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Preset by Sarina Dahlan
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Preset

A Novel

$17.96

Retail price: $19.95

Discount: 9%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Shiromi Arserio

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 11 hours 32 minutes
Language English
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Inception meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in this captivating prequel to the acclaimed, bestselling science fiction romance Reset by Sarina Dahlan

Can you give up a love you canโ€™t forget?

After the Last War destroyed most of the world, survivors formed a new society in four self-sustaining cities in the Mojave Desert. To halt extinction, everything in the Four Cities is carefully predicted and carefully controlled โ€ฆ even love.

But how can you control love and freedom? In the engrossing prequel to Reset, Preset weaves the tales of Eleanor, the Crone, and Eli, the Planner, before and after the creation of the Four Cities. Much has changed in the world and their relationship, but there are some truths that have yet to come to light.

Fighting for change yet still loving her husband Eli, the scientist Eleanor travels to Elara, the lone city resisting fully bending to Eliโ€™s control. There she must separate reality from lies, memories from desires, as she tries to piece together the truth about what is happening in the Four Cities.

But the gulf between love and freedom, between the past and the now, between what we remember and what we strive to become can be as vast as the break between two hearts bound together. It is here, in the dark fissure left by loss, where Eleanor discovers the true cost that has been paid to save humanity.

Sarina Dahlan was born into an Indonesian family in Thailand and immigrated to the California desert at the age of twelve. While children in the West grew up on fairy tales, she learned parables through ghost stories, mythologies, and Japanese manga.

A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, with degrees in psychology and visual arts, she has blended both disciplines in careers as an advertising producer, a corporate marketing strategist, and a writer. She lives in San Diego with her young family and a senior cat. Her debut novel, Reset, was an instant bestseller.

Shiromi Arserio is a stage actor, voice talent, and audiobook narrator. She holds a BA in theater from Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. In addition to narrating dozens of audiobooks, her voice can be heard in documentaries, e-learning projects, and video games such as Nancy Drew: The Shattered Medallion. A native of London, England, she currently resides in the Seattle area with her husband and her two fur babies.

Illustration of person sitting

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With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

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Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

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Reviews

โ€œDahlan once again works magic with her proseโ€ฆPreset is deeply emotional and deeply thoughtful. Heartwarming and heartbreaking. The characters Eleanor and Eli, and so many of the side characters, will live with you long after you have finished their story.โ€

โ€œSarina Dahlan wraps moments of clarity and meaning in beautiful prose while exploring themes of love, heartbreak, and the aftermath of war. Sheโ€™s never afraid to ask the big questions and consider what survival costs us, as individuals, or as humans on the edge of extinction.โ€

โ€œPreset grabs you by the heart and doesnโ€™t let go until itโ€™s wrung every emotion dry. Sarina Dahlan has a gift for weaving fresh postapocalyptic worlds that capture the imagination in the most beautiful and tragic of ways.โ€

โ€œIntricate, imaginative, and often surprising, Preset propels you through a future of warning, danger, and possibilities.โ€

โ€œA collision of our eraโ€™s catastrophes fuses a new world, becoming something rich and strange.โ€

โ€œWhat risks will we take to hold on to each other and ourselves, this elegant and ethereal novel asks. Through her sage storytelling, Sarina Dahlan richly weaves philosophy, science, and dystopia through the complexities of the human psyche, relationships, and the desire to protect what we hold dearest. This dazzling prequel clutches its secrets tightly as seeds in the palm, cleverly scattering them for us enchanted readers to follow until the novelโ€™s bittersweet end, which, of course, is only the beginning. Preset offers a trenchant meditation on what we both lose and gain when we choose to remember.โ€   

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