A Man of Shadows

John Nyquist #1

by Jeff Noon

The brilliant, mind-bending return to science fiction by one of its most acclaimed visionaries

Below the neon skies of Dayzone – where the lights never go out, and night has been banished – lowly private eye John Nyquist takes on a teenage runaway case. His quest takes him from Dayzone into the permanent dark of Nocturna.

As the vicious, seemingly invisible serial killer known only as Quicksilver haunts the streets, Nyquist starts to suspect that the runaway girl holds within her the key to the city’s fate. In the end, there’s only one place left to search: the shadow-choked zone known as Dusk.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Horror, New Weird

352 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2017

About the author

Jeff Noon is a novelist, short story writer and playwright whose works make extensive use of wordplay and fantasy.

He studied fine art and drama at Manchester University and was subsequently appointed writer in residence at the city's Royal Exchange theatre. But Noon did not stay too long in the theatrical world, possibly because the realism associated with the theatre was not conducive to the fantastical worlds he was itching to invent. While working behind the counter at the local Waterstone's bookshop, a colleague suggested he write a novel. The result of that suggestion,

Vurt, was the hippest sci-fi novel to be published in Britain since the days of Michael Moorcock in the late sixties.

Like Moorcock, Noon is not preoccupied with technology per se, but incorporates technological developments into a world of magic and fantasy.

As a teenager, Noon was addicted to American comic heroes, and still turns to them for inspiration. He has said that music is more of an influence on his writing than novelists: he 'usually writes to music', and his record collection ranges from classical to drum'n'bass.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

As a huge PKD fan, I searched out a contemporary heir, an author who could be considered a modern day Dick. One website pointed me to Jeff Noon.

Oh, baby, I feel like doing a backflip. This Brit's writing is tops – fast-paced, weird and mind-blowing trippy. A Man of Shadows is a novel set in or around 1959 in two fantastically imagined cities, Dayzone and Nocturna, connected by a hazy middle turf known as Dusk. The story is classic 1950s crime noir: private eye searching for a teenage runaway amid citywide fear created by a seemingly invisible serial killer. As for specifics, I've created a Man of Shadows highlight reel:

DAYZONE
“The sky dazzled, alive with heat and light and colour, painful to look upon directly.” The denizens of Dayzone take pride in being part of an overheated, overlit paradise, the city that knows no darkness, a city kept aglow by an army of agile bulb monkeys dressed in tight, heat-resistant outfits with goggles to protect their eyes as they cling to walls and metalwork with hooks, safety ropes and suckers in their unending task to replace and repair lights across the Dayzone sky.

NOCTURNA
Here we have a city forever held in darkness where long-term inhabitants continually look upwards and negotiate their way from point A to B to C via the position of man-made stars in an artificial night sky. Many people speak in whispers, if at all. Turning the dial on a radio, one will come across old blues songs, sombre minimalist music in a minor key or Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'.

DUSK
As Breach serves as a freaky, shadowy third city in the hidden margins between Besźel and Ul Qoma in China Miéville's The City and The City, so there's the lands of Dusk separating Dayzone and Nocturna. "Dusk was a place, not a time: a wall of fog that the light of Dayzone faded into. A place of ghosts, of dead roads, unknown lives.” Make no mistake: only outcasts and halfwits inhabit Dusk. “Strange oblations had been found along these borders – at first the carefully prepared corpses of pets and other animals; later, tales of human beings, barely alive, their bodies staked out on the ground, left here to appease whatever gods or demons might rule these parts.”

TIME
“A recent report had stated that more than twenty million timepieces currently existed in the city (Dayzone), with more being designed, built and sold every day.” As much as Dayzone and Nocturna mess with natural circadian rhythms in its division into day and night, the whackiest, most bugged-out aspect is the treatment of time. Rather than one standard time, residents and visitors can choose from hundreds of personal or commercial timelines. As per the CEO of the leading corporation addressing his pulsing Dayzone city: “But most of all it needs more time. Different kinds of time. A time for every single occasion, mood and desire. The people demand it. And we here at the Ariadne Centre have to administer that time as we see fit.” And the biggest fear for the CEO, his corporation and everyone else: the ever looming citywide time crash. It happened before and it could most certainly happen again.

