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Angelmaker
by
Nick Harkaway
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ISBN13:
9780307743626
ISBN10:
0307743624
Condition:
Like New
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$9.98
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Awards
2012 Powell's Staff Top 5s
4.6
5
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Average customer rating 4.6 (5 comments)
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hthayer
, March 03, 2014
(view all comments by hthayer)
I am so torn about this book -- I loved it and yet I have one overwhelming complaint that compels me to give it only three stars. First, the good: This book is deliciously well written, with virtually every sentence, every paragraph a tumbling glory of words that are enough to make any bibliophile smile and laugh aloud at the sheer clever audacity of the language. The bad: The words become an avalanche that bury the story, the tangents and the clever asides, the rollicking similes and metaphors (what does an accordion falling into porridge sound like, anyway?), the over-the-top character and place descriptions build and build until the reader is helpless against the onslaught. The world building was wonderful and the few characters who I could clearly keep ahold of were well-developed and interesting. I think that the story was interesting too, but I don't know because I was so lost at the end that I could barely figure out what was happening. Characters came and went to reappear thousands of words and worlds later without reintroduction with the expectation that I would remember everything about them and their backstory, which is somehow critical to the action, but I don't know because I am lost in yet another paragraph that is busy circling around to pat itself on the back with its own cleverness. I wouldn't want to give up on the wonderful language, but it would have been helpful if, at the end of every chapter, there had been a recap that told me what had actually happened or if when a character reappeared after a long absence there had been a note in the margin that would remind me who they were.
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Karen from SF
, January 30, 2013
(view all comments by Karen from SF)
The urban proto-steampunk fantasy noir zombie book is soooo done. Or so it seems. Then this book comes along and blows the genre out of the water. What a fantastic ride! This book is enjoyable, well-written, and startling imaginative from beginning to end. It's got a little Gaiman, a little Chandler, a little Stevenson, but derivative of no one. The characters are wonderful, believable, and well-drawn, even the passing side characters. My bookclub read this and, though we have 7 members and 14 opinions, we all loved it. That NEVER happens. If any of this appeals, do pick up Angelmaker. You won't regret it.
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barclaysylvester
, January 15, 2013
As fun as The Gone-Away world, but with better characters. Edie may be the best female character written in five years.
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mainecolonial
, January 08, 2013
Here's the thing. I very rarely give a book five stars. As a Mainer, I was brought up to practice moderation. To say I liked a book is fine, but to say I LOVED it is a display of flamboyant emotion my fellow Mainers would look at askance. But there's no help for it; I did love this book. Now the hard part. What's it about? Well, it's an old-fashioned tale of British Empire swashbuckling adventure (think The Man Who Would Be King, or King Solomon's Mines), a science fiction technology nightmare, a family drama, a coming-of-age story, a jeremiad against contemporary finance-world fiddles and the modern Orwellian state that tortures its citizens to protect their freedoms, a tragedy, a comedy, a romance. Hmm, that's not very helpful in giving you a picture of the book, is it? What if I say it's about a supervillain known as the Opium Khan who, with his "Ruskinites," an army of black-clad man-machines, and aided by the cynical complicity of the modern security state, works tirelessly over decades to achieve the power of a god over all of humanity, all the while countered by ingenious men and women and their steampunkish submarines, trains, various other devices and a network of extremely quirky characters and one ancient, blind, bad-tempered and one-toothed pug? No, I thought not. Let's try another tack and look at the plot. Joshua Joseph Spork is a young, London clock maker and restorer of various types of clever machines, like Victorian automata. He is the son of the late ingenious and flashy gangster, Matthew "Tommy Gun" Spork, and the grandson of Matthew's disapproving clockmaker father, Daniel. Despite his love for his father and affection for the gangster world of the Night Market, where the criminal underworld meets periodically in a grand secret bazaar, Joe is so determined not to be like him that he has, as he says, dedicated his life to being mild. He's a quiet, law-abiding man, so shy and retiring he can't even bring himself to follow through on the world's most obvious hint when a generously bosomed barmaid places his hand over her heart. Joe isn't a complete saint, though. He knows the sin of covetousness when he doggedly visits ancient Edie Bannister and feels sure she's working up to offering him some really excellent piece of machinery to work on. And she is, but she might have left it just a little late. What she has is a piece of a device that, like the atomic bomb, has the power to end all wars or destroy the world, depending on who controls it. And, suddenly, a lot of very bad men, including government men, want to be the ones to get their hands on it and are willing to do anything to Edie, Joe and everyone they ever knew to achieve their goal. There follows a tale of dazzling imagination and invention that takes us back in time to Edie's youth as a highly skilled government agent doing battle with super villain Shem Shem Tsien and falling in love with Joe's genius inventor grandmother--the creator of the sought-after device. This long trip into the past is no digression, though, because everything that happens there is supremely important to Joe's story in the present. In fact, though this is a long book crammed to the bursting point with anecdotes, people, places and things, not a single bit of it is frippery. It's all a part of the grand and intricate machinery that drives this epic story, one in which Joe ceases to be mild and embraces everything he ever learned from Matthew and his world. Why? So he can save the universe and get the girl, of course. All of the characters in this book are deftly drawn, the plot is always easy to follow despite its complexity, and Harkaway writes with a scintillating and abundant style that is just to the good side of florid. I'd say the book would make a crackerjack movie, except you'd miss the playful ingenuity of Harkaway's prose. Harkaway is the son of famed espionage writer John le Carré. I imagine he knows a thing or two about growing up with a larger-than-life father, and that has added poignancy to Joe's story. Harkaway has chosen to follow his father's career and I'm glad he did. Though I warn you that this book may ruin you for any other reading for awhile. When I finished it, I was still so under its spell that nothing else appealed to me. I think I'll just give up and find a copy of Harkaway's first novel, The Gone-Away World. A note about the audiobook: Daniel Weyman is the best possible narrator of this book. He understands that this is a story that needs to be ACTED, with absolute abandon, and he throws himself into it with all the energy and dash it deserves.
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WongKaiWen
, December 22, 2012
(view all comments by WongKaiWen)
If you enjoy the way words can roll around and reassemble in marvelous and unexpected ways, read Angelmaker. Harkaway makes me happy to read. So few people write sentences that make me stop in wonder at their beauty. Just watching the phrases, feeling pleasure at the way the words are coming off the page and floating in my head. The story is good, if occasionally lost in the meandering of words well used. When you enjoy the use of words, it's probably best not to use a non-linear time line. The reader is apt to get lost watching the lights on the wall and miss the turning. Still, the lights on the wall are well worth being distracted by and the path can always be found on the next page or chapter. The characters, especially Edie Bannister, are lovely. The evil neer-do-well, is truly despicable, but it's his truly horrifying henchmen that work best. These side characters that seem to be the bogey men under beds, make you fear that they won't be comfortably ended when the book ends and will always sneak out of corners unseen. Harkaway makes us a truly bizarre and unsettling set of bogies and that is nice treat. I loved the book. I can see already its a book I will read again and again, just because it will be fun to visit.
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Product Details
ISBN:
9780307743626
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
10/23/2012
Publisher:
Vintage
Series info:
Vintage Contemporaries
Language:
English
Pages:
496
Height:
1.02IN
Width:
5.35IN
Thickness:
1.00
Copyright Year:
2012
Author:
Nick Harkaway
Subject:
Popular Fiction - Adventure
$9.98
List Price:
$18.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
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2
Cedar Hills
1
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More copies of this ISBN
Used, Trade Paperback, $10.95
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