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The Great Convergence

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Must read 🏆

This great convergence of comedy, absurdity, and philosophy leaves one shaking their head, hovering between incredulity and laughter.

This book takes us through the lives of three failures and their adventures around the "Grand Convergence", an event of universal (multiversal?) importance. On its way, the story weaves through time, space, and multiple dimensions. The multiverse heaves, retches and belches as portals get created, people travel through universes and events take place willy-nilly, sometimes with both rhyme and logic, but often missing the latter.


I confess it took me several takes to get through the book. Absurdist literature is not my forte, and this writing is full of both absurdism, a good bit of post-modernism, and a great deal of satirical commentary. However, when I started to get my head around it, the pieces fell together into a complete picture and I began to properly enjoy myself. The writing itself is delightful. The author does not seem to take himself too seriously and the writing flows in a delightfully ticklish manner. At times apposite and at times contrary, the choice of words is both amusing and surprising. To endeavour to deliberately misplace a note as soon as it is given, for example, is a textbook case of the kind of contrajunction the author wishes to flaunt.


The characters, similarly, are absolutely delightful. Comparing them to the likes of Ford Prefect or Arthur Dent might be taking it too far, but only because those characters had some semblance of logic in them. Our three main protagonists may have logic in them too, but it was not the kind I am familiar with. The sheer absurdity of what the universe spits out coupled with the strange logic each character seemed to follow gave this book a surrealism I was delightfully unprepared for. Larry, Timothy and Geoffrey go through the motions of humankind in a way alien to most of us, save those who revel in the absurd. Their antics provide the meat of the hilarity in the novel.


However, this book isn't all absurdism and hilarity with no point: the book promises philosophy, and it delivers. Safe behind his fort of absurdism, the author delivers punchline after punchline about our world, lives, purpose, academia, art, and a host of other subjects. Good comedy is a reflection of the world it is borne out of, and this is great comedy. The dry, artless lines about academia and the witless yet meaningful sentences about the meaning of art all seem to either suggest that the author has thought long and hard about the meaning of life, or that logic itself is illogical. I don't know which one I'm going for.


This is a rare novel: one which I think I can recommend to everyone. Absurdism is an acquired taste, but this book is a lovely gateway to this delightful drug. The comedy is good, the philosophy makes you laugh and think, and the logic tries to convince you it works with a big mischievous grin on its face which tells you it's up to no good. A definite must read.

Reviewed by

Hello! I'm a PhD student working on health systems, but in my spare time, I am a voracious reader of history, philosophy, science, and most importantly, science-fiction and fantasy. I've maintained a Goodreads account since around 2015 or so and I try to review every book I get my hands on!

Missing Pieces

About the author

Thomas Kast is an award winning independent photojournalist and illustrator, and has published a number of photography art books. An incongruous rhetorician with Asperger’s syndrome, Thomas always knows best despite all evidence pointing to the contrary. view profile

Published on August 13, 2021

Published by

70000 words

Contains mild explicit content ⚠️

Genre: Science Fiction

Reviewed by