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A mixture of adventure, comic odyssey and geek nirvana. Gonzo Lubitsch, hero and troubleshooter, is hired to put out a fire, but there is more to it - and him - than meets the eye.
Synopsis
The Jorgmund Pipe is the backbone of the world, and it's on fire. Gonzo Lubitsch, professional hero and troubleshooter, is hired to put it out - but there's more to the fire, and the Pipe itself, than meets the eye. The job will take Gonzo and his best friend, back to their own beginnings and into the dark heart of the Jorgmund Company itself.
Book Details
Publisher:
Windmill Books
Publication Date:
29-Jan-2009
ISBN:
9780099519973
Guardian review
A personal collection of hells
Alfred Hickling the guardian Sat 24 January 2009
In the aftermath of an apocalyptic war, an anonymous narrator and his colleagues are hired to put out a fire in a pipeline operated by a sinister multinational corporation. But not before he has reflected in exhaustive detail on his early life, university career and years spent fighting in the Go Away War, a conflict waged with antimatter weapons designed to produce "a controlled editing of the world". A controlled editing is what this book could sorely do with: Harkaway's model may be the digressive meanderings of martial arts movies, but his asides on ninjas, rodents, antipasto and the like would be more tolerable if his style were less afflicted with verbose flourishes such as "perforce" and "folderol". At one point the hero claims to be trapped in the Hell of Not Getting Shot, and is reminded how his grandmother had "a personal collection of hells for every aspect of suffering ... a Hell of Crawling Flies, a Hell of Scratchy Undergarments and a Hell of Lukewarm Soup". To say nothing of the Hell of Excruciatingly Over-written Science Fiction Novels.
