'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 wilfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you'll believe a word of it.' So starts the extraordinary tale of Edward Moon, detective, his silent sidekick the Sonambulist and devilish plot to recreate the apocalyptic prophecies of William Blake and bring the British Empire crashing down. With a gallery of vividly grotesque characters, a richly evoked setting and a playful highly literate style this is an amazingly readable literary fantasy and a brilliant debut.
This is a clever book, well written and full of colorful and distasteful characters that are somehow likable. I was just never drawn into the story enough to care.
I realized as I read it that I don't have a taste for detective stories. I always feel like I don't really understand what's going on as I'm reading and won't until the end is revealed. Also, detective stories are so focused on the mystery that they don't delve enough into the characters. The plot is more the mystery than the relationships which is why I think I never got into the story.
