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The Gone World

Tom Sweterlitsch

3.95 · Rating details · 11,210 ratings · 1,565 reviews

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

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...

Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division ...more

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Hardcover, 383 pages

Published February 6th 2018 by G.P. Putnam's Sons

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Aug 14, 2018 Kevin Kelsey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, read-it-again, read-2018

Posted at Heradas

“The totality of human endeavor is nothing when set against the stars.”

Sometimes the best way to experience a novel is going in completely blind. I found The Gone World at my local library bookshop and had no idea what I was getting myself into, in the best way. Reading it split my head clean open. From the first page to the last, I was enthralled. After finishing the novel, it left me in this kind of fugue state that I haven’t been able to escape. It completely blindsided me. U Posted at Heradas

“The totality of human endeavor is nothing when set against the stars.”

Sometimes the best way to experience a novel is going in completely blind. I found The Gone World at my local library bookshop and had no idea what I was getting myself into, in the best way. Reading it split my head clean open. From the first page to the last, I was enthralled. After finishing the novel, it left me in this kind of fugue state that I haven’t been able to escape. It completely blindsided me. Usually I dislike the phrase “compulsively readable” but it definitely applies here. I couldn’t put it down, I had to know what was going on in this story.

The Gone World is a bit of a genre-bender, so I’m going to back up and talk about genre a little. Several years ago the visual artist Ward Shelley created a piece chronicling the history of science fiction. He began with the roots of the genre: Fear and Wonder, Speculation and Observation, and traced them down through Philosophy and Cultural Criticism all the way to our current moment, marking notable works along the way. Forgive my oversimplification of this magnificent piece of art (you really should check it out for yourself, it’s quite a thing), but there’s a moment along the visual line where a branch occurs, Science and eventually Science Fiction coming through The Enlightenment, the Gothic Novel and eventually Horror following from the Counter-Enlightenment/Anti-Rational thread. These disparate lineages, one born of Fear, the other of Wonder, branch out into genres and sub-genres, staying mostly separate. What The Gone World does so expertly is marry the pre-horror Gothic novel “fear” back together with Science Fiction's “wonder” in perfectly equal measure.

Usually I’ve found Science fiction suspense thrillers to be a little ham fisted. There’s often a solid idea but the execution is clumsy, or the SF aspects are merely genre tropes. Sometimes the mystery is a little too obvious, or the characters are as translucent as the paper in a cheap paperback. Worst of all is when the story gets bogged down by the science and it becomes more of a textbook than a novel. This isn’t to say that I’m not a fan of “hard” sci-fi, but story and character need to come first. The Gone World doesn’t succumb to any of these traps. It works surprisingly well as both science fiction and a modern mainstream suspense thriller. The SF aspects help the story to avoid the tropes of suspense thrillers and vice versa, each genre serving to make up for the possible shortcomings of the other.

The Gone World’s prologue begins with a hell of a hook. I haven’t been hooked like this in the first few pages of a novel in a long time. This is a disturbing and unique take on time travel and alternate worlds that’s unlike anything I’ve read. Think the horrific existential dread of Lovecraft or Robert Chambers, that so obviously inspired the first season of True Detective, filtered through Arthur C. Clarke’s grand ideas, all told as an incredibly tight mainstream suspense thriller with a terrific protagonist. Throw in a dash of Minority Report, and a pinch of the complexity of Primer and you’ve got a good idea what you’re getting yourself into. Mysteries in mysteries in mysteries, and they all resolve pretty well.

I little googling revealed that both of Tom Sweterlitsch’s novels have been optioned for film adaptations, and that The Gone World is set to be written/directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium). In addition to this, Sweterlitsch co-wrote several of those incredible Oats Studios short films that Blomkamp directed last year. If you haven’t seen them yet, check them out. They’re terrific. It's been recently announced that Blomkamp's next film will be a direct sequel to the original Robocop, which makes me worried his adaptation of The Gone World may be on the back burner for now. Only time will tell.

