It’s hot outside, which means people with sufficient funds who live in the vicinity of movie theaters are watching “blockbusters.” Those with the means to attend movies (but not to attend them in the private theater located conveniently on their grounds) are purchasing buckets of soda and cauldrons of popped corn and escaping into the air conditioning to immerse themselves in a fantasy world in which the most powerful people are good, strong, sane, and photogenic.
But suppose you lack the funds for cinema and/or also enjoy reading. What is one to do? I insist the library has the cure for what ails you: “blockbuster” books. You might be wondering how you’ll keep cool without the icy embrace of the local cinema. Your best course of action might be to read your blockbuster book in the comfort of your local library, but I understand some of you prefer to read at home with ready access to your domesticated animals, snacks, and the toilet that knows you best. There are many methods to achieve a comfortable temperature, though you’ll have to be pretty tiny to fit inside your fridge, and visiting your neighbors so that you can surreptitiously fill hundreds of garbage bags with their air conditioned air and then release your ill-gotten cool inside your own home doesn’t work as well as you might suppose. Perhaps place a dollop of cubed ice on a shaved portion of your scalp? As a gentleman of means, I’ll simply activate a machine built for the sole purpose of fanning me.
“But what blockbuster book shall I read?” There are practically infinite options, but I, as ever, am in generous spirits and shall grant you a specific title. “The Gone World” by Tom Sweterlitsch is a good example of a blockbuster book, in part because there are plans to turn it into a blockbuster movie, but more so because it is a page-turner which, while lacking elaborately costumed vigilantes, talking pets, or talking toys, does meet alternate criteria for a blockbuster: it’s about the end of the world and features a whole mess of murder.
While you no doubt came to the library blog for tips on how to beat the heat, now I’m sure you’ll be wanting to know what this blockbuster book is about. Fine. Basically the navy came up with a way to go to the future, and they use these time travelling abilities to, among other things, solve crimes in the present. Unfortunately, one exploratory expedition made a “Lovecraftian” alien aware of our existence, and now it wants to destroy us, and each time another expedition is made, the end of the world gets closer. Naturally, they keep making a bunch of expeditions. Set against the backdrop of this impending apocalypse (of which, thanks to a doomed crew and a horrifying prologue, we get glimpses: initially beautiful imagery giving way to terrifying brutality), there’s a murder investigation going on.
Agent Shannon Moss is our hero, and she goes through a lot to do her job. One mission costs her a leg, cumulatively they make her mother question her about why she’s aging so poorly, as each time she goes to the future, she loses months while those in her present lose little time. Each trip to “deep time” creates a new timeline, which raises some fun questions for the reader, and some tough conundrums for characters. I can’t elaborate on either, though, because you wanted to know about how to keep cool.
Various writers have compared the novel to “True Detective” meets “Inception” or “The Silence of The Lambs” meets “Interstellar” or “True Detective” meets something with aliens in it and with Scully (of “X-Files” fame) instead of two men, but I prefer to think of it as “Back to the Future” minus comedy and all the plot except for the time travel, plus a bunch of murder, plus some scary movie about aliens, minus the movie part because it’s a book, plus a really creepy drawing of some alien landscape that looks beautiful but will actually trick you into murdering your crewmates, plus the “Southern Reach” trilogy plus “Law and Order” minus Sam Waterston plus “Star Trek” minus friendly, knowable aliens plus an absolutely massive grain of salt about the validity of this comparison. Enjoy!