FIZZLE OUT
Now, do all these artificial times drive some people crazy? You bet they do. "Some Dayzone residents got so confused by all the different kinds of time on offer, their minds couldn't take it anymore. Time slowed down to zero, a space where nothing ever happened." Dayzone has a name for this increasingly prevalent syndrome: chronostasis. Meanwhile, dazzle junkies overdose on all the light while others (echoes of PKD's precogs) imbibe a new drug giving them the power to see into the future. Then there's the ultimate rebellion: entering the nether regions of Dusk, never to return.

GLOOMY GUMSHOE
Recall I mentioned a private eye back there. His name is John Henry Nyquist and he's even more sullen and morose than Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason's Inspector Erlendur. Readers familiar with the popular Reykjavík detective will appreciate just how sulky and joyless Nyquist must be for me to compare him to Erlendur. But considering all the surrounding out-there flakiness in the novel, Nyquist works perfectly - in one way Nyquist is a manifestation of the city but in another way his personality is the complete opposite of all the day/night/mist/time razzle-dazzle.

NYQUIST IN ACTION
Again, the story revolves around Nyquist hunting down a young lovely runaway. But I haven't said that much about the players or arc of plot for a specific reason: Jeff Noon's novel is much more than another 1950s-style tale of crime by an author like Erle Stanley Gardner or Eric Ambler. Noon's unique, highly inventive setting adds so much.

As by way of example, here's Nyquist on a train traveling from Dayzone to Nocturna in the mysterious realm of Dusk when suddenly the train loses speed and crunches to a halt. The lights flutter and Nyquist's eyes dart to the opposite window where the odd shapes of mist stick to the glass. Something lands on the roof - Thump - and all the passengers begin to panic. Tensions are raised even higher when through the fog something appears at the window that could be a beast, ghost, monster or demon. Nyquist pulls out his gun and...for Jeff Noon to tell.

QUICKSILVER
The city's serial killer has a name: Quicksilver. We meet Quicksilver in action in the very first chapter when a young female professional feels a pain in her side while in the middle of a bustling Dayzone market. "The autopsy revealed five separate stab wounds in the victim's flesh. And yet, out of the many people they interviewed, the police could not find a single person who had seen anything at all out of the ordinary."

How can this be? I'll give you a clue: it has to do with stealing away moments of time - and a connection with a Javanese shadow puppet. Intrigued? I certainly hope so.


British author Jeff Noon, born 1957

[carol. · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the end, it comes down to feeling, as much as it pains me to say, and this was solidly uninteresting. Whether an unlikeable protagonist, stock characterization, or predictable plotting, I couldn’t say. Remember when you were young, playing with toys and spent all morning setting up your Lego world/Barbies/miniature houses, but then quit playing an hour after the story finally started? That’s this book.

Our [insert stock here] hard-boiled detective takes the case to find the [insert trope] missing girl (who is, indeed, referred to as a girl). It takes him to Burnout, the last stop both literally and figuratively, in the Dayzone, an area devoted to light. Noon loves this idea so much that he interrupts his story to give us an excerpt from ‘Guide Book: The City of Lights:’

“As the traveller enters Dayzone, a constant haze will be seen over the streets, caused by the many billions of light sources the city uses in its tireless quest for brightness. The sky, the real sky, which even the oldest residents cannot remember seeing, is hidden behind a vast tangled web of neon signs, fluorescent images, fiery lamps, gas flames, polished steel struts, and decorative mosaics of glass. Light cascades from this canopy, its radiant chaotic beams caught, reflected, multiplied, back and forth between the shining walls of the office blocks and municipal buildings. Lower down, further sources of illumination are fixed to every available surface, adding their own brilliance to the city. Chinese lanterns swing from cables stretched across the roads, floodlights bathe the scene, powerful spotlights follow cars and pedestrians as they move along.“

But this is not enough; next stop is a bar in Shimmer Town, where the reader is to learn about time. “Chronostasis. The syndrome was becoming more prevalent. Some Dayzone residents got so confused by all the different kinds of time on offer, their minds couldn’t take it anymore. Time slowed down to zero, a space where nothing ever happened.” We also learn about the serial killer Quicksilver, who is able to kill someone in between one moment and the next without being seen.