The Gone World gut-punched my head over and over again, which is enough to solidify my interest in everything that Sweterlitsch does from here on out. ...more

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Jun 10, 2018 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018-shelf, mindfuq, worldbuilding-sf, fanboy-goes-squee, sci-fi

I honestly didn't expect this novel to be quite as hard-hitting as it turned out to be.

From the opening passages, I was plunged into a nightmare future world of nanotech and some humanity-ending Cthulhu-esq horrorshow of humans hanging from trees, undying hoards of men and women running, insane, and us, time-travelers in a spacecraft, observing our own future end creeping up on us sooner and sooner and sooner.

OMG, I LOVE THIS. This just blows me away.

But right before it scares off the normals, ...more

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Jun 12, 2018 Trish rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Okay, so I finished this last night but had to gather my thoughts before writing this review. Because the book is one of those that you can talk about for hours with others - both while reading it (discussing theories, puzzling about where the author will take this) and after finishing it (to see if it means the same to you as to other readers).

The story centers around an NCIS investigator, who tries to solve several linked murder cases (a family). It could be a jealous husband, a robbery, some Okay, so I finished this last night but had to gather my thoughts before writing this review. Because the book is one of those that you can talk about for hours with others - both while reading it (discussing theories, puzzling about where the author will take this) and after finishing it (to see if it means the same to you as to other readers).

The story centers around an NCIS investigator, who tries to solve several linked murder cases (a family). It could be a jealous husband, a robbery, some link to the Navy ... anything. However, what makes this so intriguing and layered is that in this world time travel is possible. Only forward and then back to Terra Firma (the actual Here and Now), but still time travel! And space travel too (the base for the time travel branch of the Navy is on the Moon). Anyway, investigators often jump around the time line to find clues and then solve a crime. This gets complicated by the fact that not too long ago, the Navy found out during one of the jumps that the end times (an event called Terminus) are near ... and approaching through time, coming closer at an increasing rate. The Terminus reminds one of horror movies à la Pandorum or Event Horizon what with the dark colours of that cold and snowy world, people losing their minds and being crucified upside down and whatnot. But is there a connection between Terminus and the murders? If so, what is it? And will all those efforts to prevent Terminus actually work - can they?!

Yes, one has to pay attention to which period the MC is currently in as well as how the events play out in order to get hints at who some characters are. Because jumping forward in time will only get you to ONE POSSIBLE future. It's not written in stone, which further complicates things. Nevertheless, although details are different, a few things stay the same, have a necessary common ground so to speak.

And all this is just the set-up!

The rest of the book slowly unfolds several mysteries that are intricately intertwined; a very intelligent plot with several twists and turns. It was so much fun following the clues and establishing theories (I actually used my notebook *lol*), then dismiss them in favour of new ones.
A few things were as I had expected them but there was always some detail that played out differently than anticipated and like I usually say: the journey is even more important than the final outcome.

The writing style is also very enganging, with a host of unique characters that make you feel the entire range of emotions a human being is capable of feeling. Is anyone ever truly innocent? What defines "the good guys"? Every (crime) scene was laid out in detail so the reader becomes part of the investigative team while also being appalled or horrified. You can feel how much you're running out of time so there is NEVER a moment of rest, the story keeps throwing elements at you and you either sink or swim, getting completely drawn into these worlds. The atmosphere, especially in certain surroundings, had me on the edge of my seat or barricading myself with pillows, it was that creepy-good.

I would have never even heard of this if it wasn't for Tyler voluntelling me to this buddy-read and although I will never officially admit it, I owe him because this has become one of my favourite books! ...more

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Jan 13, 2018 Sylvain Neuvel rated it it was amazing

In a word: Whoa! Edge-of-your-seat crime fiction that bends both time and mind. Think True Detective meets 12 Monkeys. Throw in the end of the world and you can begin to imagine where this gut-twisting tale will take you. This is cross-genre fiction at its best.

