Review: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
This book was recommended to me by a friend who had read it before. Upon reading the first chapter, I realized that I had to read this. Furthermore, I would be doing myself a horrendous disservice to do otherwise.
It starts with a big fire at some sort of pumping station for hazardous material. The narrator, Gonzo and the other members of the Haulage and HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company are called in to put it out else really bad things happen. The setting is post apopcalyptic and our narrator is refreshingly average, aside from being on a hazmat team.
Then the story shifts into first person present tense and in Narrator's childhood and events progress from school to activism in college to serving in the Gone-Away War to the fire and beyond. I have not encountered many examples of this particular style of prose and all the ones before were not what I would call stellar. However, there are cases where a less common writing format becomes lovely and easy to lose oneself in. I found myself limiting reading time, just so I could take my time to enjoy it more. Watching Narrator was like watching Joe Average interact some really odd characters, but he's changed a little in each encounter. Gonzo, his more or less constant companion, becomes a little larger than life in Narrator's eyes and I found it matched my own opinion of Gonzo Lubitsch the great.
The other thing that really helped was how visceral the prose was. Descriptions in this novel build on themselves and objects and people at once become both familiar and strange. It's a little like watching a dry creek become a torrent of whitewater without hearing it rush upon you first. Feelings are described more often than images. It was awesome and wonderful to read.
I am left with a large number of scenes that I liked okay and several gems that I adored to no end. Among my favorite moments in the book were any scene with Master Wu in it because they seemed very much written with the soft forms of martial arts in mind. The same thing goes for all the fight scenes actually. I don't usually gush about such things, but these were some of the best I have read in a while.
Another thing that I found amusing were the naming conventions. when one has names like Ike Thermite, Annie the Ox (who collects puppet heads), Assumption Soames and the Go-Away bombs. The really oddball names said something about the character, but didn't show where the trait was immediately. It was interesting to see how those played out. Oh yes, there are ninjas and mimes in the same room with each other. It should have been simply comical, but it was written as incredibly awesome instead.
The plot is slow building after the first chapter, but it keeps gaining momentum as it continues. The more unique characters around the narrator and his interactions with them kept me reading. Then the personal climax is extremely well handled and well paced, a personal story within a story for the narrator. Afterwards, the line of action speeds up like a skier preparing for a jump. The narrative climax is as uncertain and as exhilarating as freefall and the conclusion lands light and solid. Since the story is told from one person's perspective, antagonists were a little harder to understand at first but they do build up as the narrator figures out more about them.
In another happy twist of fate, this was a book where I actually have little ill to say about it. The one thing I have to say is that the change in narrative tense between the first chapter and the second can be off putting.The science is also softer than the tofu in my soup.
But that really becomes irrelevant, once you start to read about gong fu, vaporization, friendship, revenge, love, villians trying to take over the world, ninjas, mimes and an epic win. So why are you wasting your time with reading this small-time review, when you could be reading The Gone-Away World?
It starts with a big fire at some sort of pumping station for hazardous material. The narrator, Gonzo and the other members of the Haulage and HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company are called in to put it out else really bad things happen. The setting is post apopcalyptic and our narrator is refreshingly average, aside from being on a hazmat team.
Then the story shifts into first person present tense and in Narrator's childhood and events progress from school to activism in college to serving in the Gone-Away War to the fire and beyond. I have not encountered many examples of this particular style of prose and all the ones before were not what I would call stellar. However, there are cases where a less common writing format becomes lovely and easy to lose oneself in. I found myself limiting reading time, just so I could take my time to enjoy it more. Watching Narrator was like watching Joe Average interact some really odd characters, but he's changed a little in each encounter. Gonzo, his more or less constant companion, becomes a little larger than life in Narrator's eyes and I found it matched my own opinion of Gonzo Lubitsch the great.
The other thing that really helped was how visceral the prose was. Descriptions in this novel build on themselves and objects and people at once become both familiar and strange. It's a little like watching a dry creek become a torrent of whitewater without hearing it rush upon you first. Feelings are described more often than images. It was awesome and wonderful to read.
I am left with a large number of scenes that I liked okay and several gems that I adored to no end. Among my favorite moments in the book were any scene with Master Wu in it because they seemed very much written with the soft forms of martial arts in mind. The same thing goes for all the fight scenes actually. I don't usually gush about such things, but these were some of the best I have read in a while.
Another thing that I found amusing were the naming conventions. when one has names like Ike Thermite, Annie the Ox (who collects puppet heads), Assumption Soames and the Go-Away bombs. The really oddball names said something about the character, but didn't show where the trait was immediately. It was interesting to see how those played out. Oh yes, there are ninjas and mimes in the same room with each other. It should have been simply comical, but it was written as incredibly awesome instead.
The plot is slow building after the first chapter, but it keeps gaining momentum as it continues. The more unique characters around the narrator and his interactions with them kept me reading. Then the personal climax is extremely well handled and well paced, a personal story within a story for the narrator. Afterwards, the line of action speeds up like a skier preparing for a jump. The narrative climax is as uncertain and as exhilarating as freefall and the conclusion lands light and solid. Since the story is told from one person's perspective, antagonists were a little harder to understand at first but they do build up as the narrator figures out more about them.
In another happy twist of fate, this was a book where I actually have little ill to say about it. The one thing I have to say is that the change in narrative tense between the first chapter and the second can be off putting.The science is also softer than the tofu in my soup.
But that really becomes irrelevant, once you start to read about gong fu, vaporization, friendship, revenge, love, villians trying to take over the world, ninjas, mimes and an epic win. So why are you wasting your time with reading this small-time review, when you could be reading The Gone-Away World?