Nod

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As awful as a night without sleep makes you feel the next morning, imagine what life would be like if you could never sleep again. If the night before was the last time you ever slipped into unconsciousness. If your mind and body never again got its eight—or even four or three or any—hours of necessary rejuvenation. Imagine that it’s not that you don’t need sleep—you do need sleep, you desperately do—and you long for sleep more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life. The problem is that you can’t ever sleep again. After psychosis sets in for those who cannot sleep, and Nod falls into the wrong hands, Paul’s world begins to spiral out of control in a way he never could have imagined. Violent, frightening, textured, and dystopian are words that aptly describe the short-lived world that Barnes has created. Barnes’ writing is beautiful, but sometimes a little too good; the descriptions, both compelling and creepy, occasionally subtract from the story he’s trying to tell:

Despite the tail of the book being a little flatter than the start, it is still an outstanding read, if just for the first half alone. Barnes is able to write a horrifying novel without the reader even knowing that they are reading horror. It is not the beasties that go bump in the night that scare you, but the demons that live inside your head; with Nod Barnes has just reached into your skull and given their bellies a rub. I have never read anything quite like this book. It’s the perfect blend of heady existentialism and dystopian nightmare. The grand scope of the many ideas and themes, including anti-establishment, anti-consumerism, and the very nature of good and evil, is balanced out by fast-paced events that play on a micro-level…Nod is horror born of the unflinching and uncompromising detail that dissects what it means to be human.” -Dread Central 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

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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. Based upon the synopsis of Nod, I thought that the book was going to tell an interesting and unusual apocalyptic story. And in reality, such a good idea should have produced a enthralling novel. I feel the need to emphasis the "should". In reality this was one of the most unenjoyable reads that I have experienced in a long time. 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. As it starts out you could be mistaken for believing you're going to get a high octane end-of-the-world novel with zombie analogues. Actually while it could easily have gone that way it turns more toward the navel-gazing, deconstruction of personality, relationships and society. But it's very well done.

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. Vancouver is the place for Paul to try and think his way out of the problems he faces after the event has occurred. When the announcement went out about the event, people didn't think it was real, they denied it would ever happen and got on with their lives, yet one by one, they fell to it like it was a disease, inescapable, and deadly. Paul is not the most sociable person; he likes his own company as being an author makes it easier for him to keep out of harm's way. He does have agirlfriend, Tanya, who he has shared a long time with. As an author, it is easy to imagine how he could have spared any time with her considering also his constant observation of the human race and not being a real part of it.

Please bear in mind that this is my own point of view, and maybe other readers may find themselves enjoying Nod. My main issue with this book is that the author spent so much time using unnecessary words, that he failed to write anything interesting about what was actually going on. I don't usually quote from the books I'm reviewing but in this case it's necessary, "Charles loved big words, loved forcing them into his sentences no matter how much they squealed." Seriously? That sentence is probably the best description of Nod that I could ever come up with. Words just forced into sentences. I could see what the new world of Nod looked like, could easily picture the slow collapse of Vancouver and its people thanks to Barnes’ close attention to detail. At times I could even smell the death and decay it so vividly described.” -Project Fandom The second half of this novel seemed to switch in direction and take the reader on a more abstract and fantastical journey. I continued to appreciate the gorgeously lyrical writing style, as well as the overall ingenuity, but I longed for a return to the somewhat simpler initial stages of the novel. 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. On day one people continue in a facsimile of normality, but after a second night of sleeplessness, the reality ‘dawns’ and Paul’s world slowly dissolves. two sides emerge, the ‘Awakened’ and the ‘Sleepers’, the Awakened are the majority, the living zombies. Paul’s girlfriend, Tanya, can’t sleep and she becomes jealous of Paul. It’s clear early on that Paul needs to keep his normality hidden from those, who, after only a couple of days are suffering the hell of sleeplessness.