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Aug 19, 2018 Chris Berko rated it it was amazing

This will probably end up being my favorite read of the year. Right from the beginning I could tell I was going to like it. There are certain movies, for me ones like Reservoir Dogs, Boogie Nights, Memento, and Donnie Darko, where I knew before they even ended that they were going to be good, something special and that's what this book is like. Awesome the whole way through and everything is explained in easy enough terms that if anyone else that I knew tried to explain to me what was going on I ...more

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Mar 28, 2018 Magdalena aka A Bookaholic Swede rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2018

If there is one book that I feel inadequate to review, it's The Gone World, because it's so mind-blowing fascinating and sometimes a bit too much for my little brain to take it, but at least I think I grasped most of what was going on in the book. Still, it's hard to review that left you with a feeling of exhausting, wonder and dread.

Within two months of her arrival in Virginia Beach, she had time-traveled to the Terminus of humanity and sailed the farthest reaches of the Andromeda Ga

Within two months of her arrival in Virginia Beach, she had time-traveled to the Terminus of humanity and sailed the farthest reaches of the Andromeda Galaxy, bathed in starlight that wouldn’t touch Earth for another two and a half million years.

The book is gorgeously written, and at first, there is a tiny feeling of hope in the story, despite, the gruesome murder, as we learn more about time travel, and all the wonders with it. Then, we learn about Terminus, the end of humanity, an end that is closing in faster and faster, from being a threat generations away to a threat that seems to move faster towards each day and you start to feel that humanity may be doomed that there will be no way to stop Terminus from happening.

The Gone World is a fabulous science fiction book and I felt a craving for more books like this after finishing it. I've always loved time travel, and I loved the idea of going forward to an "if" future to see back to how for instance a case would be solved, and then go back. It's not a new thought, but adding the Terminus, gives the book a sense of doom, a sense that nothing will, in the end, stop the end of humanity. There is hope, but will Shannon Moss, be able to figure out a way to stop Terminus? Or is she just fighting windmills?

I feel that part of me is still processing this book, despite that, I finished the book a couple of days ago. It's such an extraordinary book. I also loved how the author quoted August Strindberg, from the book The Ghost Sonata, as intro quotes for new parts in the book. Love details like that. And, I need to find time to read or listen to Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Tom Sweterlitsch!

Read it, or listen to the audiobook. I have a tendency to do both when I have the chance, reading at home listening at work. Btw that's a great way to get some reading done when you don't have time. Combine listening with reading. *A tip from a Bookaholic Swede*

And some people had left their bodies entirely, had become immortal, living as waves of light - but once they could no longer die, the immortals begged for death, because life without passage of time becomes meaningless. It used to be thought that hell was a lack of God, but hell is a lack of death.

I want to thank G.P. Putnam's Sons for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review! ...more

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Jan 28, 2018 Mogsy (MMOGC) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, science-fiction, mystery, review-copy, thriller-suspense, time-travel

3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2018/02/01/...

The Gone World follows protagonist Shannon Moss, who belongs to a top-secret division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. On paper, her job is to investigate any criminal activities involving members of the US Navy or Marine Corps, but behind the scenes, her duties involve a whole lot more, including traveling through time to search for clues in a myriad of possible futures. It’s dangerous work, and years ag 3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2018/02/01/...

The Gone World follows protagonist Shannon Moss, who belongs to a top-secret division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. On paper, her job is to investigate any criminal activities involving members of the US Navy or Marine Corps, but behind the scenes, her duties involve a whole lot more, including traveling through time to search for clues in a myriad of possible futures. It’s dangerous work, and years ago she even lost her leg to frostbite while on an assignment exploring the wintry landscape of a future Earth.

