false 20786547 418557 2016005 0061375381 9780061375385 262 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2016005.The_Somnambulist 3.21 835
The Somnambulist

On a night of roiling mists and long shadows, in a corner of the city where only the most foolhardy will deign to tread, a rather disreputable actor meets his end in a most bizarre and terrible fashion. Baffled, the police turn once again in the direction of Edward Moon; who will always welcome such assignments as an escape from ennui. And, in fact, he leads the officers to a murderer rather quickly. Perhaps too quickly. For these are strange, strange times in England, with the strangest of sorts prowling London's dank underbelly: sinister circus performers, freakishly deformed prostitutes, sadistic grown killers in schoolboy attire, a human fly, a man who lives backwards. And nothing is precisely as it seems.

Which should be no surprise to Moon, whose life and livelihood consists entirely of the illusionary, the unexpected, the seemingly impossible. Yet what is to follow will shatter his increasingly tenuous grasp on reality; as death follows death follows death in the dastardly pursuit of poetry, freedom, utopia . . . and Love, Love, Love, and Love.

Remember the name Jonathan Barnes, for, with The Somnambulist, he has burst upon the literary scene with a breathtaking and brilliant, frightening and hilarious, dark invention that recalls Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, and Clive Barker at their grimly fantastical best . . . with more than a pinch of Carl Hiaasen-esque outrageousness stirred into the demonically delicious brew.

Read on . . . and be astonished!]]> 2103666 3.25 1061 352 4 4 false Wed Apr 23 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 23 08:01:42 -0700 2008 Thu May 01 22:15:19 -0700 2008 dare you to read the first two pages and not want to finish the rest of the book.

Part Victorian murder mystery, part fantastical alternate history with a liberal dash of lexigraphical acrobatics The Somnambulist combines a labyrinthine plot with haunting characters and an unreliable narrator which coalesces into an unexpected crescendo no one could anticipate.

The Somnambulist is a bald, mute giant of man who when pierced with swords does not bleed. His almost constant companion is Edward Moon, often referred to as the conjurer, with whom he conducts a magical act and solves the most mysterious of mysteries. When drawn into the enigmatic and horrifying deaths of two lechers, seemingly unconnected except for the implausible nature of their deaths, these crimes, however, and their monstrous solution are just the first strands in unraveling the gordian knot that is threatening the city of London.

At times like taking a midnight stroll through densely fogged streets and hearing ominous footsteps behind you, or standing slack-jawed at a bawdy freak show, or laughing raucously at a local pub Jonathan Barnes' The Somnambulist is reminiscent of authors of such note as Mary Shelley, Neil Gaiman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe and Michael Chabon. This books is essential for all you Word Nerds out there as I learned 11 new words during the course of the book!

A solid 4 and a half, with its only caveat being that the end leaves you thinking "what the deuce?!"
]]>