Customer Reviews

The Domino Men

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

London is engaged in a secret civil war. It's been raging for more than a century between the people of London and their rulers, the Windsor family. Okay, it's not really "the people," it's a shady group called "the Directorate" fighting on their behalf. And, yeah, the royals don't really rule anyone today, but you get my point. The Windsor's have sold the city's soul to an inhuman entity called Leviathan, and we are warned: He is coming.

Conscripted into this secret war is our protagonist, the aptly named Henry Lamb. Henry is a file clerk at the Civil Service Archive Unit. Shortly after his grandfather falls into a sudden coma, strange things begin to happen in Henry's life--such as his work transfer to the Directorate and his new (and very welcome) relationship with his landlady. Slowly at first, but eventually with greater and greater understanding, Henry comes to realize that everything he knows about the world and even about himself is now called into doubt. It is all much stranger and scarier than he previously believed.

Henry is writing his story for posterity from some point in the future. Right from the opening, Henry tells us that "time is now very short for me." About 100 pages in, suddenly the text becomes italicized, and a new narrator is telling a concurrent story. That is the story of the heir to the British throne, Prince Arthur Windsor. Arthur has his faults and weaknesses, and is being preyed upon by the mysterious Mr.Streater--a character with dialog so distinctive that I could literally hear his voice in my head. Arthur and Henry's stories fight for prominence through the rest of the novel, the struggle itself supposedly an indicator of Henry's eventual fate.

The Domino Men is rife with foreshadowing, but Jonathan Barnes has done a masterful job with the novel's construction. As I read, realizations would come to me--I am sure--exactly when Barnes intended for each epiphany to happen. Suddenly the light-bulb would snap on and I'd understand something important. And time and time again I'd flip back in the book to see all the exactingly placed clues. They were all there. Sometimes when I finally "got it" everything would be so right and so obvious, but all revelations came in their own time. Aside from the well-timed epiphanies, there were more than a few twists that managed to take me completely by surprise. By the end, I was extremely satisfied with all the major questions having been wrapped up, while still leaving a bit of room for a sequel--though I really don't believe that one is necessary.

On the subject of sequels, I had absolutely no clue The Domino Men was a sequel to The Somnambulist. I remembered being interested in reading The Somnambulist when it was first released, but I never got around to it. (I definitely will now.) The Domino Men was so deftly plotted however, that if I missed anything important by not reading the first book (set more than a century prior), it's not at all obvious to me.

The book is well-written, in a distinctly British style. The vocabulary alone is a joy to read, and though some turn their noses down at genre fiction, the use of language here is quite wonderful. Many times I paused to linger over a turn of phrase or sentence. There is a lot of humor that buoys the story as well. My biggest criticism, and the reason for the loss of one star, is that I believe that the novel could have been shorter. It dragged a bit in the middle and through the end. I'd find myself very caught up in what certainly felt like a dénouement, and I'd find myself thinking, "There's another 150 pages? No, not possible!" The book was never boring, but I do think it could have been slightly condensed.

I'm extremely grateful to have discovered this young author at this time. I am very much looking forward to now reading the first part of this tale, and will likewise be very interested in seeing where Mr. Barnes goes next. This novel is highly recommended for fans of Neil Gaiman and other writers of contemporary fantasy.

It's not often that a sequel surpasses the original work from which it derives, but in the case of "The Domino Men" that's definitely the case.

At the end of "Somnambulist", London was in ruins at the end of Queen Victoria's reign. This book picks up the story in present-day London, as the opposing forces of the epic struggle have used the intervening decades to restore their powers, so badly depleted in the previous battle.

This time, a milquetoast file clerk is the fulcrum of the Directorate's strategy, as well as bringing into play those two anarchic demons - Hawkins and Boon (the Domino Men) - who sowed so much destruction at the end of the last book.

Told in modern dialect (as opposed to the Victorian lingo of the previous work), all the verve, panache, and devilishly clever twists of the original continue in this sequel. Rich characterizations (the Domino Men are an absolute hoot!), tight plotting, and vivid scenery will keep you hooked from first page to last.

In many ways this book reminds me of Swift's "Gulliver's Travels": using dark satire to lampoon the current socio-political climate.

If you liked "The Somnambulist", you'll love "The Domino Men".

Barnes's first effort, The Somnambulist, was a great beginning, albeit with an ending as dissatisfying as the aftertaste of a bad diet cola. His newest returns the reader once again to London, though a modern London, and once again, nasty things are afoot (and underfoot). Henry Lamb, the very appropriately named main character, is a mild mannered filing clerk about to take the trip of his life.

Barnes populates his London with all manner of human (and demi-human) oddities, and The Domino Men is every bit as filled with chaotic beings who seem just at the threshold of losing control, just past that threshold, or so far gone we have no idea what doorways they have traversed (nor would we want to). His writing is like a smooth bit of drinking chocolate or an after dinner cognac: It slips right down and warms the spirit, but one suspects that an overdose might leave a bad result.

