Bewilderness, Part One: Threshold

De: Jonathan Maberry

Narrado por: Shayna Small

The Gateway Project is going to save the world.

Maybe.

Dr. Abby Corman has a bold idea: open a stable doorway between our world and an uninhabited parallel Earth. A new world we can use to mine resources to end poverty, grow enough food to end all hunger, and allow for population growth to end overcrowding. What could be a more noble aspiration for a brilliant young scientist?

But the path to hell is paved with good intentions....

The Gateway is in a secure lab in a huge office building in New York. Ultra-modern, impenetrable by industrial spies or foreign agents, totally secure. Once it goes into lockdown for the Gateway test firing, it becomes the world’s largest and most unbreakable vault. Locked doors, though, can do more than keep bad things out. They can keep bad things in.

Bewilderness: Threshold is the first part of a sprawling science fiction epic packed with weird science, corporate greed, betrayal, and horror. An Audible Original by New York Times best seller Jonathan Maberry, author of Patient Zero and V-Wars.

©2020 Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC.

Narrator made my head hurt.

Perhaps this is a YA book.

In full disclosure I never finished this book, but I read enough of the reviews to know how it went. It took me to 35 minutes to decide maybe I hate the characters more than the narrator. So much emphasis is put in the pronouncing the crappy language that you feel like you are in a soap opera.

interesting premise, annoying narrator

Just my opinion but the narrator's different voices can sound like a slightly deeper Betty Boop. Her normal voice is fine. Storyline has an interesting, if far fetched, premise. But if you like Sci-fi and fantasy, aren't you always reading something pretty far fetched? I'll definitely read the next book when it comes out.

Book of cliches

The story is not bad, but the execution is painful, unimaginative and flawed. It reads like a multiverse story told by a 14 year old teenager not very familiarized with storytelling. It ends in a cliffhanger that I will not jump into. The narrator doesn’t help either.

WOW!!! please get me the second half

loved this i usually do really long book 20+ hours but thought why not, looks interesting and I didn't have to spend a credit! Totally knocked it out of the park great character development story move along and didn't get bogged down. Narrator great job! just overall a great experience! Now I need book 2!

Question Mark

Maberry is a creative guy and solid writer, so I’m sure his story is great. However, Small’s narration was so insufferable that I had to stop listening after 20 mins. The audiobook is free, likely because of its lamentable narration.

Interesting but disappointing

Normally, I love Jonathan Mayberry's work. This had an interesting premise and provided some moments of intrigue. However, the characters were so dense! I especially hated the protagonist's boyfriend. I feel like most of his dialogue was devoted to screaming "Abbbyyyyy".
Ultimately, if the next book is included with Audible, then I will probably listen to it. But, I don't see myself paying for it.

Bewilderness, Part 1: Threshold

Fantastic, can't wait for the rest. Pretty good once it got going. Have to read the other books.

Wrong Narrator

I wanted so much to like or even finish this book but the ridiculous narration is so distracting. The narrator is talented but her attempt at the various accents in this book is terrible. She is simply the wrong narrator for this book.

This is a slow building story. However i like anticipation

i hate it is so short, even though I know there are two more volumes.

Uncomfortable narration but interesting story

I almost stopped listening immediately. The narrator's voice was so uncomfortable. Like a porn star, or a husky 90's alternative band lead singer. When she narrates the main character she sounds good. Actually, she narrates other characters fine too, except maybe the villain lady. It's the actual narration voice that felt uncomfortable to me.

If you hang in there for a half hour, you get used to the breathy deep baby lady voice and can pay attention to the plot, which does eventually happen. It goes from a bit dull exposition to gripping action for the entire second half. I was hanging on every moment by then. I was ready to cancel my plans to find out what happened next.

It ends on quite the cliffhanger. I got sucked in and I would very much like to continue. It's a good story idea. Kinda horrific, but amazing. I have no idea how the story is going to resolve from the situation they left it in, but the author set it up for endless potential. I'm hooked.

I could totally see this becoming an awesome Hollywood B-movie or TV series. I would watch it. It has what it takes for that kind of action movie: clearly good vs clearly bad characters, athletic brilliant heroes who have impossibly amazing skills and are VERY ATTTRACTIVE (it was clarified many times) (at least for the white characters). Completely supportive and subordinate non-white sidekicks (they'd need to adjust the diversity around to avoid this cringy cliche). Mass destruction in exciting action scenes. This story is CGI waiting to happen.

I kinda liked it. It's got something there. Even the non-action scenes, like the villain getting drunk, made sense to the plot and character development, and I appreciated those moments of detail in that scene. The poignancy of careless self-destruction set up the next scene very well.

No one reacted perfectly to anything, which felt very human and relatable.

I don't know if I'd recommend reading it or not. Maybe if you're stuck in a car anyway, and it's free, and you can get through the first half hour. And if you like movies like The Core, or Rampage. Then yeah, for sure.

Warning after starting book 2 and looking up the author: The author is well-known for horror and is really good at describing and evoking it. Book 2 gets gory and scary. I have waking aphantasia, so it's okay now, but sleeping imagery. I'm a little worried I'll have nightmares, tbh. If you aren't into horror action, best not start or you'll get sucked in.