3.5
Tigerman
By Nick HarkawayPublisher Description
From the award-winning author of The Gone-Away World and Angelmaker—a novel at once heartfelt and thrilling about parenthood, friendship and secret identities, about heroes of both the super and the everyday kind.
“An irresistible delight, something like Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand as played by James Bond.” —The Washington Post
Sergeant Lester Ferris is a good man in need of a rest. After a long career of being shot at, he's about to retire. The mildly larcenous, backwater island of Mancreu, a former British colony in legal limbo, belching toxic clouds of waste and facing imminent destruction by an international community afraid for their own safety, is the ideal place to serve out his time. There is an illicit Black Fleet lurking in the bay: spy stations, arms dealers, offshore hospitals, drug factories and torture centers. Lester's brief, however, is to sit tight and turn a blind eye, so he drinks tea and befriends a brilliant, Internet-addled street kid with a comic-book fixation. When Mancreu’s fragile society erupts in violence, Lester must be more than just an observer: he has no choice but to rediscover the man of action he once was, and find out what kind of hero the island—and the boy—will need.
“An irresistible delight, something like Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand as played by James Bond.” —The Washington Post
Sergeant Lester Ferris is a good man in need of a rest. After a long career of being shot at, he's about to retire. The mildly larcenous, backwater island of Mancreu, a former British colony in legal limbo, belching toxic clouds of waste and facing imminent destruction by an international community afraid for their own safety, is the ideal place to serve out his time. There is an illicit Black Fleet lurking in the bay: spy stations, arms dealers, offshore hospitals, drug factories and torture centers. Lester's brief, however, is to sit tight and turn a blind eye, so he drinks tea and befriends a brilliant, Internet-addled street kid with a comic-book fixation. When Mancreu’s fragile society erupts in violence, Lester must be more than just an observer: he has no choice but to rediscover the man of action he once was, and find out what kind of hero the island—and the boy—will need.
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3.5
Sam
Created 4 months agoShare
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GG
Created 7 months agoShare
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“Oh, Nick, did you have to break my heart so thoroughly?
As a work of fiction, this is an incredible accomplishment. The focus on a relationship between a young person and a man who's trying to be a father figure, but particularly the inner life of someone contemplating that role, the intimate scale of some sad age old truths regarding corruption, exploitation, pollution, fear versus science, bureaucracy and duty versus 'the right thing', the apathy of the global community in the face of suffering witnessed at a distance.
The characters are vivid, the writing is superb. The Suit chapter is one of my favourite moments in a book, ever.
As a reading experience, it HURTS. I think if I explain how it hurts any further I risk giving something away, and the book deserves to be experienced at full impact by the next masochist who picks it up. And yes, I will be picking up more from this author.
⚠️Animal death, child abuse, child death”
God's Brown Eyed Girl
Created 10 months agoShare
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John DiConsiglio
Created 10 months agoShare
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“An oddball genre-bender. Reads like post-colonial Brit lit blended with spy thrillers & comic books. E.M. Forster + John LeCarré + Stan Lee—shaken, not stirred. A toxic North African island scheduled for sinking becomes a Casablanca-like haven for all sorts of nefarious characters & shady dealings. It’s home to a war-weary English solider whose surprising paternal affections for an abandoned boy are the heart of the novel. There’s gun-runners, dope smugglers, missing dogs, stolen fish and an ominous Black Fleet looming off shore. Oh, and a costumed superhero. Fun, even sweet, in spots, but I never felt in on the joke.”
Jixam
Created about 1 year agoShare
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About Nick Harkaway
NICK HARKAWAY is the author of five novels, Titanium Noir, The Gone-Away World, Angelmaker, Tigerman, and Gnomon, as well as a nonfiction work about digital culture, The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World. He is also a regular blogger for The Bookseller's FutureBook website. He lives in London with his wife, a human rights lawyer, and their two children.
Other books by Nick Harkaway
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