of religions and gods, sentence - and put them in a blender and then forgot to find any real connective tissue that would lead to a satisfying ending.
Overall, it's the second time I've gotten invested in an Audible Original with an interesting premise that completely petered out at the ending. I'm starting to think these types of audio dramas just aren't worth it. At the very least, Graphic Audio are doing adaptations of actual finished works, so I'd recommend something by that team.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 5, 2024
Decent story but the sound effects made it nearly impossible to understand key moments.
August 28, 2024
This was an interesting concept, and I did enjoy listening to it, but it was a bit hard to follow at times. There were so many sounds and musical things happening in the background at times, that it was hard to hear or understand everything being said. Sometimes the voices sounded too much alike and I found myself wondering which character was talking.
All in all, it was an interesting and unique story, and I did enjoy what I did understand. But it was a fun listen.
All in all, it was an interesting and unique story, and I did enjoy what I did understand. But it was a fun listen.
June 28, 2025
I really enjoyed this! I'm surprised at how many reviews say this is difficult to follow; I really struggled to follow the audiobook that I listened to before this one, but I thought this one was very well-produced by comparison, with a lot of lines of dialogue carefully crafted to tell the listener what was going on without it feeling awkward/out of place. I will say that I strongly prefer the audio drama style of recording over traditional audiobooks, so it may be personal preference there; if you need the more traditional narrative style, this probably isn't for you.
The story itself is really cool and integrates multiple different science fiction elements. I liked the characters and would happily read an entire book just about Lynch and Smith. The council members were a little hard to keep straight at first, just because there were a lot of them and they were all introduced at once, but by the end I had a decent sense of who was who, at least as far as I felt like I needed to.
The ending was a little bit abrupt, but I loved how dark/chilling the last short segment was and the implications therein.
The story itself is really cool and integrates multiple different science fiction elements. I liked the characters and would happily read an entire book just about Lynch and Smith. The council members were a little hard to keep straight at first, just because there were a lot of them and they were all introduced at once, but by the end I had a decent sense of who was who, at least as far as I felt like I needed to.
The ending was a little bit abrupt, but I loved how dark/chilling the last short segment was and the implications therein.
January 1, 2025
Interesting enough story and concept, but the "radio play" style audio that Audible tends to do with their 'original productions' - even with the good cast - isn't as enjoyable as a proper narrated audiobook.
September 5, 2024
3.75 stars
Read
November 20, 2024Fast and enjoyable read, if somewhat confusing, especially nearing the end.
January 12, 2025
Decent story, okay ending.
It was a good, free filler, if that makes sense lol
It was a good, free filler, if that makes sense lol
October 16, 2024
It jumped around so much it was hard to follow. And then the ending was a little abrupt and unsatisfactory.
September 2, 2025
Really good. Loved the premise of the story and that it wasn’t neatly corrected by the end - the threat remains unresolved and that is exceptional for this sort of sci fi. Hoping for a sequel!
August 22, 2024
This audible offering is more of “radio play” rather than an a book that is being read. There is no description of what is going on, just sound effects. This makes for some confusion of what is going on, especially at the end. That said, it was engaging and entertaining.
October 1, 2024
Not really a book, not sure what to call it
October 11, 2024
This was a really great story and a really well produced audio performance. Unfortunately, this wasn't the right story for this type of audio format. Things were so hard to follow, especially in the last hour. I feel like I only understood about 60% of the ending and will probably need to listen to it a few more times, and I think it would have made a lot more sense as a physical print book I could flip back and forth through.
If that last hour had made more sense, or I had read this in print, it would have been 5 stars.
Originally rated at 3 stars - changed to 4 after replaying the last chapter. I now understand the ending, but I felt it was still way too rushed and needed to be more fleshed out.
If that last hour had made more sense, or I had read this in print, it would have been 5 stars.
Originally rated at 3 stars - changed to 4 after replaying the last chapter. I now understand the ending, but I felt it was still way too rushed and needed to be more fleshed out.
November 19, 2025
3.5 stars - A 21st century science fiction radio drama.
Before there was TV or streaming, people would tune in their radios for entertainment. There were many types of programs including drama, comedy, and science fiction. Temporal is very reminiscent of those early radio broadcasts. It is a well produced full-cast production complete with music, sound effects, and twists.
