Can be scoffed at one sitting … Tasty

Joanna Trollope crossed with Tom Sharpe

The romance fizzes along with good humour and is a good, fat, summery read

Hits a right and ringing note and keeps hitting it

Sharp observation of domestic detail

There are delightful moments aplenty ... 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

A debut novel of the kind that comes along only once every couple of years, overflowing with imagination yet powered by the kind of cleverly twisting plot that marks him out as a master storyteller ... A quirkily original writer

Has the pace and action of an episode of 24 ... The agility of the narrative is one of the great strengths of this book ... Harkaway is robustly confident ... Particularly effective are his Matrix-like fight scenes, brought to life in meticulous yet flowing prose

A stunning debut ... By turns thrilling, silly, gripping, crazy, daring and outrageous. I loved every minute ... The Gone-Away World is brakes-off fiction

I loved it...exuberant, mind-bending science-fiction/fantasy adventure about truckers, weapons that wreck the very fabric of existence, foul-mouthed drill instructors, ninjas and stuff like that. But by golly it's well written, funny and enjoyable

With his debut The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway has created a fictional universe that is out of this world

A big new book by a big new writer. Well done! Harkaway describes The Gone-Away World in words that whiz and ping like bullets ricocheting off the walls of the reader's mind. He's the real thing

A genuine panoramic, 3D, surround-sound, total-immersion, thrill-factor ten miracle - it is the kind of book that you just don't want to end! ... Engrossing, action-packed ... Very highly recommended