The Gone World Audiobook By Tom Sweterlitsch cover art

The Gone World

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The Gone World

By: Tom Sweterlitsch
Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
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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 best-selling 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 USS Libra - a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows firsthand 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.

©2017 Tom Sweterlitsch (P)2017 Penguin Audio Adventure Crime Detective Fiction Mystery Police Procedural Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Time Travel Exciting Heartfelt Scary Emotionally Gripping

Critic reviews

One of the A.V. Club's Top 10 Books of the Year 2018

One of BookPage's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2018

“The Gone World has already created quite a stir. . . . The book probes questions about consciousness and crime that call to mind, among others, True Detective and 12 Monkeys.” (EW.com)

"I like to be freaked out and mystified simultaneously. The Gone World, a gory time-travel thriller, does both in surprising ways....Inception meets True Detective, but it also contains elements of Solaris, Interstellar, Twin Peaks, Minority Report, and even Stargate. To all this, it adds some innovative time-travel shenanigans." (The New Yorker)

Inventive Plot • Complex Characters • Compelling Protagonist • Engaging Mystery • Unique Concept • Emotional Delivery
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I like NCIS but this twist with future involved and too much blood was not the best for me. I needed to push myself to finish.

Good but heavy to follow

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It's really quite good. There are a few logical holes in the plot (time travel will do that) which really bugged me, but when you boil it down, the prose is crafted well, the characters have depth and are compelling, and the story is interesting enough to keep one reading.

Solid prose, good story, compelling characters

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A great story that builds off known sci-if roads but adds new twists & turns — wonderful narration. This is time well spent.

Amazing creative unfurls through perfect delivery...fantastic!

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I usually dislike any sci-fi story that deals with time travel because they always seem to be sloppy. The writer will write themselves into a corner and then with some non relevant plot twist they magically "fix" their sloppy story telling. This story is well done and engaging. The narrator Brittany Pressley is a great match to the story. The combination of story and narrator makes the entire piece better than the sum of parts

A time travel story that doesn't cheat.

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There was a time in my life when I was not as well read when I would have given this piece five stars simply because I could not put it down. I also remember a time in my life after my 300 days in a long term drug rehab for the the “reluctant to recover” when a new counselor said to me one day in a rich southern drawl, “You sir, are juvenile!” Turns our she was high as a kite in a full blown relapse after 18 years clean but she was spot on. Although my maturity level has not increased much in the past few decades, I like to think I’m a smidge less impulsive, a skosh more sincere, a smidge less self-destructive and hair more wise. I have thus come to expect more out of my five star reads than a fast read. I’m gonna give this piece five stars because of the weird ending and like a good David Lynch film I didn’t fully comprehend the beginning, middle or end, nor half the concepts of time travel in the multi-verse.

When Your Gravity Fails and Negativity Won’t Pull You Through

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It was slow and predictable. I finished it but I didn't enjoy it. I feel like this could have had a lot more impact. Motivation s seemed weak and random... the writer is skilled clearly... but I didn't like this story.

Predictable

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Great book overall, with a solid narrator. One of the more darker and complexed plots I've listen to on audiobook. Overall I would highly recommend if you are looking for something new.

NCIS meets X-Files meets TV show Fringe

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This book is gear more to NCIS fans than science fiction, but the time travel kept me reading and reading. Tom Sweterlitsch is a good writer. He combines time travel, true crime, and detective all into one lump sum that actually works pretty well. The time travel phase leaves you a bit confused in between chapters, but it's pretty easy where you left off.

"The Gone World" will eventually be a movie or a miniseries. Maybe CBS will buy the rights on this book and have a show call NCIS Libra.

NCIS Libra

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This book is one of those lovely science fiction surprises that takes you on a fantastic and fantastical journey. The prose is excellent, the characters fresh and scenarios mind-bending in a great way. Any quibbles I have are, for the most part, quite minor as I really stayed engaged and engrossed in the book from start to finish. Well worth the time IMO.

Every now and then you get surprised.

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I need to stop reading reviews before I listen to a new story I guess. I had high expectations for this book but it disappointed in a massive way. Getting through the story was a true effort that took me several weeks to finish. To put this into perspective if I am listening to a story that really grips me I will spend between 6 to 10 hours straight and sometimes find myself going to sleep at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. With this book I often turned it off mid-chapter

Furthermore the ending was a TOTAL and COMPLETE disappointment. It truly is like the writer lost the story and threw the ending in that seemed to go completely off the tracks.

In the end I wish I had never purchased this book. So many stories over the years have left indelible impressions on me and a few have touched me deeply. This book is NOT in a good category for me.

Meh...Hard to finish.

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