Moss’s “own” time is 1997, the year she receives a case to track down a missing teenage girl named Marian whose mother and brother have been brutally murdered. The main suspect is a former Navy SEAL, who Moss discovers, with some shock, was part of the Naval Space Command program, stationed aboard a spaceship assumed lost on a classified mission. Knowing how the stresses of traveling through space and time can push a person to the edge, Moss suspects a deeper connection. Now she will need to jump ahead to a possible future Earth to see if Marian’s disappearance has made any ripples, so that Moss might trace the events backwards to discover what happened to the girl.

But for a while now, the NSC has also been aware of an event known as the Terminus, which will bring about the end of the world and all reality as we know it. The date of the Terminus, however, is not set; every time Moss makes the jump to the future and returns to the present, she receives news that the Terminus has moved up a few more years, drawing ever closer.

This novel is a sci-fi crime thriller with time travel thrown into the mix, so you just know the story will be a little wild. It can also be quite confusing—but again, that’s almost par for the course when it comes to time travel fiction. Everything is connected somehow, and as readers, we must keep track of the times Moss travels to the future, how long she stays, the people she talks to, and the information she gleans. Just to make it even more complicated, every time Moss jumps forward and comes back, the future she visits “blinks” out like it never happened (or maybe that should be “will never happen”?) and anyway, all her futures are possibilities only, not certainties. If your head isn’t exploding yet, there’s more: Echoes. These are individuals brought back from the possible futures, doubling someone already living. This aspect plays a big role in the story, so I won’t say more on the topic. The point though, is that The Gone World is a story of many different components, which Sweterlitsch juggles like a performer spinning plates on sticks, trying to keep them all up in the air and moving at once. If you’re not prepared to have your mind twisted, of if you’re in the mood for something lighter, then this is not a book for you.

This is also the second novel I’ve read by the author, so to some extent, I knew what I would be getting in terms of the tone of the story and writing style. In a word, it’s dark. Really dark. Like Sweterlitsch’s first novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow, we’re talking an extremely bleak worldview, where the threat of the Terminus is always present and encroaching on our minds. Some of Moss’s memories and her disturbing visions also have the quality of a nightmare, and the prose frequently utilizes imagery that is once painfully beautiful and viscerally horrifying.

As much as I enjoyed this novel though, there are a few caveats. The raw, gritty, and depressing mood aside, I’m not sure the book got its ultimate point across successfully. The story might have lost its hold on me at the end, crushed by the weight of its own ideas and growing a little too unwieldy for the plot structure to support. As well, I still have no idea how a lot of the science or the mechanics behind the technology in the novel really work; the author doesn’t make much of an effort to explain. One can argue all that is secondary to the main story, but I think it would have helped to get at least some background on the secret NSC space program and the history of how time travel was ultimately achieved.

But all in all, I enjoyed this. It’s smart, imaginative, and so edgy it could cut. I liked following our compelling protagonist, watching all the pieces come together (and sometimes get torn apart) against a backdrop of drama, action, and thrilling suspense. I would recommend this for time travel fiction fans and sci-fi mystery lovers, especially if you’re looking for a challenging, mind-bending read.

Audiobook Comments: Brittany Pressley was a wonderful narrator, successfully portraying a large cast of characters of different ages, different backgrounds, and different times. She used accents to great effect for several of them, creating a very immersive experience for the listener. She had a great voice for the book too, perfectly capturing its grim and dark tone. ...more

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Aug 27, 2020 Beverly rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: time-travel-sci-fi

Time travel gone very wrong

What if time travel was under the onus of the navy with all its attendant problems which every branch of the service has? If there were a problem, would all the members of the team be able to act honorably? Or would we (the people of earth) be in deep trouble? These are the questions asked and answered by this intricate and multifaceted glimpse into a future in which the honor of a few could spell the end of a planet.

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Feb 19, 2021 Blaine rated it really liked it

Shelves: from-library, 2021

For a moment Courtney’s death had made horrifying sense, had an identifiable cause, a reason. But the pieces slipped apart. There was no center, no reason. Courtney’s death was random, banal viciousness inflicted by one organism upon another. There is no design. The universe isn’t kind or cruel. The universe is vast and indifferent to our desires.

