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The Gone World
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“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
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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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 ...more
“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 ...more

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
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

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 ...more
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 ...more

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

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.
...more
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

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 ...more
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 ...more

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.
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.

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 ...more

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
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

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
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

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
Explaining the premise is g ...more

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

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
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

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

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

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
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

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 ...more
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 ...more

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
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

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!
But, damn, that was really good!

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
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

“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
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

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
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

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’ ...more
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’ ...more

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

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

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
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

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

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
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

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
I realized reading this bo ...more
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“There is no design. The universe isn’t kind or cruel. The universe is vast and indifferent to our desires.”
—
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“The totality of human endeavour is nothing when set against the stars.”
—
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