Harkaway’s fiction occupies an extraordinary space between evocative sci-fi dystopia and Hollywood action-adventure—in other words, it is completely irresistible. Tigerman follows a burned out sergeant in the British Army, sent to a tiny island where he can serve out his time—but it’s far from an idle beach vacation. The island is slated for annihilation after having been used as a chemical dumping ground, and the impending apocalypse has invited all kinds of malefactors. He befriends a young local boy whose English is drawn from chat forums and comic books, and together they embark on a caper to save—the island? themselves? The result is, in the boy’s tongue, “totally leet full of win onehunnerten pro cent.”