The Goodreads description sums up the plot of The Gone World pretty well. In a 1997 in which space travel and time travel exist, NCIS investigator Shan

For a moment Courtney’s death had made horrifying sense, had an identifiable cause, a reason. But the pieces slipped apart. There was no center, no reason. Courtney’s death was random, banal viciousness inflicted by one organism upon another. There is no design. The universe isn’t kind or cruel. The universe is vast and indifferent to our desires.

The Goodreads description sums up the plot of The Gone World pretty well. In a 1997 in which space travel and time travel exist, NCIS investigator Shannon Moss is called in to investigate a crime scene involving the family of a man who was believed lost years earlier on a time-traveling mission. In order to try to solve the case, she travels into the future to learn more quickly what will ultimately be uncovered about the crime. Instead she learns that this crime appears to be connected to the Terminus, an unexplained, Earth-threatening phenomenon that seems to be moving from the far future backwards in time towards the present.

But what’s missing from the above descriptions is a sense of the enjoyable strangeness of the story. The Gone World is an unusual mashup of a police procedural novel and a time travel story. Shannon’s backstory—a criminologist haunted by the murder of her best friend when they were teens—is unremarkable for a crime novel but quite unusual for the lead in a time travel book. There are a couple of ideas here about the mechanics of the time travel—that traveling forward sends you into merely one of the infinite possible futures, that other people and objects can be brought back with the traveler—that are interesting and uncommon but also vital for the story being told.

It’s also rather somber and dark, with the grittiness of a noir crime story. Time travel here is not a very happy process. It requires sacrifice because you’re continuing to age while you’re away. There’s also a particular risk of discovery that leads to a distrust of everyone encountered in a possible future. It all adds up to characters that are often flawed and sad, sometimes just altogether broken, and a book that is more character-driven than a typical time travel story. The scenes involving the Terminus are cinematic yet disorienting at the same time. The story is full of unsettling references to Norse mythology, and the book as a whole has the general vibe of a crime movie like Se7en or a crime tv show like Hannibal.

The Gone World is a more complex, original story than I expected. But the disparate threads are all brought together and resolved very satisfactorily by the end of the story. It’s not an easy read, but it is a good one. Recommended. ...more

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Oct 06, 2018 Claudia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, horror

Time travel, multiverse, murder mystery and horror weaved in a story about the end of humanity. Even if the subject sounds like a well worn one, it isn’t. TS created an original world, time travel is seen in a new light and the ouroboros cycle is masterfully used as a base theme.

I was hooked from the prologue:

“Please,” she said, “go back. I’m down there, please go back, don’t leave me—”[…]
“You have the wrong body,” she said, remembering that she had somehow seen herself in the orange trainee sp ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Cindy Burnett rated it really liked it

Shelves: first-to-read

3.5-4 stars

I struggled reading this book and am struggling writing the review. I loved the concept of the story but didn’t totally love the execution. I am always intrigued with time travel, and I felt that the portion of the book dealing with that was fabulous. Sweterlitsch clearly researched and thought through that concept and executed it very effectively. What I didn’t like as much was the length (the book would have benefitted from significantly more editing), the intricate scientific detai ...more

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Oct 09, 2017 Blair rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-abroad, edelweiss, sff, 2018-release, read-on-kindle

I wanted to read this because of the story that Neill Blomkamp is adapting it into a film, as well as the fact that Sweterlitsch has served as co-writer on a number of Blomkamp’s Oats Studios projects. I mention this first because The Gone World, being pretty high-concept sci-fi, is not the kind of novel that would have appeared on my radar otherwise. Thankfully, Sweterlitsch is a first-rate storyteller, and though the plot is complex I found the narrative fascinating.

