Both were more pessimistic than I think I would have been, and both are interesting reads during 2020, a time when the U. As the situation gets more and more problematic, the authorities try to take a stand against the insomnia outbreak, and it, as usual doesn't work and all the while Paul watches his one true love get the insomnia illness and steadily go to her demise. Nod chronicles the devastating side effects that occurs in the Awakened , with the world changing into something unrecognisable. So in summary this is a really good book, that get's you thinking long after you have put it down, but be warned. Barnes tries to cram this book so full of Memorable, Quoteable Lines that absolutely nothing sticks.

It seems that almost all of the population of the world has slept either, except a few persons, Paul included. Strange cults pop up, children are acting oddly, and everyone starts going on about Paul's book he is currently writing, Nod (yep, the same title as the book). The world takes on a very fantasmagorical aspect because of the psychosis brought by sleep deprivation or from the dreams the few who still sleep have. I was born in England but grew up in Canada buried in suffocating suburbia, which made me angry and fueled my flight, first to the city and then to the bucolic rural climes of the West Kootenay region of British Columbia where people mostly live like human people. This is a brave and original way of writing this kind of novel, but its ultimate consequence is that the story raises questions which it chooses not to answer, and provokes (in me, at least) a sense of vague dissatisfaction and of ends left flapping raggedly in the breeze as the story draws to its close.

For me, the story is excellent, dark and doom laden enough to encourage me to read on to the very last page, the characters well created and fleshed-out, this is one for those who like their doom extra dark and disturbing. Well, inevitably I go to four loves of mine: Lewis Carroll, Harlan Ellison, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan. Yet the most endearing element comes from the death of a long term relationship between Paul (one of the few Sleepers - people who are able to maintain nightly sleep) and his is partner Tanya (one of the many Awakened, those in a perpetual state of insomnia).

Actually while it could easily have gone that way it turns more toward the navel-gazing, deconstruction of personality, relationships and society. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I did quite like the way Barnes wrote the ending, particularly the very last page (quite unexpected which was appreciated).Factual Inaccuracy, Part Two: Sometime in Chapter 2, Paul describes a scene from Star Wars (Episode 4) where Princess Leia “receives news” of the destruction of her homeworld (Alderaan) by “Darth Vader’s Death Star”, only to be flirting with Han Solo “two scenes later”. Over the last year my skull was chopped, my brain lumps were chopped out, and I was drugged and radiated month after month.