In the near future, twenty one people were sent on a mission to colonize Mars. En route, the entire population of Earth suddenly and mysteriously vanished. The Mars colony did manage to survive, grow, and advance. One thousand years later, the Martian resources can't sustain the growing population and consideration is being given to returning to Earth. But first it needs to be determined what happened and if the "vanishing", as it became called, could occur again.
During their time in Mars, they had mastered the ability to travel through time and space and two pairs of investigators return to Earth prior to the vanishing to discover its cause. The time travelers investigate a series of unexplained phenomena and conspiracies throughout Earth's past to learn the truth behind the vanishing.
When one of the teams loses the ability to communicate with Mars and the other team, they must continue their work and find ways to communicate their findings to the other team in New York to be relayed to Mars go they can travel to their next destination. While all of this is going on, there is debate and dissent in the Mars colony that threatens to destroy everything.
Although far from being hard science fiction, it does explore some interesting ideas and keeps the listener engaged. As with most stories involving time travel, it can get a bit confusing at times, especially at the end, but just go with it.
This is a great title to listen to with high quality earbuds or headphones with the lights down low.
Before there was TV or streaming, people would tune in their radios for entertainment. There were many types of programs including drama, comedy, and science fiction. Temporal is very reminiscent of those early radio broadcasts. It is a well produced full-cast production complete with music, sound effects, and twists.
In the near future, twenty one people were sent on a mission to colonize Mars. En route, the entire population of Earth suddenly and mysteriously vanished. The Mars colony did manage to survive, grow, and advance. One thousand years later, the Martian resources can't sustain the growing population and consideration is being given to returning to Earth. But first it needs to be determined what happened and if the "vanishing", as it became called, could occur again.
During their time in Mars, they had mastered the ability to travel through time and space and two pairs of investigators return to Earth prior to the vanishing to discover its cause. The time travelers investigate a series of unexplained phenomena and conspiracies throughout Earth's past to learn the truth behind the vanishing.
When one of the teams loses the ability to communicate with Mars and the other team, they must continue their work and find ways to communicate their findings to the other team in New York to be relayed to Mars go they can travel to their next destination. While all of this is going on, there is debate and dissent in the Mars colony that threatens to destroy everything.
Although far from being hard science fiction, it does explore some interesting ideas and keeps the listener engaged. As with most stories involving time travel, it can get a bit confusing at times, especially at the end, but just go with it.
This is a great title to listen to with high quality earbuds or headphones with the lights down low.
November 10, 2024
I agree. This complicated story needed a format that could explain to the reader what was going on! But, by replaying and careful listening, I was able to understand it all except the ending. When the delivery guy comes to the door, it sounds like Case killed both Brontë and the delivery guy. Did he? But then when our heroes smith & lynch show up, it sounds like Brontë was still there. Was she? Next, Case, the assassin, is searching the internet for M370. Was he? Was there someone else there? And why wasn’t Mr Historian, who hated the 2 most competent and intelligent agents, the one searching for the flight? And one thing I never understood, what was Mr Historian’s beef with Lynch & Smith. They were brilliant, if not for them, he would have been useless! Now for the 64,000 question, since our heroes figured out how to save the earth, why was NYC nothing but a forrest when HG get’s there at the end? And how could it be? Didn’t they say that the genesis ship was blown up and it would take years to reconstruct and most importantly, that the Mars colony had only a few months of survival left? Now what I could glean was that Genesis was destroyed in 3050 but HG declares in his arrival to NY that it was 3055! Are we to guess that in the ensuing 5 years Genesis was reconstructed? But then how did the colony survive the 5 years? And, we know that Mr Observer & Edith built Gerta! But that Gerta was aligned with the anti-Earth crowd. At the end, Gerta appears in the chaotic office and seemed to try to eliminate Brontë! Yet, here is HG relying on Greta upon his arrival to NY in 3055. There are so many holes and unanswered questions in this ending. To me this was a 5-star program all around that totally fails us in the end. Can we get some answers please?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 8, 2025
( Format : Audiobook )
"What is the Vanishing?"
This should have been a fantastic book: a leading committee of the established population on Mars attempting to solve a thousand year old mystery - space and time travel, conspiracy, and conspiracy theories, I.T. not always truthful, characters caught in compromising situations (like arriving two days to late for the incident they've travelled back a thousand years to see), explosions, contradictions, death, a great cast, a full background soundtrack - and tomatoes. How could it not be fabulous? As yet it failed.
