While this wasn’t my type of novel, I do see the appeal. The concept is interesting and the writing is strong.

[Took me a while to get to this, because the DRC was in a format I couldn't read. Bought the novel and read it after publication.]

I really enjoyed Sweterlitsch's previous novel, TOMORROW AND TOMORROW, so I was eager to read more by the author. THE GONE WORLD, I'd say, is in the same sub-genre of SF-mystery/thriller, but it is also quite different. Like his other novel, it's also tonally very dark: this is some gritty, grim stuff.

The novel follows a great protagonist, Shannon Moss; a member of a clandestine division of the NCIS. Assigned to investigate the murder of a SEAL's family, and the disappearance of his teenage daughter. It is through this investigation that we learn about the special nature of Moss's work. You see, she's from 1997 - but her work is not restricted to her own time. The missing SEAL was a crew member of a spaceship that is assumed to be lost in the currents of "Deep Time". I've always been interested in novels that feature time travel, and Sweterlitsch's approach to the sub-genre is both interesting and has enough originality to it to keep it feeling quite fresh.

Another very good novel from Sweterlitsch. Really looking forward to reading more by the author. Definitely recommended.

Completely amazing! Characters and plot come together into something super memorable. I'll be looking for more from this author.

This was a very nice thriller, albeit a tad dark for my taste. I am generally not the biggest fan of bleak or grim, but I regardless opened my mind to this one, and it paid off. The thriller aspects were compelling, the action is fast and hard-hitting, and the sci-fi elements are fun. This book is sharp and imaginative, which is all you really need out of a book like this.

Fascinating horror of a book. You will remember this book for it’s original ideas as well as the vivid images it contains.

Picked this one up and had no idea what I was in for. The story is absolutely insane, in the very best ways! Very much recommend for fans of Joe Hill.

I tried to read this several times. This book just isn't for me. It did not hook me at the very beginning, so I couldn't continue reading it. I kept forgetting that I had even began. Sorry for the trouble.

DNF @ 41%

I really, really tried. And I hate not finishing books. But this just really not my thing. It has such an interesting premise, a mix of crime mystery and time travel sci-fi. Unfortunately, I was completely lost the entire time I was reading. I was confused by all the characters and the perspective, and the pace was just really sluggish. There was also a lot of terminology that was a little lost on me, and overall I felt like I was reading the words, but nothing was quite sticking. The writing style is quite unique; there are lots of run-on sentences or fragments, and while I do understand that it's stylistic, it makes the book a little harder to read.

In the future, an NCIS agent is assigned to investigate the murder of a Navy Seal’s family. Her investigation will lead her to many different possible futures as she works to solve the case.
My attention was grabbed in the first few pages, and before long I was really into this novel. It’s a murder mystery/survival story with science fiction elements. The main character is a strong, fierce, determined woman who never loses sight of her goal. Fast paced and intense, it’s so well wrought, you’ll almost feel like you’re right there, in a whole other world. If you like your sci-fi with space ships and time travel, or a really good suspenseful thriller, than you’ll enjoy this book.

Pretty good book, though it did get a bit confusing at times. There's more than a little 12 Monkeys in there, but I really didn't see much of True Detective. Maybe some Silence of the Lambs? I don't know. It was a very twisty crime/detective story, with a bunch of time travel science fiction worked in for good measure. Very well-written. I've heard it's destined to be a movie soon and could be a good one, if the plot through-line is kept very clear.

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 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."

he Gone World, by Tom Sweterlitsch (2018)
2018/03/10 LEAVE A COMMENT (EDIT)