Clearly all these things will eventually come together, and just as clearly, light and time are giant metaphors. The girl, Eleanor, is found, then lost, and when Nyquist decides he needs to become her protector, I tried to settle in for a rehash of Senlin Ascends, another book I bounced off of.

Breaking down the why is not easy. It does come together in the end, in a way that should be satisfying. But by then it was so profoundly uninteresting to me. Did I get tired of the tour through Dusk, the in-between from Night to Day? Did I develop antipathy for Nyquist’s growing time-lag turning him erratic and paranoid? Did I find the overt symbolism tiresome? Did I once again tire of the female as holy grail plotting? Was the weird for weirdness’ sake a chore?

It could be all of these things. When I stalled out around page 100, I set it down for a month, hoping that it was a mood-based rejection. But I fared little better after a hiatus, and only finished through sheer stubbornness and a switch to skim mode. Though Noon, by other reports, operates in the New Weird along with Miéville and VanderMeer, he lacks Miéville’s momentum and build, and VanderMeer’s commitment to the unfamiliar and strange. This time, New Weird didn’t take.

[Paromjit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a multi genre sci-fi thriller that is dark, intelligent, atmospheric and decidedly ambiguous. It is guaranteed to absorb and provoke thought. Jeff Noon engages in the heavily detailed world building of a city concealed amongst us by a dome. Half of the city, lit by lamps, exists in endless sunlight, and the other half in Dusk, wherein lies the odd and all the horrors of darkness. The two zones are connected by train. Within this weird world, time is money, a commodity to be traded and where people exist in their own particular timelines making time both an obsession and a critical factor. The troubled PI, John Nyquist, languishes at the bottom of the ladder, when he is hired by the father of 18 year old runaway, Eleanor Bale, to find her. A search that finds him making connections with a dangerous serial killer, Quicksilver, notoriously killing openly, yet to all intents and purposes, an invisible man.

This is a place where illicit drugs mess with time and the crime noir aspects hark back to the classics of the genre where the action takes place in a shadowy world. A tired and sleep deprived Nyquist has to venture into the dark, disturbing, and feared Dusk which will test him to his limits, physically and mentally. He is determined to find the beautiful, complicated and fragile Eleanor, amidst the menace and despair of Dusk, the foreboding presence of Quicksilver, and other ruthless forces. This offbeat novel, is beautifully artistic, raw in its blurred impressionism and surrealism flavoured with rather a strong dash of the fantastical. Noon has written a complex and superbly plotted multilayered novel which goes all out to embrace the strange. It will have you questioning what is real and what is time. A highly imaginative and enthralling read which I highly recommend. Many thanks to Angry Robot for an ARC.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book should be proud to sit atop the "New Weird" label.

It is like Dark City, a potboiler Noir with a very timey-wimey worldbuilding twist.

For the early part of the novel, it's all hardboiled detective stuff and it's familiar and fun, but I for one was clicking my teeth for the moment it started showing me the good stuff. And it did... in time zones.

A city all in man-made darkness, stars that never moved, where time is a relative thing, where industry collapses when certain pieces of reality can slip into different time streams.

Like, cool, right? Chaos. And industry leaders, working stiffs, government officials, everyone does their very best to keep the peace and the time in place.

I can't tell you how much I love this idea.

The detective noir stuff is polished, too. From a missing kid to a freaky wild family mystery to lots of cool spoilery things happening. :)

I can easily say I'm going to be reading a LOT more of Jeff Noon. Mixed genres may be a kind of specialty thing for intrepid and courageous readers, but it's so damn rewarding. Let your imaginative hair down! :)

