Departure

By A. G. Riddle

From the author of THE ORIGIN MYSTERY – the trilogy with ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD. En route from London to New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind.

Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the world they’ve crashed in is very different from the one they left. But where are they? Why are they here? And how will they get back home?

Five passengers seem to hold clues about what’s really going on: writer Harper Lane, venture capitalist Nick Stone, German genetic researcher Sabrina Shröeder, computer scientist Yul Tan, and Grayson Shaw, the son of a billionaire philanthropist.

As more facts about the crash emerge, it becomes clear that some in this group know more than they’re letting on – answers that will lead Harper and Nick to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy involving their own lives. As they begin to piece together the truth, they discover they have the power to change the future and the past – to save our world . . . or end it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Oct 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9780008156886

A. G. Riddle

A. G. Riddle spent ten years starting Internet companies before retiring to pursue his true passion: writing fiction. He is the author of the Origin Mystery, the million-copy bestselling trilogy—including The Atlantis Gene, The Atlantis Plague, and The Atlantis World. A native of North Carolina, he lives in Florida with his wife.

Reviews for Departure

[busyreadin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not enough character development. Plot wasn't very engaging.

[carolinenh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great story! Fast-paced sci-fi; even the times I thought I knew where it was going, the story line kept me guessing. I enjoyed the story very much, liked the ending, hoping for sequels! I liked the author and the writing enough to immediately download another one of his books. Great job, looking forward to more!

[debbie13410 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Add this to the other books that have a good idea but aren't fully realized. It has a great idea and plot but the writing doesn't take you to that other place I go to when a novel hooks me. The author doesn't write a complete image of the world he is taking me into. The setting, characters and how-tos are not developed.

[Brian Walker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Certainly a book to ponder over. A fast moving tale.

[stefferoo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was actually first introduced to Departure as an audio title (given how often I browse for interesting new titles to listen to, it was pretty hard to miss how often it popped up on the popular science fiction and fantasy audiobook lists). What I didn’t know, was that the book itself was originally self-published. The news of its success must have caught on though, because I just learned recently too that HarperCollins has bought it and will be re-releasing it later this year. Runaway hits like that often have a way of catching my attention, so my curiosity probably got the better of me when I decided to check this one out.The story begins with the crash of a passenger plane on route to London from New York. Flight 305 ends up somewhere in the English countryside, its fuselage split in two. In spite of this, there are actually quite a few survivors, most of them from first class because their half of the plane went into the trees while the tail section went into a nearby lake. As the survivors treat the wounded and fight to save as many lives as they can, they soon realize that they have crashed into a very different world. Rescue might be a long time coming. If ever.There’s not much more I say about the story without spoiling it, but suffice to say, the Lost vibes are strong with this one. If you enjoy mind-bending sci-fi thrillers with a slight touch of creepy mystery, you should give this one a look. On the other hand, if you were looking forward to more of a survival adventure, you’ll probably want to alter your expectations like I did. As someone with a fear of flying, I was really nervous and bracing myself for a heart-pounding intro, but what I ended up getting was barely a notch above suspenseful. After the first quarter of this book, the emphasis also rapidly shifts to the bigger conspiracy.The focus mainly falls on five passengers: Harper Lane writes biographies for a living, but her real dream is to writer her own series of adventure novels one day; Nick Stone is an American businessman, on his way to a meeting with The Gibraltar Project to discuss the building of a dam in the Mediterranean; Sabrina Schröder is a German medical scientist, making her the best choice to care for the wounded crash victims even though most of her experience was in a lab; Yul Tan, a Chinese-American computer scientist, has just developed a quantum internet capable of transmitting more data farther and faster than anything seen before; Grayson Shaw, son of a billionaire philanthropist, is struggling with alcohol problems after finding out some news about his father.Unbeknownst to any of them, these five characters are all connected in some way and may hold the clues to the reason why their plane crashed, not to mention an answer to where they’ve ended up. The details are gradually revealed as the events unravel, and it was a captivating journey to discover the truth – even in spite of the many confusing moments along the way. To be honest, this book ventured a little too far into hard sci-fi territory for me to feel truly comfortable, and even though I was able to follow the plot just fine, a lot of the themes that came up later in the book are just not topics I find interesting. Be that as it may, I didn’t actually dislike this book; I found most of the story very enjoyable in fact, and even liked how it ended (as opposed to how I felt about Lost!) but it’s difficult to ignore the technology aspects that I personally couldn’t get into.As for my thoughts that are specific to the audio version, I’m always happy listening to multi-narrator books and I thought both Nicola Barber and Scott Aiello delivered excellent performances. They portrayed Harper and Nick respectively, and voiced their own characters’ dialogue even when they were in the other character’s perspectives, giving this audiobook a quasi full-cast feel without it actually being a full-cast production. With their natural performances, the two narrators also made a lot of the dialogue sound a lot less awkward than the way it probably looked on paper.In truth, I don’t think I would have fared as well reading the print version of this, given the propensity for my eyes to glaze over when they come upon pages of technobabble, especially when they have to do with subjects like the quantum theories of time travel. My brain has a better time when this stuff is read to me, so I was quite happy with my decision to listen to Departure in audio format. This is a book I might have enjoyed more if it had been the survival adventure I expected, but all told it’s a pretty solid book with a story that will no doubt appeal more to sci-fi thriller fans who also enjoy some conspiracy with their mystery.

