Nick Harkaway

Interesting setting for a noir-style crime novel. It doesn't quite capture the Chandler vibe, the hero is slightly too nice, but it's decent attempt and a fun read. Somewhere in the future, medical tech has progressed and a wonder drug been invented. T7, it completely resets the body, rebuilding it from the initial genetic code back up to fully grown again, whilst retaining all (nearly) mental capacity. This has several benefits it completely heals any damage, and clears any disease. It also grants another lifetime's worth of living before damage starts to accumulate again, and the dose can be repeated. But as with any panacea it comes with some side-effects. Trivially it's very painful for several months as it isn't fast. It's very expensive and access to it is heavily controlled by the family who invented it. More importantly it also doubles the body's normal growth, so people who have taken it even once are larger, stronger heavier - Titans.

Cal Sounder is not a Titan. He's a consultant for the police in an unspecified city region. He does have several connections to the Family though, and his precise consultancy is tidying up any crimes that may touch Titan interests - given their power and influence they aren't going to be convicted of anything, but justice must still be seen to be done. Cal ensures that all the forms can be honestly completed. He has contacts everywhere (this does give the noir vibe) and so knows all the details. He is therefore somewhat surprised when he's called out to what seems to be a normal suicide/murder. On close inspection though the youthful looking professor is actually somewhat tall, and according to his ID, 91 years old. An incognito Titan. While they're not totally immune to everything, this is very surprising.

Fairly fast paced, the motivations of long-lived characters are somewhat obstruse, but it all makes sense in the end. I'm not convinced by some of the violence, but the setting is fun.… (mais)

This is a weird book. A cocaine dealer's inner monologue as he is caught up in - and enthusiastically escalates - a ridiculous and pointless onslaught of extreme violence, horrifying enough that it becomes cartoony. No one learns anything. Most characters don't survive. Nothing is gained, and the world is objectively worse off. And it's continuously entertaining. The sociopathic narrator has a voice that is fun to read. You like him as a character, while he also makes it completely undeniable that he is a horrible person. A true "wtf did I just read?" sort of book.… (mais)

Set in the future, this is a detective story of greed but also of abuse and desire to live forever. It isn't so much a world-building book, the world seems very familiar, it is what can be given to people who are ill or injured to repair them that is different. T7, given as an injection, repairs the body but also makes it grow and so there are a few very tall/wide/extremely long-limbed people who are known as Titans. Not many because you need a very lot of money to receive this 'treatment'.

When one of these titans is killed, Cal Sounder is called in to solve the case. He is not a policeman but a consultant to the police and so can be denied if things do not go well. What Sounder does well is to straddle the world of normal people and Titans, law-abiding and criminal, rich and poor and needs to draw on all of these groups to solve the case with the answer right under his nose.

There are a few elements of sci-fi other than the T7 itself such as a self-healing putty that you can place in shot wounds in people to heal them and a key card which is injected into a person and then dissolves after 24 hours providing a vitamin shot. What the story needed was a device that would enable people to change the way they looked and instead of plastic surgery, Harkaway took the sci-fi route. This isn't a criticism, in fact it is quite an original solution to the problem, it's just that the sci-fi goes no deeper than that. The story that lies behind it is as old as time.… (mais)

Add my name to those who cannot fathom the reasons why so many people wax lyrical about, 'The Gone Away World.'

I have learnt a few things about myself having read this however:

1. I am not a fantasy fan (My distaste of 'The 13 and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear' first aroused my suspicion, this has affirmed it resolutely) especially when it feels particularly made up.

2. I do not like this writing style (which I feel is sadly how I myself write haha) full of digressions, tangents, asides and somewhat esoteric concepts which detract from the experience rather than add to it.

At points it was enjoyable, I liked the central idea and I thought the plot twist was skilfully executed and an engaging concept to boot (hence the second star) but I felt all this was hampered by Harkaway's writing which was all just too complicated: there was a huge cast of characters who were quite flat, relatively unexplored and empty vessels for the plot; the 'fantasy' had to be explained so much so that the suspension of belief was broken and it all felt painfully made-up and deliberate.

I'm confused and slightly indignant that people compare Harkaway to Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut, especially. I've nothing against the guy obviously but there is a hugely apparent gulf in quality no? - surely people can see that, right?

Sigh. I'm glad I read it and I have 'Angelmaker' which maybe I'll like more? (Let me know please!) but unfortunately, this was a read I'd quite like to 'Go Away' ha! Ahem, sorry folks.… (mais)