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
A former professor of mine was fond of saying that great art is not merely engaged with, but surrendered to. That particular quality of experience – the willing submission of the viewer to the mastery of the art object itself – is hard to nail down in words; so then, is the absence of that quality. This, in a nutshell, is the ambition of the critic – to find the words to relate that experience, or lack thereof (or the gray in between) to other potential consumers of said object.
Jeff Noon’s A Man of Shadows is undeniably a work of art, and an engaging one. Expressionistic in style, though post-modern in flavor, it often feels more like a painting than a novel: confined to its subjective space but bleeding out from its boundaries and edges, willing you to look for more than it can display. Like all art objects it asks for your surrender; like many it falls just short of obtaining it.
Though Noon is not usually associated with the movement known as the New Weird, A Man of Shadows, with its hybridized genres and skewed realities, fits the mold. The novel is set in some (future? Sideways?) version of our world, where the city of Dayzone exists in the perpetual light of an artificial neon sky, and the nearby city of Nocturna is shrouded in permanent darkness. Because the natural criteria for measuring time (the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun) has essentially been banished from the two cities, everyone basically lives in their own personal timeline. In between the two cities is the shadowy (and gradually expanding) land known as Dusk, where strange people with terrifying abilities reside.
The story follows private detective John Nyquist, hired to find a young runaway heiress named Eleanor Bale. Eleanor’s case appears to be connected to a serial killer known as Quicksilver, who can somehow commit his murders is plain view of spectators without being seen. Nyquist becomes obsessed with protecting (or possibly killing) Eleanor, and with unmasking the enigmatic, and probably Dusk-born, Quicksilver. In the canon of fictional detectives, Nyquist is more Hammer than Holmes (or, more persistent than clever), and as a mystery it is one of those novels that plays coy with its biggest secrets until the villain is unmasked and willingly spills the beans.
Nearly every aspect of the book is immersed in Nyquist’s emotional reality. It is even suggested at one point that Dusk itself is “conjured from his own inner landscape.” I found it curious that, despite the highly subjective emotional expressionism shrouding Nyquist, I never really connected with him on a personal level. His motivations spring from a murky web of unconscious drives and pseudo-Freudian anxieties rather than anything tangibly associated with the quest he is set on.
If the world of the novel really is just an exegesis of Nyquist’s own mind, this would be the most intellectually honest rabbit hole for the author to tumble down, and as a result the book is way more head than heart. So, while it may have gotten into my skull, it never got under my skin. A Man of Shadows is still an art piece worthy of admiration, if not exhalation.
Thanks to Netgalley and Angry Robot for providing me with this ARC.

[David Katzman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh, Jeff Noon. Dammit. He's never lived up to his first two novels. I loved Vurt, one of the earliest cyberpunk novels, and Pollen, a tripped out cyber-environmental apocalypse. But I was meh on Automated Alice and Nymphomation. I actively disliked A Man of Shadows.

Ostensibly, a science-fictional/fantasy noir detective story, it falls down on all accounts. The main character, the detective, is a sad sack. A rather pathetic failure who gets beat up a lot and only succeeds by accident. At times, his actions are also kind of creepy toward the female lead he is attempting to rescue, a teenager, and that makes him even less appealing and less sympathetic. He is all-around unlikable.

The physical environment and tone of the story is excessively gloomy. Dark is one thing. But gloomy and mopey is boooo-ring. The story takes place between two cities and the border between them. One of them is called Dayzone, with artificial lights of all kinds hung from some kind of overhead electrical lines entirely blocking out the sky. And Nocturna, where everything is dark. And the dusk zone between them, which is filled with fog and smoke and is intended to be spooky. There is also this commercialization and commoditization of "timelines" within these cities, where various corporations or individuals can buy and establish different timezones for themselves, and you have to adjust your watch constantly as you go from one place to another. Residents can develop a sort of mental time-sickness if they become too confused and thrown off-balance by constantly changing time-zones.

All of this is interesting from a creative perspective, but from a science fiction perspective it made very little sense. It's more of a gimmicky way for society to evolve than one with coherence. The quirkiness of this construct makes very little sense from an economic perspective. Obviously, a city with a sky of artificial light would be burning tremendous amounts of money on energy versus one that had none. Particularly illogical is the proliferation of individual and branded (for sale) timelines. Dividing the day up into hours, minutes and seconds and universalizing it is an aspect of economic conformity and commoditization. Slaves of course did not need time, they were always on call. Farmers and hunters follow the rhythm of the sun and nature. Once you have "employees" you need them to show up at specific times for specific periods to use their labor for profit. Allowing people to run on their own individual timelines would utterly destroy this capitalistic system. Who would hire an employee that interprets 9am as being his noon? Or who adjusts her hours to run twice as long when she is at home?