[tobinelliott · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not a horrible book, but not a very good one, either. The beginning was not bad, with some interesting mysteries set up. But eventually the plot got bogged down in unnecessary overcomplication.

The author also made some weird decisions. When we first meet Nick Stone, he's a rough-and-tumble, take charge kind of guy that knows how to galvanize the lost. And we're constantly given hints about his profession, but not told until about halfway in. So the reader is left to wonder if this man of action is a soldier, a spy, a sophisticated thief, or something else equally interesting and mysterious.

When I found out what he did do? Yeah, no spoilers here, but I just thought, oh, really? Big deal..

Other than that it got far too meta for me toward the end, and the author dragged...and I do mean d r a g g e d...the ending out far too long. Riddle's a fan of over-describing everything.

While there was some interesting stuff in the novel, the best I can say about it is, kudos to Riddle for not dragging this out into a trilogy or something. I was happy when it was finally over.

[cpolk625 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Imagine a disease so virulent that it eradicates human life from Earth. Imagine it to be an unanticipated result of medical research carried out by a consortium of super-geniuses. Now, imagine that you are one of those super-geniuses, and you, along with other closely associated super-geniuses, have been brought to a specific location in space-time and given the chance to change history. Further, imagine that changing history to save human life on Earth is not the only agenda; you and each of your super-genius associates have personal, less-altruistic, agendas as well. Finally, imagine that you are only aware of the events occurring in the present; the space-time you currently occupy.When Nick, a victim of the crash of flight of Flight 305 in an unknown location in England, assumes de facto a group of survivors, Harper, a journalist, is among them. When Harper becomes trapped in the wreckage, Nick becomes aware of a bond, perhaps even a sense of déjà vu between them. His awareness of that bond comes crashing into his consciousness in a confrontation with Sabrina, the closest thing they have to a medical doctor over administrated antibiotics to an injured Harper.Soon, Nick becomes aware that Sabrina and Yul, a mysterious Asian man whose laptop is always nearby know each other and share a secret; one he suspects will affect them all…while Grayson, acting the ass, subtly threatens Nick and Harper alike. Soon they will all discover there is much more to their plane crash than meets the eye and that as the other survivors of the crash die around them each of them will have a unique role to play in the drama that is unfolding.Departure contains a well-developed cast of characters all of which are important to the story and all of which are confused between destiny, responsibility, emotions and individual sense of right and wrong. Departure is a war of values between characters.Well written and edited, Departure is an imaginative sci-fi action adventure that will satisfy any sci-fi or action thriller fan; adrenaline with a message.