Science Fiction
Adult
First, take your time in reading this book. It is not one to rush. It’s to be savoured, taking time to ponder the latest plot twists as you try to figure out what the heck is going on! It’s at heart a mystery set in a science fiction world, not unlike the film Inception. In fact, I predict you’ll be seeing this story on the big screen in a year or two. Shannon Moss is a criminal investigator for the U.S. Navy. It’s 1997, and she’s called into the case of what appears to be a domestic murder involving a Navy SEAL. A wife and two children are dead, and both the eldest daughter and the husband are missing. But what the police don’t know is that the husband is actually an astronaut whose spaceship Libra and its entire crew is missing, lost during a secret trip to the future. When Moss discovers clues indicating more of the missing astronauts are here, she and her boss face the challenge of figuring out what really happened to the Libra and its crew, and how missing astronauts could have returned to earth undetected. Moss, who has a prosthetic limb from her own first experience with time travel, takes a trip 20 years into the future, hoping to find out how the murder was solved so she can return with clues to help her solve it in real time. But every trip to the future is an IFT, an Inadmissible Future Trajectory. It’s inadmissible simply because that is only one possible future. Our real world is solid but the future has an innumerable number of trajectories. But looming over every trip to the future is the realization that time travel is bringing the end of humanity closer to our present. Are you still with me? Yeah, that’s what the book is like. Moss is an amazing protagonist as she navigates possible futures, slowly solving the mystery with wispy clues that collide and dissolve as Moss travels back and forth between 1997 and several different futures. The same people appear, but their paths to the future are so different that a sexy good guy colleague in one future is a bad cop threat in another. (Did you ever read Stephen King’s Desperation and the mirror novel The Regulators? Like that.) Sweterlitsch has created an appealing, moody and powerful protagonist for a world that is both familiar and like nothing you’ve ever seen. Thought-provoking, lingering, and staggering in its breadth and complexity, this is one of the best sci-fi novels I’ve read in years. My thanks to publisher Penguin Putnam for the advance reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34643289

The Gone World is a science fiction mystery that follows Shannon Moss, an NCIS special agent, through a high-stakes murder investigation spanning over 20 years. Shannon Moss is not just an NCIS agent, she has also been trained to travel through Deep Time to the future. When she is called in to investigate the murder of a sailor's family and his missing daughter, she is pulled into a complex web of secrets that threatens to unravel the world itself. She must get to the bottom of the mystery before it's too late.

While the premise of The Gone World is interesting, the book never really grabbed me. Some parts were a little slow and others were confusing, which distracted from the overall plot. However, the characters were interesting and many parts of the story were quite engaging. Fans of time travel fiction will probably enjoy The Gone World.

Wow. A roller-coaster of science fiction adventure...well-developed characters and a storyline that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Think Dark Matter but with a solid detective story layered in. Gut-wrenching twists and turns that keep you guessing throughout. Well done, 5 stars!

Dark and twisted crime and time fiction.
Infinite echoes crossing paths and strands. Past and future colliding, looping, illusory threads of different lives lived; one possible interaction becoming the probable bane of all futures.

Special Agent Shannon Moss has two missions: solve a murder, and stop the end of the world.
What is the endgame when the pieces keep changing?

I received an Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam in exchange for an honest review.

Shannon Moss is a secret agent in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. She’s part of a special unit that tracks crime though space—and time. Almost no one knows about her unit, so she can’t always explain her findings to people. Sometimes, she’s sent into the future to gather information about crimes in the present, but her departure from that future always ends that timeline, as she returns home.

In Pennsylvania 1997, Shannon is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL’s family, and to find his missing daughter. She discovers the SEAL is from the missing spaceship, Libra, presumed lost in Deep Time. As she works, Shannon also discovers anomalies that give her more questions than answers, so she travels into possible futures to gather information.

There, Shannon realizes the case has far greater implications: it’s not just the fate of the SEAL’s family that’s at risk, but the entire human race, as the case is inextricably linked to the Terminus, the end of humanity. Now Shannon must solve a murder case, a girl’s disappearance, and stop a plot destined to end the human race, in a case that shares eerie links with Shannon’s own past.

I’m still not sure what to think about this book. The concept of Deep Time was both baffling and understandable in the narrative—although the visuals did not always coalesce for me. (Those never-ending lines of trees and the crucifixions.) Shannon is a strong, capable woman, haunted by her past and her experiences in Deep Time, and she finds herself amid events that can shatter existence into pieces. Her visits to possible futures were strangely compelling, as the people she knows in the past become startlingly different people in these futures. This reminded me of the time I read Stephen King’s Desperation and Richard Bachman’s The Regulators back-to-back (Bachman was King’s pen name.)

Tom Sweterlitsch was born in Ohio, grew up in Iowa, and worked with the Carnegie Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped for twelve years. The Gone World is his newest novel.

(Galley provided by Putnam in exchange for an honest review.)

Shannon Moss is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family, and to find the missing teenage daughter. She discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut on the spaceship U.S.S. Libra, a ship thought to be lost in Deep Time.

Shannon is determined to find the missing girl while being driven by a connection from her past. She travels ahead in time to see different futures and seek evidence to crack the case.

This is definitely a different book for me to read. I usually only read YA and NA books, as you can see from my past blog posts. What intrigued me about this book was time travel, plus I love a good mystery. This book will keep you on the edge of your seat.

If you love a good sci-fi, mystery, crime, time travel read this one is for you.

As an avid reader and someone who can’t resist looking for that next great read, even when I’m buried by my tbr list, I am always scanning Goodreads, NetGalley, and now Edelweiss. When I read the first sentence in the synopsis for The Gone World I knew I had to read this book. That sentence was, “Inception meets True Detective in this science-fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope”. I loved Inception and the first season of True Detective and knew this book was right up my ally. The story was fantastic with the elements of time travel and looping back to the present, and its scope was mind blowing. The Gone World was an excellent thriller with a frantic pace and excellent characters. The plot was so complex and well thought out I can imagine it being diagramed on a white board to keep it all straight.
The book opens with the protagonist, Agent Shannon Moss, in the year 2199. She just saw the end of one of the world in one potential future. Trying to get back to the present nearly kills her. The Navy’s special Deep Waters Program has crews making trips into the future. Every trip made reveals the Terminus, or the end of world. Each subsequent trip shows the world closer to the Terminus, and by hundreds of years. The goal is to find the answers about how to stop this eventuality. The present is set in 1997 and Special Agent Moss is called to help investigate a murder. The suspect is from the Navy’s Deep Waters Program and the case brings her past racing back to the present. I loved Shannon, she had depth, heart and a mysterious side that all added up to a well-developed character. I loved the setting of the late ‘90’s with all the futuristic science fiction that hasn’t yet come in 2018. The juxtaposition worked well, it gave you the nostalgic feel of the past and the excitement of the future with infinite paths and possibilities.
The rules set in The Gone World were excellent and well thought out. There was the premise that a person can affect the past from the future. The Schrodinger’s cat theory was mentioned, which was awesome. Thin spaces in time, where travel to one of many possible futures exist. The terminology, concepts and multiple, upon multiple layers of existence was mind blowing and left my head spinning. The Gone World is by far one of the best books I've come across in a long time. I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves science fiction and a fast-paced thriller.

After reading many reviews I expected to be confused by the plot, but I was surprised to find that I followed it along quite well. I am not much into crime, but I love sci-fi so I decided to try this out. I am glad I did. I really did enjoy reading it. Shannon is flawed yet has a head on her shoulders. I mean, you have to be when you time travel! This book makes you think, which I found myself doing even after I was done. I did have a little trouble with the descriptions of the murders, but I skimmed past them.

* 3.5 stars *

This book is a great cross between the sci fi and thriller genre setting up a mystery that travels through time in order to uncover the truth behind missing person case filtered with eerie similarities to a future event that wipes out humanity as a whole.

I have to admit the first 25% of the book was a bit hard to get into because it sets up the laws of this world with the Deep Space program and the consequences humanity faces in the future all the while having this disturbing triple murder and missing persons case front and center and there was just a lot to try and learn so I wasn’t confused later but after that hurdle it really picked up!

There are a lot of similarities to True Detective, but I could not read this book without seeing it directed by the people who created Hannibal, the entire aesthetic of Terminus itself seems like it walked right out of that show and into this book it’s so creepy and dark and I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I also enjoyed how they explained some of the travel stuff in terms of what you learn or what takes place in the future might not occur when you go back making the tempting concept of getting lottery numbers pointless because of the varying probabilities that go into everything I always find that kind of stuff fascinating.

All in all this is a good books for anyone looking to spice up their usual mystery novels with something a little more out there!

**thank you to netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review**