Explaining the premise is g ...more

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Nov 15, 2017 Dave rated it it was amazing

Shelves: edelweiss-books, penguin-first-to-read, read-have, goodreads-giveaway

The Gone World is a breathtaking journey of literary imagination. Beautifully written, deeply layered, and most importantly mind-boggling. It’s a procedural detective story about a NCIS investigator Shannon Moss looking into a brutal bloody murder of a family in a house where her best friend from childhood had once lived. But, it’s not just any police procedural because Moss is part of a secret program whereby the investigators can inject themselves into the stream of time and space seeing what ...more

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Jan 02, 2019 Jack +Books & Bourbon+ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

First spoiler-free review of 2019! Huzzah!

Holy hell…what a way to start the New Year! The good news is that The Gone World is an amazing creation, well worthy of the praise it is receiving, and is a “must read” for sci-fi fans. The bad news is that the bar has now been set awfully high, and I think I’m going to have a difficult time finding books this year that grab me and affect me like this one has.

One of my favorite things about Goodreads is that I frequently come across books on friends’ fee ...more

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Nov 20, 2017 Juli rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-review-copies-2017

Deep Space. Deep time. In the future there isn't much in the universe outside of the reach of humanity.....even time. Shannon Moss is part of a secret branch of the NCIS that travels in time, investigating possible futures and the Terminus....an event in the future that might cause the end of humanity. They want to learn how to prevent Terminus, but they also discover that time travel has some very real physical and mental costs. In 1997, Moss joins a police investigation into the brutal murder ...more

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Nov 16, 2017 Faith rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, publisher

At some indeterminate point in Earth's future, two suns will appear in the sky. One of them is a white hole which will cause the Terminus, at which point all human life on Earth will cease (or at least cease to be relevant). Special Agent Shannon Moss is with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Part of her work involves going on dangerous time traveling missions to a point in the future in an attempt to determine the cause of the Terminus and to prevent it if possible. She also investigate ...more

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Feb 28, 2018 Debbie rated it it was ok

Shelves: scfi

WTF? I have no idea what went on in this book - and I am willing to consider that it's a bit over my head but really...

there is murder mystery wrapped in a time-travel paradox wrapped in a pending apocalypse all a jumble. I kept reading hoping for it to make some sense but alas I ended the book with a big HUH? ...more

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Nov 01, 2018 Peter Tillman rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, at-bg-pa

This is a well-written sort-of SF novel that I have mixed feelings about. The downside is near-constant violence, graphic gore, mass murder, mass suicide, mixed mass murder and suicide…. Oh, and the end of the world as we know it. I’m not a horror fan, and there’s enough gore here to drop my rating to 3 stars, if not lower.

The upside is pretty cool, well-thought-out sfnal concepts. This is a multiverse novel. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) uses “time travel” to alternate future This is a well-written sort-of SF novel that I have mixed feelings about. The downside is near-constant violence, graphic gore, mass murder, mass suicide, mixed mass murder and suicide…. Oh, and the end of the world as we know it. I’m not a horror fan, and there’s enough gore here to drop my rating to 3 stars, if not lower.

The upside is pretty cool, well-thought-out sfnal concepts. This is a multiverse novel. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) uses “time travel” to alternate futures, to investigate past crimes some years later. I’m not sure if the author’s scheme would “actually” work, but it’s plenty good enough for fiction. And the author has gone to some effort to make his stuff scientifically plausible: https://medium.com/adjacent-possible/... (thanks to Claudia for the link). The writing style is contemporary literary fiction. This is 4-star stuff.

The viewpoint character, Shannon Moss, is a NCIS agent investigating a gruesome mass-murder of the family of a Navy deserter. You won’t like the gore if you have a weak stomach. She’s well-drawn, a driven professional with an interesting history and life — which gets very convoluted with her side-trips into alternate futures. I had trouble keeping track, and the author’s habit of slipping in nicknames of characters made it harder. Or this may just be my poor reading retention?

