Gone World

Where do I begin trying to unpack all that went on in this book? The Gone World is a massively bold and ambitious book, it is quite mind-bending in its concepts and how Sweterlitsch tries to visualise the incredibly complicated circumstances that occur throughout. I can’t go into details without spoiling, but there are some phenomenon in the book that I still struggle to get my head around and to see in my minds eye what the author was trying to project. It pains me to say this, but perhaps this is a story that would be best told as a movie.

The book revolves around Shannon Moss who is a part of a highly secretive government department that makes use of technology that allows them to explore alternative versions of the future in order to solve crimes committed by others in the same secret program. The book jumps back and forth between the “present”, known as Terra Firma, and different versions of the future where the characters of the present lead lives that branch and diverge from the original path.

Needless to say, bad actors have, through a VERY complex sequence of events, managed to bring about the end of life on earth and Shannon becomes caught up on the battle to try to prevent this inevitable catastrophe from occurring. 

The scope is vast, the concepts are amazing and the actual thread of the plot is very good also. The wrap up and the way things are brought to a conclusion is very well worked and expertly executed. You have to go into this book knowing it’s not going to be an easy read. You also need to accept that you won’t always know exactly what is going on, but it does all become clear when it needs to.

I enjoyed this book, I like a bit of sci-fi mind bending. There were just a few occasions were I got totally lost, which perhaps was on me, and although I found the trail again and worked out what was happening, that sense of having missed something did put me off from time to time.