There were times reading “The Gone World” where I felt myself freed into low gravity, clutching the book near to my nose, tumbling through its duplicitous plot. Sweterlitsch’s big hit’s got everything: time travel, disability representation, rednecks. I feel like narrowing this down to merely sci-fi/thriller does a disservice to the bigger existentialist conflict the author tied around the plot with twine. This was bleak, brutal, and brooding, just how I like ‘em!

However, there’s no sharper sting than taking away a powerful character’s story with an insignificant ending.

It’s “True Detective” in space starring Clarice Starling, y’all, doesn’t get much better than that.

4/5 If I got my grubby little hands on time travel I’d simply shoot to the day that I’m walking out of a coffee shop while Florence Pugh is walking in and hits me with the door and I spill my coffee all over myself and she apologizes and buys me a new one and we end up sitting and talking until the shop closes and we exchange phone numbers and then fall in love over pho a week later and then get married right after that and we wouldn’t have to deal with the existential dread of the earth’s inescapable winter at all ever