The Domino Men, Hawker and Boon, Boon and Hawker, those frightful, cartoonishly demonic daguerreotypes of Angus from AC/DC, replete with school uniforms and reeking of a hell only Clive Barker might want to visit, form a small centerpiece de resistance around which whirls the crisis the throes of which London has supposedly been in since Victoria's time: The war between "The Directorate" and the House of Windsor. No good can come of the Domino Men, and it certainly doesn't.

As in his first book, Barnes masterfully creates characters whose humanity is as touching for its frailties and failings as it is wrung out by their heroic and anti-heroic abilities. Beautifully styled prose, intricate and complex dialogue with plenty of British sardonic wit and humor, and a genuinely compelling pathos, moves the narrative forward. As we walk, drugged as it were by Barnes's verbal talents, we encounter the problem of the unreliable narrator, and we must at times wrench our sentiments free of their inclinations to consider just what the author is doing to us here.

Unlike The Somnambulist, The Domino Men has a satisfying (euphemistically so) ending. The book, hard to categorize but perhaps best called Steampunk Conspiracy Opera, gets into your blood, grabs hold of your nerves and keeps you turning the pages even when it would be nicer not to (oh, how the characters suffer, and in so many ways).

In the end, satisfied, I found it a relief to finish this beast of a book. It is a verbal trompe l'oeil, because as you read it, you become lost in it, and I found its heavy character and spirit toll weighed down my emotional perspective even as its brilliance buoyed up my imagination. A bit like something one might find in the library of Mephistopheles: Goes down easy, but grabs hold once its in.

Ware the ampersand!

In an article about the Somnambulist, author Barnes declared that book to be a tribute to things he loved: Ackroyd's London histories, Doctor Who, Victorian genre fiction and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. If the same is true of The Domino Men, we can add Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday and Grant Morrison's seminal conspiracy series The Invisibles to the list-- the book reads as a delicious mash-up of all the above and more.

Nevertheless, the book stands wonderfully on its own, and will no-doubt go on to influence other authors based on its own wonky merits. Barnes's London is a vibrant, seething presence, and it's peopled with an array of characters both familiar and enjoyably offbeat. There are multiple narrators (sort of), Lurking Horrors, Secret Histories and Terrible Dooms. All-told, a delirious and compelling read.

Jonathan Barnes' fantasy novel, THE DOMINO MEN, features Henry Lamb, the character described by many as passive, and Joe Streater, the man who lives up to his urban name, particularly in one bedroom scene I unfortunately can't erase from memory. An assortment of featured characters complete the ensemble and are described vividly, each creating an intense impression. For the character development, I enjoyed the novel.

After a grand opening loaded with metaphors, similes and flavorful language, I read this book on and off over two days. I liked the pacing of the first half, expecting a wild ride would develop, but then I found myself hearing Van Morrison's voice singing, "Domino" as I drifted from the story line. The language wore thin as I became disinterested in the plot and characters. For me, it fell flat and I became annoyed when descriptive terms were repeated. Like the head of the Directorate, Dedlock, I was at an impasse but forced myself to follow through until the very end. Perhaps this book really appears to fantasy lovers, but it didn't appeal enough to me to recommend this book.

I haven't read much in the urban fantasy sub-genre unless you count Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels. The other thing in the genre I can remember having read recently was Edghill's "The Sword of Maiden's Tears", which was okay but almost painfully an obvious projection of its target audience's wishes (i.e. lonely nerd girls wanting a broken elven prince to fix up and fall for). This is, as Americans would say, "a whole another can of worms", and there are indeed wormy, creepy, decadent, and just plain disturbing things in it.

This is an England where the royal family is being eaten from the inside by the legacy of a demonic pact and a strange addictive drug, and where a government department is secretly tasked with binding a monster that could consume all of London and worse. That's the big picture. On the personal level, there are nasty little incidents like the main character forced to watch his girlfriend under the influence of said drug have frenzied sex with a man he detests, and the titular Domino Men - two agents whose role I never quite figured out - releasing into a crowded nightclub a powder that makes people sneeze uncontrollably till they bleed out from the lungs. To me, the worst thing about this sadistic pair is that they are not actually the "bad guys".

The climax of the book is a scene of citywide pollution and horror worse than the aftermath of a nuclear bomb. To save England and possibly the world, the hero, like another a generation before him, has to sacrifice himself in a way repulsive almost beyond imagining.

