The Scary Reviews

Review copy provided in exchange for an honest review

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 only imagine it being diagrammed on a white board in order 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.

Book Info

Length: 400 Pages

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Release date: February 6, 2018

To Purchase The Gone World Click Here

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 teenage daughter, who has disappeared. 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 darkest 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 or insight that will 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.