Every now and again a novel comes along that is so Completely original and captivating that it makes you gasp....well Nod is one of these! On both counts I was disappointed. No explanation is offered, and all that is just used as setup for that tired old Humans are the Real Monsters tripe that's been done to death by this point. There are some fantastic Dystopian Worlds to discover; try Sand by Hugh Howey or Railhead by Philip Reeve. Then there's the kid that they adopt. No logical reason is given for why they decide to do this, but this kid that they don't even know and who never says a word suddenly becomes VERY important to them. So important that she is the impetus for everything the MC does for the second half of the book. The possible exception being when he murders his girlfriend. I still don't know why that happened. It was probably meant to be a mercy killing, but it didn't seem like one because I got the impression the MC wanted to do it, probably because of what a slut she had turned into. In the end though, it was very important to save this kid, even at the cost of sacrificing everyone else, including himself. The protagonist was so deeply and utterly unlikeable that I honestly hoped he'd die a horrible death at some point. His girlfriend considers him to be a 'geek', going by a few scenes-- this is one of the author's many, many shortcomings.

Nod explores the slow disintegration of humanity through sleep deprivation. Reality is distorted as the conceptual fiction of the world of Nod turns fact in the eyes of the Awakened. A harsh insomnia overthrows the daily grind, replacing it with a hazed infused horror fun-house that strips the characters down to their basic need to just survive. Debut author Barnes has written a completely original twist on the subject of insomnia. His apocalyptic thriller will appeal to fans of ChristopherGalt’s Biblicaland other dystopian and sf thrillers as well as readers with an interest in mythology" - Library Journal Dawn breaks and no one in the world has slept the night before. Or almost no one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand, can still sleep, and they’ve all shared the same mysterious dream. A handful of silent children can still sleep as well, but what they’re dreaming remains a mystery. Global panic ensues. A medical fact: after six days of absolute sleep deprivation, psychosis sets in. After four weeks, the body dies. In the interim, a bizarre new world arises and swallows the old one whole. A world called Nod. Nod by Adrian Barnes – eBook Details Nod works brilliantly on several levels; as a nerve-shredding horror, a timely cautionary tale, and a study of a man’s life being stripped away. --Sci-Fi Now Nod is a novel that only comes around every five to ten years. It takes that long for a writer to create a piece of fiction that actually has something to say and is unique. Nod is that book. It tells the tale of Paul who finds himself an unlikely prophet after his manuscript on the etymology of words becomes a surrogate bible to a city who cannot sleep.For anyone who has suffered from insomnia, the idea of a world with no sleep is an unsettling place as it feels so real. The thought of having to drag yourself to work after a night with no sleep is bad enough, but what about two nights, or three, or four? Society will crumble if everyone missed five meals in a row, but what would happen if we all missed five nights of sleep? If you end up in the land of Nod, we are all in trouble. Edit: RIP Adrian Barnes. I learned today that the author died early this year, succumbing to the brain cancer he was diagnosed with around the time the book was released. Okay, so let's start with the basics: the plot. It ultimately never goes anywhere and is merely used as a vehicle to show the Deprivation of Man and how We Were Like This All Along and honestly, by that point I'd stopped caring. There are so many factors in a dystopian novel that need to mesh for the book to work. The first is of course the concept. All the best science fiction has a great idea at its centre and Adrian Barnes' Nod certainly has this. The idea of getting no sleep will chime with anybody who has had a poor night sometime in their life. It is easy to imagine that after only a few days the thin veneer of society would start to crumble if you were so dog tired. It’s estimated that without sleep you would certainly die within around four weeks: Paul’s aim, in the end is to survive those four weeks.

The style of writing that Nod is written in was overwhelmingly distracting. Maybe the author did manage to write a passably interesting book, but it was completely hidden under that many words I couldn't even be bothered to start digging. I did manage to finish Nod, mainly because I was playing the "how many ridiculous words in one sentence can I find" game. It's not that often that I find myself writing a completely negative review, but I can honestly say that I can not find anything about this book that I liked. 1 star.

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Thus meaning they'll know exactly how much bullshit went into that one line. To briefly deconstruct it: Leia is forced to watch the destruction of her homeworld, powerless to stop it; the death star isn't in any way Vader's, and throughout the first movie she's largely contemptuous of Han. To portray her as vapid and indifferent as Barnes does here is... honestly kind of insulting to one of science fiction's most prominent women.

This is certainly a book of unanswered questions, and most frustratingly of all, the protagonist, Paul, doesn't seem interested in what any of the answers are. He rarely questions anything; why is his book coming to life? Why is this happening? What does his dream mean? How is he connected to the Sleepers when most others aren't? Outside of this, our so-called hero is a misanthropic author of books on etymology nobody reads-- save for one homeless character who nobody in the story actually likes. I'm having a hard time describing him without swearing profusely. Honestly, he's abhorrent. He describes one character wearing a suit as an 'autistic attempt to copy mad men', which is a dozen different kinds of messed up and honestly has no place in the 21st century, and believes another character later on can't possibly be a doctor because he's fat, and therefore CLEARLY spent all his time before the end of the world in his mother's basement playing video games. Actually, let's talk about that line. Because odds are a lot of readers won't be familiar with the effects and timeline of sleep deprivation psychosis, but you can bet your ass that a book marketed to the SF/fantasy/horror crowd will be read almost entirely by People Who Have Seen Star Wars.

All Adrian Barnes Reviews

Paul is one of the few sleepers left, only about one in a thousand people can now catch forty winks, the rest of the world is awake. This includes Paul's partner Tanya and as she loses more and more sleep she becomes agitated and confused. If things are looking bad indoors, the outside is even worse as the once peaceful citizens of Vancouver are getting to the end of their tether and they will do anything just to get some sleep; even if that means catching and killing one of the strange sleep-able children that roam the woods. Nod is a book for dreamers who have become scared to dream, making it a delightful bit of horror." Starburst Debut author Barnes has written a completely original twist on the subject of insomnia. His apocalyptic thriller will appeal to fans of ChristopherGalt’s Biblicaland other dystopian and sf thrillers as well as readers with an interest in mythology”– Library Journal Can the Sleepers protect these children? How can the Sleepers even protect themselves from desperate Awakers while they sleep? Will the Sleepers be able to ride out these terrifying four weeks until the Awakers, rapidly devolving into their Neanderthal progenitors, finally die? Nod takes place in Vancouver, Canada and follows the lives of Tanya and her husband Paul, an etymologist and writer, who is one of the rare Sleepers. Paul is the novel’s narrator. Early on in Nod, Tanya, an Awaker, desperate for sleep as anyone would be after several days of watching the moon make its slow crawl across the sky, demands sex from Paul, because she hopes that will get her to sleep. Tanya and Paul’s touching is coarse, brutal, and primitive, setting the stage for the rest of the novel.