This is not what I call "technical fantasy", the kind whose authors seem to have either gotten muddled up with science fiction, played too much Dungeons and Dragons, or both. Writers like that tend to lay out rules for how stuff happens as if there are little tables of quantitative parameters in an appendix somewhere. Despite the modern setting of the story, Barnes understands that magic doesn't follow the same rules as physics, and that fantasy fiction has to have claws deep into mystery while somehow seeming to make sense. You can't even understand why some people do what they do, and certain phenomena remain inexplicable, even at the end.

After a book like this, I don't sleep well at night, but I want to read more. Make of that what you will.

The high concept is familiar: A bland everyman learns that he has inherited a crucial role in an age-old war between Good and Evil. In The Domino Men, everyman is Henry Lamb, as meek and ineffectual as his name, once a child actor by virtue of nepotism rather than talent, now a government file clerk timidly attracted to the pretty girl from whom he rents his flat. Good takes the form of the "Directorate", an organization about which he can learn nothing. (Google has blacked it out.) Evil emanates from Britain's royal family, party to a conspiracy beyond the wildest fantasies of Lyndon LaRouche.

The story moves forward with great verve, peopled by vividly drawn characters like the bewildered Prince of Wales (a late initiate into the conspiracy), the Directorate's aquatic leader, who maintains his HQ inside the London Eye, and the glib, cross-talking "domino men" of the title, a pair of vicious supernatural adolescents.

As is often the case with books of this sort, a little common sense and cooperation on the part of the heroes would forestall the villains by about page 40, and the resolution of the plot is rather arbitrary and capricious. Also, the purpose of Evil's scheme, once revealed, sounds like it was salvaged from Douglas Adams' wastebasket, quite out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the book. Facetious though the Domino Men are, this is occult horror, not slapstick comedy.

In the end, the author ties matters up deftly, though leaving room for, and all but promising, sequels.

While not a classic of its kind, The Domino Men is inventive, well-paced and witty, satisfying fare for a long weekend.

Whether burned or bloody, Jonathan Barnes does love to see London in complete chaos. It happened in his last novel The Somnambulist, and has now continued in The Domino Men. Few things crossover between the two, save the intriguingly bizarre characters constituting his uber-secret and not-so-normal civil service division called The Directorate. Oh, and The Prefects, can't forget them.

The story centers around Henry Lamb, a completely ordinary though perhaps even dull, clerk who through a series of extraordinary though familial events is drawn into a hunt, a race to prevent London's descent into utter ruin. By all accounts he has no business within the Directorate or even approaching The Domino Men, the only ones who can either help or even destroy the chances for success.

Barnes excellently scripts his mystery around the fog that continually encompasses London, though he also lowers a fog over the reader's mind as well, keeping us in the dark about the major players of the novel. He offers breadcrumbs about the Directorate and the Domino Men, the comatose grandfather of Henry, and the ever over-confident mastermind Director Dedlock, though his description is never enough to quash the ever-lingering questions the reader may conjure. A frustrating yet gripping method. We know of a battle waged for centuries and that the Prefects are dangerous to say the least, but Barnes, hopefully in anticipation of another novel, tells us only what were allowed to know of the process. All that is requested is that we must "trust the process". And in the end, the distinction of who the villain was is not at all clear.

In several ways the Domino Men surpasses The Somnambulist; the ending is much more captivating though at times the pacing can be a bit slower. His inclusion and description of the aristocracy (Prince Arthur in particular) is quite interesting, for it is neither kind nor overtly cruel. The Prefects, however, were a bit under-described as they were in the former. Their playfully comic nastiness, hinted to atmospheric levels, falls just short of their behaviour, though admittedly ruthless and reckless as the story hits its crescendo. Their actions are more a vehicle of the story than the framework. Overall, its another fascinating story about London, manipulated by all creatures forceful and ubiquitously normal. Fun yet creepy, one can only wonder how many times and what twisted ways London has fallen and yet continues to rebuild itself in the mind of Barnes.

Reading this novel, one has the feeling that it is quite similar to Mr. Barnes' previous book, 'The Sonambulist' -- but not in a good way. One also has the feeling that Mr. Barnes tried to locate the novel in an alternate-universe London as it might have been imagined by Neil Gaiman. Unfortunately, the book lacks Gaiman's combination of eerie strangeness and slightly off-kilter normality, and lacks as well Gaiman's humor and wit.

So: the book is on the road toward being Gaiman, but it ain't there yet. Nevertheless, still worth a read.

This is a strange little book and one I quite enjoyed reading. The residents of modern-day London - particularly those who work for the shadowy ultra-secret Directorate. Henry Lamb, a simple file clerk, finds himself involved, after his grandfather died, in trying to save London from a bargain made by Queen Victoria.

Written with the sort of dry humour that British are known for, this might not be everyone's cup of tea, so to speak. However, this is just what the doctor ordered for someone like me, who enjoys subtle (and not-so-subtle) humour, and just generally strange stories. Pick it up and give it a try!