Things get even weirder with the Vartogger trees, thin spots in the cosmos; hanged men in the trees; “echos”, multiple copies of the same person (or object) from nearby time-lines; misfires of the B-L starship drive that may be causing the White Sun.... He ends the book with an unconvincing “do-over” epilogue. Not quite “I woke up and it was all a dream,” but getting there.

So, overall: a 3-star book for me. Maybe 3+ in retrospect. Worth reading, but too gory, dark and confusing for me to really enjoy it. Definitely not a comfort read! But I'd read something else by him.

See Mogsy’s perceptive review for the details https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more

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Feb 12, 2018 S rated it did not like it

I kept reading, waiting for it to get better (hoping!)... and then it was over.
Dang.

This book had some interesting concepts - the time/space travel, the freaky particles. But there were just too many flaws:
~How did she never run into herself?
~It was just too implausible that you would be expected to go live an entire separate life for however long you wanted, in the course of an investigation... this was beyond deep cover, and yet there seemed to be no standards around it. She also didn't seem ...more

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Apr 28, 2018 Marianna Neal rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery-thriller-horror, science-fiction

I need to process this before I review it...
But, damn, that was really good!

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Apr 19, 2019 Jim rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, 2fiction, 1audio, mystery-thriller

A very long way to a decent ending. There were only 2 ways the author could go by the halfway point & I didn't think he'd take option 2, so it just became a long trek to finally get to the point which was increasingly obvious. If I'd liked the main character more, it wouldn't have been such a slog.

I should have liked the character. It wasn't her fault she was given such a crappy role to play. I had a lot of trouble believing the current & future scenarios for a few reasons. (view spoiler) ...more

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Apr 10, 2018 Tanja Berg rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction

“Merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

I often struggle to emotionally connect with characters if they are placed in an over worn plot in a common genre. This book transcends genre and I have never read anything remotely similar to this - despite the fact that I’ve read 140 books a year since my early teens.

In this book we meet special agent Shannon Moss. In her teens, she lost her best friend in a grisly murder. As an adult she travel to possible futures, “IFT’s”, inadmissible future trajecto ...more

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Mar 20, 2018 RG rated it liked it

3.5*
Moss works for a special division of NCIS. She has this weird ability to jump about time, to solve a murder mystery. At the back of her mind is the thought of the world ending. This end of the world concept is called The Terminus. When she returns back from the future she realises the Terminus is closer than first thought. Its intriguing, thought provoking and has much more going on than just a scifi novel about time travel. It has a strong theology theme throughout. The concept was great th ...more

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Jul 01, 2018 Caidyn (he/him/his) rated it did not like it

Shelves: fantasy, mystery-horror-thriller, dnf

This review can also be found here!

DNF at 67%

The biggest thing I didn’t like about this book was that I found it odd and confusing. I got this from Nocturnal Reader’s Box and when I read the description, I didn’t quite understand it. I thought I would understand it more when I read it.

Boy, was I wrong.

It was incredibly confusing. Every single time I thought I had the world down, something new was mentioned and introduced without being entirely explained. I don’t mind being dumped into a world I’ This review can also be found here!

DNF at 67%

The biggest thing I didn’t like about this book was that I found it odd and confusing. I got this from Nocturnal Reader’s Box and when I read the description, I didn’t quite understand it. I thought I would understand it more when I read it.

Boy, was I wrong.

It was incredibly confusing. Every single time I thought I had the world down, something new was mentioned and introduced without being entirely explained. I don’t mind being dumped into a world I’m not familiar with. Sometimes, I like it. I like having to work at a book to understand it.

But my takeaway from this one was that it wasn’t plotted out very well, that the world wasn’t very planned. I tried so hard to understand it, but things kept changing and not making sense no matter how much I tried.

