Reddit reviews The Gone-Away World (Vintage Contemporaries)

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway.

One of those rare books that is fast-paced and hugely entertaining the whole way through, while never sacrificing intelligence or thematic depth.

Kung fu, war, secret weapons, post-apocalypse landscapes, lifelong friendships, corporate conspiracies, and ninjas all smash together in a book about the power of relationships in shaping who we are.

I finished this book this week and I'm going to recommend it:

https://www.amazon.com/Gone-Away-World-Vintage-Contemporaries/dp/0307389073

>"Reading The Gone-Away World is a bit like spending a week with a hyperactive puppy: there are delightful moments aplenty, but it's slightly wearing over the long run. Still, any author who has come up with the beautifully silly plan of melding a kung-fu epic with an Iraq-war satire and a Mad Max adventure has to be worth keeping an eye on."

It's very much "The Zone", it involves a superweapon that can erase information from energy and matter. The government deploys it without realizing that it creates fallout in the form of "stuff" energy and matter that reforms based on the contents of the minds it comes into contact with.

So for example, a army unit gets ambushed by the idea of an ambush, bullets flying out of nowhere, everything seeming too cinematic because the hallucination is based on their perception of war rather than the reality. But still deadly.

So the whole world gets eaten by "stuff" and there's one big company left producing "anti-stuff" and the world cowers beneath its skirts. It gets political but I don't want to spoilers.

Really can't say enough about how it was written, either. The first third was slower and didn't hook me as much as the rest of it, but once I got out of that section I couldn't put it down. I'm picking up another novel by him to add to my list because I so thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Maybe I should just start doing fiction review posts, instead of finding places to hide these

The Gone Away World is super fun, and a great big trip. Plus, the action scenes are mind blowing.

Other books we discussed were books that Redditors had recently read or were planning to read:

The Snow Child

Purple Hibiscus

For We Are Many and All These Worlds Volumes 2 and 3 of the Bobiverse (and it wasn't me who mentioned it, smartass).

October

Silver Sparrow

Hidden Figures

The Glass Castle: A Memoir

And Danger-Moose mentioned The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, and he had completed The Gone-Away World, which a lot of us were not able to do.

Jbcoll04 suggested Homegoing: A Novel by Yaa Gyasi a couple of posts ago, and I don't want to lose track of that, because both me and darr76 want to read that at some point.

So, be thinking about our next choice. I'm definitely going to read October, Homegoing, and I'll try Volume 2 of the Bobboverse.

The book I am pulling these excerpts out of is "The Gone Away World" by Nick Harkaway.

It is the funniest, saddest, most entertaining, mind-warping tale of brotherhood, coming of age, romance, war, ninjas, and survival I have ever read. It has painted my ideals of politics, ethics, morality, philosophy, and writing that I still strive to come ever closer to each day.

Please dive into this book with nothing else (I've only spoiled some of the funnier quotes, thankfully not the plot nor any of the other insanely comical characters). I promise you, it will blow you away.

https://www.amazon.com/Gone-Away-World-Vintage-Contemporaries/dp/0307389073

"The Gone-Away World" by Nick Harkaway is essentially based on the premise of the title of this post.

The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkoway It's probably difficult to accept, but I'd strongly encourage you not to read anything about it and just buy it and read it. Ignore the horrible cover on the book itself. It's fantastic. If you must know something about it, I'd say there's some Vonnegutesque writing, some Kung-Fu, some war. Some mimes. I've said plenty...

There isn't a single mention of Taoism, but this book is 100% the culmination of Taoist teaching in the form of martial arts.

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway.