{"id":481,"date":"2012-08-06T13:27:20","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T21:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=481"},"modified":"2012-08-06T13:27:20","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T21:27:20","slug":"the-somnambulist-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/06\/the-somnambulist-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"The Somnambulist– review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>The Somnambulist<\/a> by Jonathan Barnes<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 2 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

This is what I do, I sometimes find myself in the vicinity of a bookstore, so I go in, wander about use my phone to take pictures of intriguing titles, go home, enter them into Goodreads, and when I don\u2019t know what to read next, download the samples onto my e-reader. That\u2019s how I came across Domino Men<\/em>, but then it wasn\u2019t available in an e-version. Then I discovered it is the sequel to The Somnambulist<\/em>, which was also on my to-read list, and also not available in an e-version. When I happened upon a used copy of The Somnambulist<\/em>, I snatched it right up.<\/p>\n

So much work for so little reward. I didn\u2019t enjoy this book much. I did at first\u2014I liked the language of it, liked the mystery and the intrigue. But once again I was let down by not knowing, ahead of time, that I was reading fantasy. I assumed everything would be explained, and of course it wasn\u2019t. I like genre fiction as much as anyone, but The Somnambulist<\/em> was only even \u201cfantasy\u201d in the sense that there were a few non-real conveniences that allowed the \u201cstory\u201d to work.<\/p>\n

What story there was. Read other people\u2019s reviews, you\u2019ll see the same complaint: it just started going downhill around the halfway point or so. Some have suggested that The Somnambulist<\/em> is a \u201csteampunk\u201d novel, but, again, only in the sense that a convenience was tossed in and that convenience was made with a bit of brass. Genre fiction has its tropes, and I suppose we might allow for a lack of everything else if the tropes are good enough. But there weren\u2019t even enough tropes.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a big spoiler: at no point is there any indication of what the title of the novel has to do with anything. Yes, there\u2019s a character called “The Somnambulist,” but unless I\u2019m supposed to understand that the author was sleepwalking his way through this novel, I just don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

And I am now going to strike Domino Men<\/em> off my to-read list.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is what I do, I sometimes find myself in the vicinity of a bookstore, so I go in, wander about use my phone to take pictures of intriguing titles, go home, enter them into Goodreads, and when I don\u2019t know what to read … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Somnambulist– review on Goodreads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-7L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}