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Loading... The Somnambulistby Jonathan Barnes
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Jonathan Barnes shows a quirky sensibility in this novel. His grasp of dialogue, description, and plot are sound, and the plethora of unusual details he uses conveys a good grasp of Victorian-era history. The character of Edward Moon is certainly distinctive, and much different from the usual plague of werewolf cops, vampire lords, and wizard P.I.s in the urban fantasies I've been reading lately. I enjoyed this novel so much that I ended up buying the sequel to it, "The Domino Men", last week. (  )BrigidsBlest | Jul 8, 2009 |   Let me make it perfectly clear, this is not a book you should approach lightly. It is a puzzling mixture of mystery, suspense, and a touch of Victorian horror story mixed in a jumble of parts. At first it seems that all these qualities might make an exceedingly good tale, but alas it does not. The author tells the story of Edward Moon, magician and part time detective and his companion, the Somnambulist, who together are called upon to solve a series of murders and in so doing save London from destruction. The author tries to pay homage to past writers and their creations ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Frankenstein. I felt the author was being a bit too cute with the reader, going so far as to tell us that he would at times lie and mislead the reader, which he does. (  )Ronrose1 | Jul 4, 2009 | Here is my review from early January, 2008. I don't see it here so I am posting it again: I have just finished The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes. Will someone please explain it to me? It starts off simply enough as a Sherlock Holmes pastiche set in London shortly after the death of Queen Victoria – there are still hansom cabs, fortunately. There are references within the text to Conan Doyle and Poe, so the proprieties are being observed. Not for long. We soon meet some disagreeable people with distasteful habits who are murdered horrifically for no apparent reason. There is a conjuror and amateur detective and a mute giant who, if you prick him, does not bleed. There are many odd individuals who have too many or too few body parts. There is a taciturn gentlemen who seems to swim upstream in Time, but is not Merlin. There are several sinister conspiracies, one of which is determined to 'liberate' London whether the Londoners wish it or not. Even the Okhrana is there. I expected the Spanish Inquisition or the Bavarian Illuminati. The author seems to have prepared for writing this book by gazing long into the Aleph, the sphere which contains the entire world. He has delved deep into the pleroma and tried to fit all he found into the Great Chain of Being. The book seems a mess but it is artfully contrived and it all fits together. What is bewildering about the book is all the loose ends. The amoral fiend named Barabbas does not seem to be needed. And what of the Survivor's Club? What do they do apart from the one member who survives but must resign from the club? I am an old-fashioned reader. Fiction needs more resolution and coherence than this. One tolerates incompleteness in 'reality' because there is no choice – who killed the Princes in the Tower (an agent of Richard III?); who was The Man in the Iron Mask (someone who resembled the King too well?); who killed JFK (space aliens escaped from Roswell?). There is a resolution to the narrative which is half-satisfactory (except to the hundreds of dead victims) but one wishes to know why some of the characters have supernatural powers. The sound and fury of The Somnambulist are great fun, but what does it signify? (  )bertilak | Jul 1, 2009 | http://blog.tharos-online.de/archives... (deutsch) ( )tharos | May 2, 2009 | When a author starts a book with the sentences "Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and willfully bizarre." You should believe them. You disregard such comments at your own risk. I did and now the time I spent reading "The Somnambulist" is gone. I was left wonder if the sleep walker was a character in the book, the author or me! There was so much in this book that was un-answered. It seems like this book was an elaborate set up for another book. Domino Men perhaps? Well I'll never know. (  )misericordia | Apr 17, 2009 | 0.060 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0061375381, Hardcover)
Once the toast of good society in Victoria's England, the extraordinary conjurer Edward Moon no longer commands the respect or inspires the awe that he did in earlier times. Despite having previously unraveled more than sixty perplexing criminal puzzles (to the delight of a grateful London constabulary), he is considered something of an embarrassment these days. Still, each night without fail, he returns to the stage of his theatre to amaze his devoted, albeit dwindling audience with the same old astonishments—aided by his partner, the silent, hairless, hulking, surprisingly placid giant who, when stabbed, does not bleed . . . and who goes by but one appellation: 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 Hiaasenesque outrageousness stirred into the demonically delicious brew. Read on . . . and be astonished! (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:25 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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