The characters were mostly cardboard, with tormented pasts, and awkward interactions generating little attachment to them. The dusk zone didn't conjure up much spookiness. And the blending of the magical elements of fantasy into the storyline didn't even support pseudo-justification. Nothing in the story held together for me.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book suffered both from my misplaced expectations and a poor handling of genres.

In the first case what I expected to read and what the book actually contained were rather different. Based on the description I expected a detective/noir story set in a city with one part in permanent light and the other in permanent darkness. I thought this was a cool idea and would play well into the idea of a literal dark side of a city that is metaphorically prevalent in the noir genre. There is lots of space in this setting to work within the noir genre and push its boundaries in cool, innovative ways.

Instead of a gritty noir mystery this book contained a good deal of magical realism, a genre I am discovering I really just don't care for. Instead of a down on his luck gumshoe trying to track down a killer and save a girl (hallmarks of noir) in a realistic, if somewhat, fantastical setting I was instead presented with a magical dreamlike setting in Dusk (the growing area between the Dayzone and Nightzone of the city) where strange things happen can and do happen and where some sort of magic exists. Very little of this phenomenon is explained (thanks a lot magical realism!) and I am expected to just accept it for what the author tells me it is.

This is not a thing I can do.

If a book wants to present me some fantastical setting there is only so much I will accept as a premise. Half the city is bathed in a constant bright light while the other half is permanently shrouded in darkness? Sure, I can go along with that conceit for the basis of a story. But these conditions were explained and slightly explored with physical explanations given to how the city achieved this condition. Dusk (and the true driving force of the story) is left completely unexplained and takes A LOT of liberties with how reality works. There is no explanation given to why it is the way it is or behaves the way it does yet the book expected to just smile and nod at all the strange things happening. I didn't find Dusk interesting or engaging enough for me to ignore its lack of credibility.

The mixing of these two genres led to the second major problem I had with the book in that I felt that neither genre was effectively handled creating both a bad noir and a bad magical realism story at the same time.

On the noir front I think the biggest stumble was with the character of Nyquist. There were many aspects of this book that hit some of the high points of the genre: powerful men above the law with a shadowy agenda, family secrets that link to the wider mystery, a down on his luck gumshoe with a drinking problem who falls to far into a case, dames, etc. But where this aspect of the book stumbled was failing to deliver a suitable arc for Nyquist that made all other aspects of the genre nothing more than window dressing.

Basically the entire story is of Nyquist falling harder and harder into a terrible state, be it drinking, obsession with the case and the girl in question, or time screwing up his perception to name a few. We don't get a feel for what Nyquist is like before we see him with his descent already underway so there is no baseline to compare his state to. We get some vague hints about his past but nothing that fixes in our minds what Nyquist in a good state is to contrast with how far he has fallen. Further he doesn't seem to do anything particularly smart or unexpected, he seems to be rushed forward by events instead of being proactive about figuring things out. I didn't get the sense that he was worth much as a detective which made it difficult for me to care about what he was doing. In the end this book failed on the noir front because it did not properly frame the main character in a way that allowed the reader to put him in the proper context.

On the magical realism front, well, maybe it's that I just don't like the genre. I prefer my fantasy to be somewhat explained and not forced to accept it as is. For instance, in Lord of the Rings we are told why Sauron wanted the ring and why it was important. Not everything has to be explained (like why are there giant eagles? There just are, accept it as a small part of the story and move on) but the important things, the things that drive the entire plot of the book and exist in an otherwise realistic and rational world, need to be explained or else the story doesn't make any sense.

Why did Dusk exist and why was it so different form the rest of reality? This is never explained but in a world with at least an understanding and appreciation of science and the ability to KEEP AN ENTIRE CITY IN PERPETUAL LIGHT I would have expected A LOT more interest shown in studying Dusk since it was also a threat to said city. The fact that it is just treated as this thing that is out there and dangerous and no one seems to pay it any mind save for avoiding it struck me as completely unbelievable. Compound that with unexplained magic in an otherwise realistic world and the story really suffers in my eyes.

