The Domino Men

by Jonathan Barnes

With a gallery of vividly grotesque characters, a richly evoked setting and a playful and highly literate style, this is an amazingly readable literary fantasy and a brilliant novel. Jonathan Barnes is one of the most talented writers of Victoriana around, and juggles invention, reality, grotesquerie and curiosities together into a sparkling and wonderfully quirky story. Perfect for readers who like something a little different, this is a stand alone novel from the author of The Somnambulist - "A cabinet crammed with curiosities", The Observer - which picks up the tale of The Domino Men as they embark on an all-new adventure.

• ISBN10: 0575082305
• ISBN13: 9780575082304
• Publish Date: 21 February 2008
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 31 July 2009
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Gollancz
• Edition: Export ed
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

The Domino Men is the follow-up to Jonathan Barnes' [b:The Somnambulist|2016005|The Somnambulist|Jonathan Barnes|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/414PUSYVm1L._SL75_.jpg|2274802], which was a steampunky, crazy romp that involved dead poets and milk-drinking giants. The Domino Men is a completely different style; it's an urban fantasy set in present-day London, and while it still has wacky elements and ties to The Somnambulist, it's far more restrained. The main character, Henry Lamb, is a filing clerk, which is a long ways from the conjurer and his bizarre sidekick of the first book.

I didn't like Henry all that much, he's far too passive. When it comes to storytelling, I prefer a narrator who makes things happen (or at least shows some independent thinking) over one who reacts to everything around him. And I missed the steampunk - to be fair, I don't expect every author to stay in the genre he or she started in, but I felt like Barnes really got the steampunk atmosphere down quite well before and was looking forward to more.

The Domino Men stands on its own, but I do wish I had read the two books closer together. Hawker and Boon were completely unforgettable, so I had no troubles there, but the role the Directorate played in The Somnambulist is really, really fuzzy in my head. I kept wanting to draw connections between the shadowy group in both novels, to see if what we learned about them now explained their actions then, but all I could really remember was that they existed.