The Gone World

Inception meets True Detective in this science fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope that follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind...

“I promise you have never read a story like this.”—Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter

Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family—and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can't share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra—a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL's experience with the future has triggered this violence.

Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence to crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it's not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time's horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself.

Luminous and unsettling, The Gone World bristles with world-shattering ideas yet remains at its heart an intensely human story.

review

Good narration though often difficult to follow the chronology of the back-and-forth time travel with alternate realities and a less than clear understanding of the plot.

Good writing, excellent narration but awful plot

The writing and imagery were well done. Narration was great. However, the story line was not something I enjoyed. I found the ending annoying.

Hard Boiled Time Travel

Tom Sweterlitsch has written an absurdly complex, hyper violent, deeply disturbing SciFi Noir, brilliantly performed by Ms. Brittany Pressley, whose command of character & nuance is remarkable. I ended the book completely baffled, yet thoroughly entertained. It’s brutal. It’s surreal. It’s weird. Very much for fans of Richard K. Morgan style savagery.

Very unique timeline but easy to follow

Crescendo pacing. Vivid characters. Dramatic and emotional. Razor-edge science and philosophy underpinnings. Strong female character. One heck of a detective story through time and space.

Wow, twisted, but with such believable characters

Ok. This is a thriller mixed with some serious sci-fi. I truly enjoyed the narrator's performance. in my mind, she brought the lead character, Shannon Moss, to life for me. Her style is straightforward, just as I imagined Agent Moss to be.

There were a couple of complaints in other posts about the difficulty in understanding the sci-fi plot points of the story. I can see that. It's not a standard Hollywood simplistic idea. I found there to be some nuance involved. That's ok for me. It added a bit of mystery and complexity. So, without quite understanding the finer points, the story still works for me.

I find Sweterlitsch's descriptions and observations to be insightful. He's not filling space or time. Everything hangs together. I did not sense anything superfluous. I did find myself actually wondering how Agent Moss was going to proceed. I felt her uncertainties, doubts, and struggles. For me, this was a story that I haven't experienced for years: well told, believable characters in unbelievable circumstances, unknown futures that I can't predict using work out tropes and cliches.

Granted, I'm a stupid simpleton. Your mileage may vary. I found "The Gone World" to be a refreshing and original work, and I look forward to reading more works by Sweterlitsch.