It would be one thing if Dusk was a minor part of the plot and its inexplicable presence and characteristics remained relatively sequestered from the main storyline but the last third of the book directly dealt with it and its consequences. The story put the poorly explained fantasy center stage and expected it to hold the weight of the narrative. This it could not do and each successive page added further to the amount of material the reader just had to accept instead of building on past explanations or reasonable foundations. By the end I begrudgingly accepted what the story offered just so I could get to the end of the book. This poorly realized magic realism aspect of the book collapsed under the spotlight and dragged the story down with it.

Now there were some interesting aspects of the book: the idea of people buying and living on different timelines, the dichotomy of the city and all the consequences of that, the neighborhoods within the different city spaces were neat and interesting. But the heart of the book, the fusing of noir and magical realism, was just a poorly executed mess and wasted so much potential of the setting and the story. So really your enjoyment (or lack there of) for this book will come down to how you view genre conventions because I could see how some readers could really enjoy the book. It just didn't work for me.

It did have a cool cover though...

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just recently learned the term "new weird" fiction, but I think it can be applied to this book. It's sci-fi, horror, urban fantasy and detective noir, so there's a lot going on here. John Henry Nyquist is a private detective looking for the missing 18 year old Eleanor Bale. Robert Mitchum could have played Nyquist in the movie. It turns out that Eleanor is not just a runaway, she plays an important role in the very strange world created by the author.

The action takes place in a city comprised of three parts. Dayzone is always light, lit by millions of light bulbs at all times. Nocturna is always dark and to go between these two parts of the city you must go through Dusk, which is a no man's land that is best avoided. In each of the parts of the city, time is a distinctly relative concept. Time zones are personalized. Nothing about any part of this city makes it an appealing place to live, and one problem I had with the book is that the author never explained why anyone would choose to live there when the rest of the country appeared to be "normal". Another problem I had with the book is that the difficulties faced by Nyquist and Eleanor could have been eliminated by a little truth in the beginning, but then you wouldn't have had a book. The truth begins to be told at about the 80% point. Up until then you get a serial killer, fog men, a drug that distorts time even more than this city does, and a lot of situations that made me wonder whether everyone was just mad and imagining the whole thing. This was a well written and imaginative book and I'd like to read more by this author.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Liz Barnsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really will never look at time passing in the same way again.

Sometimes a book comes along that just ticks every box in the “things I love about reading” stakes – A Man of Shadows is such a novel, so incredibly immersive, such brilliantly incisive descriptive prose and a set of fascinating, beautifully imagined characters – that you just dive into it with abandon and leave the real world behind.

A Man of Shadows has a decisively built world, a world of literal light dark and shade, where time is of the essence and the residents live with a kind of permanent jetlag as they jump between one timepiece and another. Into this strangely authentic place we find John Nvquist, Private Eye, damaged individual, hunting for a missing teenager and becoming entangled in a dark and dangerous web.

He is quintessentially of the 1940’s, the wonderful noir feel the author brings to proceedings is quite simply incredible considering the scifi setting and the increasingly bizarre yet compelling narrative – the dialogue is of another age yet sparkles against the advanced backdrop, all the way through this strange beauty echoes in your mind, you do live it and breathe it.

A Man of Shadows is a heady mix of science fiction, old school detective noir, horror and thriller – I was almost literally holding my breath as the final moments unfolded and I have no doubt there are some surreal dusk fuelled dreams awaiting me when I sleep tonight – I almost welcome them, so much did I enjoy this one that despite the dark nature of it I’d love to return. Oh look – this is John Nvquist 1 apparently – so I guess I should be careful what I wish for.

Surreal, dazzling, unusual and extraordinary – A Man Of Shadows will haunt you for a long time after turning that last page.

“You can walk away from events but not from your own darkness”

Highly Recommended.

[RG · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a re-read..I loved this novel. Originally a 3.5* but Noon at his best!!

What a strange and weird rollercoaster ride. This blend of detecitve street noir with new weird scifi world buidling creates a completely new type of experience for the reader. Its not as quirky as Vurt but very close. Two cities each different in their own way but the distinguishing feature is the daylight and perpetual darkness of them both. Time is a currency of sorts, and this has a huge influence on the themes and plotting of the novel. John Nyquist is your protagonist whos latest detetctive work is the locating of a missing girl. It takes him through the streets of both cities, amongst drugs, the grit/grime of the underbelly, and this element us as good as any detective noir. The scifi element was good and weird but I think I just had high expectations. Still a great thought provoking novel. Cant reccomend Noon enough.