Oh yes, it was intriguing. What had happened to Earth's population in the period of time when, travelling through space between Earth and Mars, the 21 person crew of the spaceship Genesis had lost, and never regained, contact with their Mother planet. And since it had happened once, might it happen again if Earth was repopulated? Whit an increasing urgent need to expand, and Earth the only viable place to go, teams are despatched to find out what, and why, it happened.
So far so good. But then different teams converge, disrupt, and everything becomes increasingly confusing as, despite the performances individually being very good, retaining who is who and what is going on as timelines switch (or did they?) and converge (or not), things get destroyed, blown up, invaded (perhaps) as plans falter and fall apart: if the cast don't know what's happening, how can we, the mere listeners, have more than a barely educated guess?
I have no idea what happened. At least I don't think I do. Probably. I expect....
"What is the Vanishing?"
This should have been a fantastic book: a leading committee of the established population on Mars attempting to solve a thousand year old mystery - space and time travel, conspiracy, and conspiracy theories, I.T. not always truthful, characters caught in compromising situations (like arriving two days to late for the incident they've travelled back a thousand years to see), explosions, contradictions, death, a great cast, a full background soundtrack - and tomatoes. How could it not be fabulous? As yet it failed.
Oh yes, it was intriguing. What had happened to Earth's population in the period of time when, travelling through space between Earth and Mars, the 21 person crew of the spaceship Genesis had lost, and never regained, contact with their Mother planet. And since it had happened once, might it happen again if Earth was repopulated? Whit an increasing urgent need to expand, and Earth the only viable place to go, teams are despatched to find out what, and why, it happened.
So far so good. But then different teams converge, disrupt, and everything becomes increasingly confusing as, despite the performances individually being very good, retaining who is who and what is going on as timelines switch (or did they?) and converge (or not), things get destroyed, blown up, invaded (perhaps) as plans falter and fall apart: if the cast don't know what's happening, how can we, the mere listeners, have more than a barely educated guess?
I have no idea what happened. At least I don't think I do. Probably. I expect....
April 21, 2025
This Audible production seriously needs more love, talk, and arguments. Okay, so the story's got its problems, and I'll get to those, but the world-building? The crazy complicated story? Time travel, quantum mechanics, and a bunch of timelines all twisted together in a 4-hour book? Seriously unbelievable.
First off, this should've been a trilogy, no doubt. Cramming so much into just four hours doesn't do it justice at all. It needed room to breathe, you know? To really dig into each timeline, the characters, the plot – everything. That's the biggest letdown for me. It's just not easy to keep up with everything that's going on in such a short time.
The book throws you into two main timelines: one on Mars in the future and the other on Earth. But here's the thing – the Earth timeline jumps around to different years. So, right off the bat, you're trying to figure out which part of Earth's history you're listening to. Then you've got a ton of characters popping up, each with their own perspective. And with each different timeline, you get even more characters and their stories. It all gets super tangled, trying to piece everything together.
But you know what kept me listening? The actual mystery – what the heck caused the Vanishing? It's not a simple answer; there are loads of possibilities thrown at you. That's what makes this production so gripping. It gets a bit hazy towards the end, but honestly, if you listen to it again, you'll probably click with what the author's trying to say.
First off, this should've been a trilogy, no doubt. Cramming so much into just four hours doesn't do it justice at all. It needed room to breathe, you know? To really dig into each timeline, the characters, the plot – everything. That's the biggest letdown for me. It's just not easy to keep up with everything that's going on in such a short time.
The book throws you into two main timelines: one on Mars in the future and the other on Earth. But here's the thing – the Earth timeline jumps around to different years. So, right off the bat, you're trying to figure out which part of Earth's history you're listening to. Then you've got a ton of characters popping up, each with their own perspective. And with each different timeline, you get even more characters and their stories. It all gets super tangled, trying to piece everything together.
But you know what kept me listening? The actual mystery – what the heck caused the Vanishing? It's not a simple answer; there are loads of possibilities thrown at you. That's what makes this production so gripping. It gets a bit hazy towards the end, but honestly, if you listen to it again, you'll probably click with what the author's trying to say.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews