The Gone World

Written by Tom Sweterlitsch

Narrated by Brittany Pressley

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Feb 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780525497769

Reviews for The Gone World

[murphy.waggoner · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some tag this as a police procedural, but that the fact that it includes agents of various law enforcement agencies, the mystery solved has more to do with unraveling time loops than of solving crime.

The complications due to time travel are convoluted and difficult to follow, which hampered the enjoyment of following the lead character through time.

The narrator used an annoying up-talk, and this was particularly distracting when the narrative had short choppy sentences.

[rena613 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow! This book is seriously crazy. This has space / time travel with different futures branching out. So fun. My older kids would absolutely love to read something like this, but they're too young for this particular book. But it's something they find so interesting. I don't know how more of the people in this book didn't go crazy from all this. It can make your head spin.

[radaghast_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great novel. Cosmic horror with a heart and a soul. I gave it 4 because I predicted the end but this is a 5 star in every other way

[sarcher-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Didn't think I'd come back to it for a second read, but I did, so that counts for something. A book I would call an 'airport read' if I hadn't read it twice.

[jbaty_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Love the whole murder mystery time travel horror weird bits, but frankly I became lost late in the game and never found my footing.

[jimdr-236203 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a lushly worded, mind bending story about time, reality, and death. It is equal parts X-files thrill and Ligotti-esque nihilistic dread, and I loved it.

The issuing was spot on, and the characters were fully realized in a way not many popular works achieve. The ending turned the mind-f#@k up a little high, perhaps, but the journey there was truly unforgettable.

[tuusannuuska-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4 stars

I listened to some of this on audio, and while it was a good audiobook, I still wish I'd stuck with the physical copy. Some of this required some intense mental gymnastics and if I'd been a 100% invested, I would have re-read some sections. However, mostly I just wanted to get through it, so I didn't have the energy to invest the time to go back.

The time-travel and multi-verse aspects were fascinating as all hell, but I didn't really connect with the characters. I was into the plot to the point where I really wanted to know where it was going, but I didn't really care one way or the other.

I wasn't a fan of the unnecessary gore, I didn't really see the point. I also found the language a little gimmicky sometimes, but it was something I got used to.

Over all, an interesting read, but probably not something I'll be rereading anytime soon.

[burritapal · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Difficult to understand; nevertheless 4.5 Stars for incredible imagination.
This book is fantastic, a fantastic work. It would help to be a quantum physicist, to understand what's taking place better, but even so... Nothing less than a "trip".

Remarking on a picture at a crime scene . . . a ship of nails:
" 'a ship of nails to carry the dead,' said Moss. 'I don't know. Jesus Christ, we've seen a lot of death today.'
'are you religious?' asked Nestor.
'what?' she said -- she realized she'd blasphemed, was worried she might have offended him. Several men she'd met in law enforcement were Christians, evangelicals. 'I'm sorry, I -- '
'my faith is the only thing that sustains me,' send Nestor. 'thinking about the boy and girl, thinking about Marion. It breaks me, but I believe in eternal life, I think of how God will care for these victims, and it helps me. It helps me stay focused. I imagine a new life for them. Do you believe in the resurrection of the body?'
Moss thought of all of humanity in a funnel leading to a singular point.
'no,' she said."
Yeah, me neither Shannon.

In this book, humanity is able to jump to the Future using something called the "B-L Drive". I think only law enforcement is allowed to use it.
" 'you did complete a jump, though?' I asked. 'the cancer must have been The last ship to see a future without the Terminus [the Terminus is a disease that was brought from the planet Esperance. It is nanotech that enters the body; crucifies the human body].'
'we sailed five thousand years,' said Njoku. 'and I saw... Wonders, Shannon. Wonders I will never comprehend. The oceans were thick like honey. 55 billion people or more. Deserts – everything sand-swept. The old cities had fallen away, but new cities were built, entire cities in the shape of black pyramids, pyramids carried on the shoulders of the millions who lived in their shade. Entire generations were born, lived, and died beneath the cities they carried. Moving cities, wandering to find water. The people below were starving, naked, subsisting on scraps and detritus left by the Kings who lived inside the pyramids.'
'maybe the Terminus is a mercy,' I said.
Njoku snapped from his reverie. 'I can tell you the rich were doing well for themselves,' he said. 'inside the pyramids were pleasure gardens, grottoes, fountains. Our crew was welcomed like we were long-lost children, prodigals shown every comfort. Every illness cured if you could afford the Cure. 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 beg for death, because life without the passage of time becomes meaningless. It used to be thought that hell was a lack of God, but hell is a lack of death.' "
This author's vision of what the rich have in store for "the great unwashed" could be true. Could well be true. But how the heck do you carry a pyramid?

In one future that Shannon travels to (2015) , Nestor, the FBI agent, has quit the FBI. Here is his explanation to Shannon why:
"Nestor laughed, 'yeah, you could say that,' he said. 'in fact – you asked why I quit the FBI? There were other things, but we had Patrick mursult's body. It was a clear homicide, but word comes down through Brock that we talk about it like a suicide. We were told a man killed his family, then killed himself, stick to the script. I couldn't handle that, the outright lies we were supposed to live with. Then we find Marion's body years later but hold to that same line. Patrick mursult was killed, plain as day – he didn't kill himself. It just didn't wash with me.' "
4C4B

[bgknighton · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not bad but not my taste. Too confusing, time travel complications.

[auntmarge64 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Superb time-travel fiction coupled with a mystery that will determine the course of humankind's existence.

In 1997, Shannon Moss is an agent for a clandestine Navy department that runs exploratory trips to both deep space the deep future. She's been to the future herself a few times, and the trip that opens the book is terrifying and disorienting. She returns to 1997 missing a leg and horrified by continuing nightmares of what she saw.

On routine assignment some time later, Shannon investigates the vicious murder of a family and the disappearance of the husband and a daughter. The missing man supposedly disappeared with his ship and crew during a deep space mission, and is not supposed to be on Earth. As Shannon searches for the daughter, who may be alive, she uncovers a conspiracy among the ship's crew that leads her back and forth in time, exploring different possible futures stemming from our own timeline. But on each trip she finds the horror she faced when she lost her leg, one that will destroy humanity's future in every timeline.

The publisher described this book as "Inception" meets "True Detective". I thought "Inception" was pretty perfect, the kind of movie that cannot be looked away from even once without losing the plot. "Gone World" is not quite that intense in the first half, but as Shannon travels between timelines, facing future's horror, there is a sense of disconnect that arose that mirrored some of what Shannon is feeling. I had an uneasy sense that it would be easy to no longer experience the "present" as deeply true or real after spending extended times in futures in which the same people interact in different ways. The mystery, too, gets deeper and deeper, running through each possible future and circling back to the present. Just wonderful, and highly recommended.

[vokram-944968 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

4.5/5 (changed from 3.75 originally)

The Gone World is a tough nut to crack. It's a mystery thriller wrapped in a sci-fi-horror-apocalyptic-time travel package. The basic story is that humans developed a quantum drive that allowed the traveling of space as well as time. It's an ambitious novel that doesn't quite live up to its high concept plot. Reading requires that you follow a difficult storyline- oddly, it opens on a murder scene and moves to flashbacks and flashforwards which sets the tone for the rest of the novel. Interestingly, the MC is disabled. How refreshing! There is no pity granted, it's just matter of factly presented. She is unreliable which works with the unreliable plot. The MC is well developed but the secondary characters are a bit flat. There is a lot of interesting science which while not hard science as such, doesn't get in the way of the story and allows the suspension of disbelief. I feel like the disparate plot elements could have been more tightly constructed. It's mostly well written. The author does something interesting with the point of view and tense in which he changes from first person past to third person past to first person present and it works. I'm not smart enough to see the significance of these changes although they clearly signify something. It would probably take a reread to figure it out and this book isn't quite good enough for a reread (after living with this for a while, this is incorrect.) As a result of these point of view changes and the disparate plot elements, the story becomes a little confusing to the reader. In particular, the ending feels jarring and doesn't add anything to the story. It is the most disappointing element of the book. I would recommend this book to a patient reader. It takes a bit to sink in and grab you.

[cafcaflt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great writing. Full of twists and turns and alternate time lines.

[guide2_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good time travel concept and nice start of the story, but it gets bogged down in the second half. The resolution is fine, but how we get there is quite hard to truly follow.

[robert3167 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hard Sci-Fi time travel and NCIS combine to create a brilliant hybrid.
This is not the NCIS of Gibbs an Co, although he is name checked in this novel.

The Prologue will set you up for one hell of as ride.
Time travel has been conquered, but what they found was more than weird aliens, it was the end of the world - Terminus.
The Terminus and been observed and subsequent voyages noted that is was being observed closer and closer in date to the present day.

“The Terminus is a shadow that falls across the future of our species,” said her instructor. “Every timeline we’ve visited ends in the Terminus. And it’s moving closer. We first dated the event to 2666—but the next travelers to witness the Terminus found that it had moved closer, to 2456. And the Terminus has moved closer still, to 2121. You see, the Terminus is like the blade of a guillotine slicing toward us.

Shannon Moss is Special Investigator for the NCIS and is called in for an especially brutal mass murder of the family of a Navy Seal. He is missing and is the presumed suspect. This investigation and the on coming Terminus become entwined in one of the most enthralling Sci-Fi crime novels I have come across. The characters are believable and the science is hard but accessible.

Time travel explained, Shannon talking to her FBI liaison:

"Think of it like a whisk." I said
"Think of what?" ...
"A whisk." I said returning to our table. "This is how my instructor taught me".
I held the whisk sideways. Pointed to the tip of the handle. “Beginning of time,” I said. I ran my finger along the handle. “All of history—the observed past.”
At the top of the handle, I said, “The present.”
“And then you hit the wall of doors,” he said.
I touched each of the wires of the whisk. “Possible futures, possible timelines—infinitely possible,” I said. “Imagine this whisk with an infinite number of wires.”
“What’s up here?” Brock asked, pointing to the tip of the whisk, where all the wires bent, looped toward one another, joined.
“Terminus,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“The end of the world.”

[gwendydd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Shannon Moss is an NCIS investigator who is sometimes required to go to the future to discover the solution to a crime she is solving now. The complication is that every future she travels to is theoretical - there are a lot of different possible futures, and the future she visits will cease to exist as soon as she travels back to her own time. Looming over all of this is the spectre of an apocalypse: every time someone from Shannon's time travels to the future, they see a bright light in the sky that heralds the beginning of the end of the world. Every time they see it, it happens earlier and earlier, so Shannon must find it's source before it happens.

This book has some really fascinating concepts of time travel. Enough time travel stories have been written that it's hard to do something original with it, but this book succeeds. It even manages to stay well within the realm of science instead of resorting to magic.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of characters and a lot of confusing details and at some point I think I spaced out for a little bit and missed some details and never could keep all the characters straight so by the end I was mostly confused and it seemed like there was just a lot of running around.

[sberson_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great reading! Inventive, challenging.

[ragwaine · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Read this after reading a review from a Goodreads friend. It started off amazing, then kind of settled down, then got amazing sometimes. It was always brutal and intense. To the point where you're like, jesus, how much can this character take? I don't like time-travel stories, they just seem too "cheap and easy", the author can write whatever they want and then just change it using time travel paradoxes. In the end I either feel cheated or like I can't really invest in the story because it could "miraculously" change at any moment. There was a little of that here, but the great story and writing allowed me to put that to the side.

I definitely kept picturing this as a movie and it looks like it has been purchased, so pretty excited about that. Sweterlitsch writes incredible sci-fi, I feel like if the book would have been all set on other planets I would have given it 6 out of 5 stars, but the majority of it was set on boring old Earth, where the most exciting things were really brutal murders and creepy domestic terrorists.

[musichick52 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sci-fi and mystery fan is sent a book about time travel and a murder mystery. What could be better? Be still my heart. The female lead gets to time travel and solve crimes for her job. Caution....there is some hard science and lots of gore. You have been warned. Just go get the book and prepare to leave this universe. My thanks to the author and the Penguin First to Read program for a complimentary copy.

[catherinehsu · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When I first picked up this book, I thought it was a police-procedural thriller, but I didn't realize it was also a multiverse-hopping time-travel book. It is really satisfying on all counts, with a compelling protagonist, Shannon Moss, who investigates crimes for the NCIS related to the Navy's top-secret missions to Deep Space and Deep Time. A doomsday is approaching, called the Terminus, a truly horrifying event that gets closer in each possible future that is explored, and Moss's current investigation is closing in on who caused the Terminus and how. This is a mind-warping read, often confusing as Moss travels between alternate futures and tugs on all the threads, but those who stick with it will be rewarded. It's a well-done mystery, an exciting thriller, quite often bordering on horror (a warning to the squeamish!), with solid speculative fiction as the foundation.

[sandrabrower · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’ve read a lot of time traveling novels that have strong male protagonists, not a whole lot of books that have strong Female leads. This book fixes that. So many strong females. Shannon Moss, NCIS agent travels through time to solve cases. This book is a back, forth and around traveling machine. The novel starts with Agent Moss visiting her murdered best friend’s home (years after Courtney is murdered) entering the home to help solve another murder case- a woman and her children and a missing teen daughter. After that, it all goes downhill for Agent Moss. Halfway through the novel, I thought I knew exactly how The Gone World was going to end. Surprise! It twists into a whole other direction. Pleasantly I kept heading into the surprise twist until it was no longer pleasant but disturbing and very scientifically technical. I appreciate what Tom Sweterlitsch did to keep me reeled in. This book’s universe kept me flying high, slinking into the world of corruption, murder and the crazy world of time traveling and what it does to your body and mind. I give this book 4 stars for surprise, intrigue and keeping me on my toes.

I am grateful for Penguin First to Read for the opportunity to read this book for my honest opinion.

[undermyappletree · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It’s 1997 and NCIS Agent Shannon Moss is assigned to a case involving the murder of a Navy SEAL’s family. Shannon is part of a secret group that works outside of conventional law enforcement to investigate crimes by using time-travel into the future. But time travel is tricky – upon your return, the future you visited is only a possibility and blinks out of existence upon your departure. And if someone from the future is taken back to their past, well, that can cause a lot of new problems.

During their travels, investigators have also learned about The Terminus, an event that may cause the end of the world. Things become even more complicated as we discover that there are others traveling to the future for their own purposes. It isn’t until the end when all the pieces come together that we understand what is happening.

What did I think . . .
This is a dark, complex science fiction thriller that I enjoyed immensely. Not only because it combines two of my favorite genres, but because it was so well-written and plotted, especially the time travel concept. It did get a little complicated at times, and I sometimes felt like I needed a spreadsheet to keep things straight, but I don’t mind a mind-bending plot in good speculative fiction.

This book is not going to work for everyone, but it will be sure to please fans of the genre and those that don’t mind going a little outside of their comfort zones.

Audio production . . .
The book was narrated by Brittany Pressley and her performance was superb. Her vocals were very expressive and she effortlessly changed tone, inflection, and accents for the many different characters. I could easily believe I was listening to multiple narrators.

While the audio performance was excellent, I would recommend it only for experienced listeners. With a complex plot, jumps in time and place, and more than a few characters, it required a high degree of concentration.

[mookie86 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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!

[veeshee-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I wanted so badly to love this novel. It had such a fantastic story line and I'm a sucker for strong female characters. However, this novel and I just didn't work well. I found it a bit slow at times, which stopped me from really getting into the story. I also found that the way it was written was very confusing; there were too many details and names thrown out there and it became hard for me to keep track of everyone. And that was just in the first few chapters! I really liked the concept behind this story, and the tie-in with the mystery and science fiction elements. However, the writing style made this confusing and hard to get into. A lot of other people have read this book and have very positive reviews on it, so I would encourage anyone who is a fan of this author or who likes mysteries/sci-fi to give this novel a shot! 

Thank you to Penguin Random House and the First to Read program for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[grumpydan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Shannon Moss a NCIS agent that travels in time, investigating possible futures so to try and help in stopping the end of the world which will be caused by something called the Terminus....an event in the future that might cause the end of humanity. In 1997, Moss investigates into the brutal murder of a family which they believed were killed by another time traveler who disappeared years before. If you love science fiction and thrillers, then you should read this book and stay with it because one could get lost with all the time travel back and forth and the alternate realities. This one will certainly get into your brain as Moss tries to unravel it all and find the answers and maybe save the world. I was intrigued by the premise and how it all played out.

[cburnett5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 detail and the overly complex plot. I felt I had to be hyperly focused on the book every time I read, or I would lose track of the various story lines. Overall, The Gone World is an interesting and original tale that you must be prepared to devote your entire attention to as you read it and not spread it over too many days. It is also contains several fairly gory sections. I had to skip over those. Thanks to First to Read for my copy. All opinions are my own.