[Scott Hitchcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fact: I don't like noir fiction for the most part. I loved this. The best noir I've ever read .

Fact: I generally like character driven stories. This is completely world driven. The characters are merely a conduit for which to experience this vivid, original, amazing and very strange world. Usually I can hate characters and that's as good as liking them. By the end I did embrace the two main characters but only because the world drew me into them.

Fact: This is the most original world and story since Beyond Redemption.

Fact: Not everybody will like this. The story and the world are very abstract and strange. It's sort of like taking Harry Bosch, The Naked Lunch, The Time Machine and a pinch of Malazan (Dark, Dusk and Light) and shaking them up into a acid trip cocktail.

I really don't want to get into the plot and the world too much and ruin it so I'll just say the book revolves around different elements of time, space, dark, light and dusk with a lot of metaphores for day to day life. This takes place in an alternate reality of the late 1950's and there's a culture that revolves around both the conformity of that decade and the drug decadance of the following decade.

If you're looking for something off the wall and different this is the book for you. If you're not a fan of an acid trip style book it probably isn't.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Grim Journey into the Twilight of the Soul

When my Goodreads friend Glenn recommended Jeff Noon’s novel A Man of Shadows to me, I couldn’t wait to go and buy a copy of that book in order to start reading. All in all, it proved a sound decision even though Noon did not really remind me of PKD as it did Glenn.

Nevertheless, the author manages to create a world in its own right on the pages of his novel, a world that is set in a large city such as has never been known on this planet and hopefully never will be known: Just picture the premise of the Simpsons movie transferred into literature – a vast cheese dome being put over a mega-city that is located nowhere special. One part of this city, Dayzone is shed into eternal artificial light because above it, the dome is covered with bulbs, neon signs and other sources of light that are constantly maintained by people known as bulb monkeys. This part of the city is brimming with more or less superficial 24/7 activity and bustle, and the citizens living here have grown fearful of the dark. Another part of the megalopolis is named Nocturna, and here night reigns forever, and people generally speak in whispers and hide in shadows. In between these two, as a kind of eerie no man’s land, there is a zone called Dusk, an unwholesome place, more or less off limits to the common citizen, inhabited by shadow people and billowing with treacherous fogs that, once breathed in, are said to poison your very soul. A bit like in Lovecraft’s story The Color out of Space, this area slowly and surreptitiously advances, stealing inch by inch into the realms of Dayzone and Nocturna.

Another feature of that weird city is that its denizens no longer share a common timelime but constantly change between various chronologies, some of them job-related, others pertaining to their leisure time activities, with the result of people repeatedly having to reset their watches depending on the social context they are moving in. For some people, this never-ending jumping to and fro between timelines results in a disorientation of the mind, a medical condition which is called chronostasis but even if you are not affected by this condition, the proliferation of individual timelines must put an incredible strain on the minds of people, who find themselves in a rat race of their own making.

In the midst of all this, we have our protagonist, John Henry Nyquist, a private eye of the lower order, forced to take up any case as long as it helps him pay his bills, a broken, jaded, disillusioned man into the bargain, an alcoholic divorcee, with – you might have guessed it – a whole bunch of childhood traumas at his heels. Nyquist is not exactly a very likeable man, and his most alienating quality, to me, is his inclination to fly off the handle and lose control of himself whenever push comes to shove. In one situation, he does not even stick at threatening a little child with a gun, with the kid’s mother standing by and watching helplessly. In short, it is very hard for the reader to like this guy. This our mentally unstable, drug-ridden gumshoe is entrusted by a rich businessman with finding Eleanor, the man’s missing teenage daughter, and taking her home again. The task seems easy enough, even for a wreck like Nyquist, but very soon, the entire case is getting more and more complicated, and the private eye eventually has the impression that in restoring the girl to her father, he may not be doing Eleanor a very good service after all and instead endanger her life. And then there is the mysterious Quicksilver, a serial killer spreading fear in the city by appearing out of nowhere and taking lives, not in solitary places but in large crowds, without being seen or heard.