I did like the characters, though. I found Shannon Moss, the main character, interesting. I wanted to know more about her and her job and her experiences. Sadly, I never felt like I understood her. It was a shame because she was a solid character, the one unchanging thing in a sea of changes. Perhaps that was Sweterlitsch’s point, but I couldn’t handle the changes when things didn’t make sense to me.

Another annoyance I had was the POV changes. Some parts were first person, some were third person. Personally, I don’t like first person. I like third person best. All of the parts were focused on Shannon as the one telling it, but I just hated the switches. It took me out of the book because it made no sense why Sweterlitsch was changing it. There was never any rhyme or reason to it.

Sadly, this book is one that has a very interesting premise. It’s part murder mystery, part sci-fi, part horror. But none of the parts added up together. The murder mystery felt solved (or somewhat so) at the end of every part, just for it to open up again at the beginning of the next with things unfinished. It didn’t help that the sci-fi part didn’t feel developed enough, so the time travel part just never worked for me.

I think this is a good book for people who don’t mind a book feeling somewhat unfinished. Of course, I didn’t finish the book so it might have wrapped up well, but I didn’t care about getting there. When I find myself dreading picking up a book, that’s when I know it’s time to stop even trying to read it. ...more

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Jan 18, 2020 Etienne rated it it was amazing

Ohhhhh that was good! A candidate for best of 2020 early in January! This book has everything : very well written, some might find it a bit prosy but I was fine with it, strong casts, and it was at it best bringing the best of every genre with a strong thriller/crime elements, hard scifi and a touch of horror. It take on the time travel/multiverse take in a very original way and just deliver a mesmerizing story that I think will stay with me for a long time. I know this author have another novel ...more

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May 11, 2020 Melissa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: apocalyptastic, best-of-2020, ah-deadly

Oh boy, I loved this! Was the ending so abrupt and the epilogue so terrible because I was upset that it was all over or because Sweterlitsch didn't quite know how to end things? This is one of those books that make me sad I'll never again get to experience reading it for the first time. ...more

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Sep 06, 2020 Liz Barnsley rated it it was amazing

This book is totally insane and will mess with your head in so many ways but it is also unique, brilliant, mind boggling and hugely thought provoking.

Time travel novels are often convoluted but I don't think I've ever read one with this level of complex intelligence where both nothing and everything makes sense. With every new timeline the author adds richness and vibrancy to the plot, our main character Shannon Moss engages you in her mission with a nervy, edgy focus, her purpose being to prev ...more

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Jul 25, 2018 ash c rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, horror, space-time-weirdness, cthulhu-fever

There's one thing that can be said of The Gone World that is hard to come by these days with popular scifi - is that this is a unique story. I imagine, sometimes, that parts of my brain are dedicated to retaining my enjoyment for certain things. The Gone World made the parts of my brain for cosmic horror, time travel, and a good detective story light up like it's Christmas. Also cosmic horror doesn't get activated very often. So it's happy.

"We sailed five thousand years,” said Njoku. “And I s

...more

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Mar 27, 2018 Steve rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, horror, favorites, mystery, read-in-2019

All the stars! All the stars times a billion!

This is well beyond anything I can easily describe, but imagine a cross between the multiple realities of Christopher Nolan's Inception, the apparent crosses and double-crosses of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, the deep space/time adventures of the USS Enterprise, the hidden links of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, and you might get close to The Gone World.

This is a very dense book, and definitely not light reading. There are multiple mind-bending even ...more

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Nov 16, 2018 Sarah rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2018, mystery-thriller, published-in-2018, science-fiction, time-travel, mind-melting

I actually enjoyed reading a good chunk of this book, but it got to a certain point where a) there was a violence of a particular type that makes me very squeamish, which made me check out a bit after that and b) it got so confusing and convoluted that it just wasn't very much fun to read any more. This starts out as a murder mystery, but isn't really one any more by the end, and ends up being an incredibly complicated story about time travel. Also, the epilogue sucked.

I realized reading this bo ...more

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