[book1dragon1952 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great speculative fiction. A time travel adventure about a plane that leaves the U.S. in this time and crash lands in England in the future.

[john_warner-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Venture capitalist Nick Stone and writer Harper Lane are passengers on Flight 305 from NYC along with a plane full of other strangers. However. the plane crashes in rural England prior to reaching London. After several days waiting for rescue, the survivors learn that they are approximately 150 years in the future and a world that has been decimated by a pandemic. (I did not realize at the time I picked up this book that this world would be in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic.)Additionally, Stone and Lane discover that their respective personal actions in the past have caused much of the future problems. Shortly after the time of the crash in the present day, the two as well as other integral passengers will become part of an elite cabal to create an Utopian world with unlimited power, transportation, and knowledge available to all. However, as is often the case, their plans go awry. Scientists in the future have removed the plane from the timeline into the future in an attempt to change the past and therefore, the future. However, not everyone is on board regarding what to do with the Flight 305 survivors. One faction believes that the passengers should remain in the future but what would be the consequence on the subsequent time line. Another faction believes that the passengers should be returned to the past realizing the impact of their past actions. However, will they do something else that have a negative future impact. The arguments have become so heated that they it has become a war.I did enjoy the story, but its themes with modification has been replayed in television shows such as Lost and Manifest as well as a number of science-fiction novels and stories.

[steeleyjan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A.G. Riddle's new novel "Departure" is written in multiple genres, which isn't easy for any author to pull off sucessfully. The original storyline is the novel's strength, and the carrying out of that storlyline is it's weakness.This futuristic sci-fi grabs the listener's attention right out of the gate with a plane crash. We are introduced to the surviving passengers, and are suddenly engulfed in a mystery, adventure, suspense, and a budding romance. Sci-fi via time travel is quickly added to the mix. Many characters and events are introduced very early in the novel with limited detail, which resulted in a lack of character development and difficulties with suspension of belief. Usually, the inability to suspend belief in a sci-fi novel is like drawing the death card. I was able to get past this, but not without it effecting my overall opinion of the novel.Most of the characters who are not essential to the story are weeded out by the ending of the first half of the novel. The second half, while less suspenseful, is well devoleoped... allowing the reader to focus on time travel within a post-apocolyptic world, and the mystery of how the world got that way.Overall, "Departure' is written with an original storyline, and although not Riddle's best, it is still above average. Both narrators are very good and character consistant. It was a good listen, but I wouldn't be interested in experiencing it a second time.

[wesleyh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Departure is a sci-fi thriller involving an airliner crash, time travel, and a dystopian future driven by bio-engineering. The first part (25-30%) of the book is an action-packed thriller describing an airliner crash. I really got into that part of the book. I didn’t realize that the book was classified as a bio-engineering sci-fi and not an action/adventure novel. I was disappointed when the story turned. The last half of the book dragged for me as i started to lose interest in the dystopian future created by bio-engineered humans. The struggle for control of the future was mildly interesting to me and the characters portrayed were consistent with what I expected. The author’s descriptions of the people and settings are quite good and I found only a few grammatical errors.

[jfe16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Flight 305, traveling from New York to London, suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, leaving its passengers struggling to survive. The survivors begin to wonder exactly where they are when the help they expected doesn’t arrive. And soon it becomes clear that the answers they seek may be more complex . . . and more frightening . . . than anything they could ever have imagined.Nick Stone and Harper Lane take turns narrating the story and the unfolding saga is one of courage, honor, and treachery. “Dream big, work hard, live forever” is the promise held out to the world, but unforeseen events turn the truth into something far more sinister.“Departure,” a science fiction mystery, is filled with strong, well-developed, characters involved in a fast-paced story that captures the reader from the very first page. The thought-provoking tale is riveting, filled with unexpected twists and turns that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Crisp, compelling writing, imaginative plotting with just the right amount of grounding in science, and unexpected surprises make this a not-to-be-missed book. Highly recommended.