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The Gone World

By: Tom Sweterlitsch
Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
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Publisher's summary

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
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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)

What listeners say about The Gone World

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great time travel story

great character amazing story. you will want to read it many times over. five stars

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Very dark

I was not expecting so much gore. Very vivid depiction of gross stuff. The story line was interesting with a decent conclusion. Not my genre but worth my time.

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Excellent! One teensy criticism

An interesting, well-written and complex story. It is sci-fi that doesn't attempt to explain the 'hows,' so readers should let go of any preconceptions/ intellectual quibbles. I wish I had not read the epilogue, which felt very tacked-on and after so many hours with the main character, completely unrealistic - more so than time and space travel. Still, would recommend 100 percent.

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Unique blend of mystery and scifi

One of the more interesting frameworks for time travel I've read in a while. I'm sure if you spend some time you could pick it apart, but it hangs together pretty well throughout the boom and supports the story more than just another gimmick. the crime element is engrossing and keeps things moving forward. Good naratation, clean voice that's a pleasure to listen to.

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Great Book and Narrator

If you like Inception and great narration, this book is for you.

The author does a wonderful job of world building, making you want to hear more stories set in this universe.

The narrator is great at voicing different characters without being distracting.

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wow

The summary of this book does it little justice. If you are on the fence, just get this book.

I had this title in my wish list for a couple years and for some reason always skipped over it when it was time to get another book. Big mistake. This book was nothing like I have ever read and well worth the credit.

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Might be difficult for some

I really liked this book. It was wildly creative, pushed me to imagine new concepts, had a great mystery at the center of the plot, and I ended up really liking the main character. Noble. A review described this as Inception meets True Detective and I agree that is accurate. There was a lot of gruesome imagery and violence in this book. It dipped its toes into the horror genre at times. Not usually my thing, but I think it was necessary to drive home the terrifying impending doom surrounding and motivating the main character. Some people have described parts of this book as repetitive, and in a way they are... but recursion is a main theme in the book and so I think it served its purpose. Lots of strange and haunting images linger after listening to this book. As a science fiction novel, it handled time travel well and presented some ideas about the multiverse that I found fascinating. The writing was good. It didn’t annoy me with cliches or stereotypical dialogue. It didn’t distract me from the story with clumsy sentences. All in all, it was entertaining and thought provoking. Recommended.

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stunning

incredible time travel, multi-verse sci-fi that defies genre tropes and satisfies til the last word.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Great beginning then just petered out

This started out really interesting, wonderful concepts and set up. However it looks like the author wrote himself into a corner and couldn’t get out, and just had to add more and more ridiculous elements to try to keep the energy or whatever he was trying to do. It’s OK but I wouldn’t recommend buying this.

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Excellent!

Truly a great story! Bravo! Great character development, great plot twists and a truly satisfying finish. Loved every minute!

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