As the title A Man of Shadows already implies, Noon exploits the motif of darkness in more ways than one, even though his name would have led you to expect otherwise. The story itself, its cast of characters and most of the situations Nyquist goes through appear like yet another noir tale with an especially washed-up detective at its core, but the setting of the tale constantly oscillates between horror literature and darkest dystopia, all the more so since Noon spends quite a lot of time diving into the details of the places he parades before our eyes – yet leaving it all strangely blurry and vague. In the course of the story, the supernatural elements are taking over more and more forcefully.

While reading this book, I began to think of Dayzone, Nocturna, Dusk and the capitalistic exploitation of people’s mania for new timelines – Eleanor’s father is head of the company profiting from that craze – as meaning something deeper. Just take the following quotation:

”It was predicted that eventually there would be a highly personal timeline for every single Dayzone citizen. And what then? What kind of society would it lead to? Would it bring utter chaos, or a strange, unforeseen peace? Of course, it was too late to stop that process now, the twenty million clocks were ticking, ticking, ticking …” (p.53)

Aren’t we experiencing a similar phenomenon in our own society right now, where social media have taken on the importance that real life contacts used to hold for lots of people, and where more and more of us are starting to live in filter bubbles, not of our own but of our manipulators’ making, disabling so many of us from bearing the very thought of being exposed to opinions and views contradicting our own and from interacting productively with those who do not happen to reinforce us in what we are already thinking? Are we not also living a kind of Dayzone life in which we feel the need to be always up-to-date, always on-line, interspersed with Nocturna moments of exhaustion, passivity and loneliness? And does all this not encourage the growth of Dusk in us, a state we forbid ourselves to wander in but where our hidden, unacknowledged fears and insecurities fester into tangible nightmares, and which is filling more and more of our hollow selves?

The most dreadful horrors are growing in a life where we have lost touch with ourselves and each other.

[Ellis ♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recensione apparsa su Leggere Distopico e Fantascienza Oggi!

La realtà editoriale della 451 sta portando in Italia testi davvero niente male e oggi vi parlo de “L’uomo delle ombre” di Jeff Noon - la cui traduzione è stata affidata a Valerio Stivé - primo volume di una tetralogia che vede protagonista il detective John Nyquist.

Chi è Nyquist? Sul suo passato, attraverso dei brevi accenni, si scoprirà qualcosa andando avanti nella lettura, ma principalmente ci viene mostrato come un detective che preferisce lavorare da solo e ha un rapporto controverso con la società; è un tipo abbastanza taciturno, dall’aspetto trasandato, tuttavia svolge il suo lavoro con grande scrupolosità e appena fiuta una traccia non esita a gettarsi a capofitto nelle indagini.
In questo primo libro viene assoldato da Patrick Bale, pezzo grosso dell’industria del Tempo, per ritrovare sua figlia Eleanor scomparsa da alcuni giorni.
Ciò che Nyquist non aveva messo in conto è quanto questo caso avrebbe richiesto il suo totale coinvolgimento, ma soprattutto quanto sarebbe stato intricato da risolvere - il tutto presentatoci in un drammatico crescendo di eventi – a tal punto da mettere in pericolo la sua stessa vita.
Intanto in città un serial killer “invisibile” – che si fa chiamare Mercurio - semina il terrore tra gli abitanti.

Diurno: la città degli orologi, milioni di milioni di orologi, ognuno a scandire un orario diverso. Dove sarà il tuo posto? Quando lo troverai? Ora…

“L’uomo delle ombre” è un noir sperimentale in chiave futuristica che strizza l’occhio al new weird e al pulp in cui l’autore sovverte alcuni dei soliti cliché di genere, offrendo al lettore, una prosa asciutta e affilata di cui il punto di forza è senza dubbio il worldbuilding: l’intero romanzo verte sulla peculiarità di Diurno e Nocturna, due città speculari: la prima pullula di un perpetuo chiarore artificiale, l’oscurità è stata letteralmente bandita e il suono che echeggia per le strade è quello dell’elettricità che l’attraversa; la seconda, invece, è avvolta dalle tenebre e ci si orienta per mezzo di costellazioni create ad hoc dall’uomo. Tra le due città ve n’è una terza che fa da spartiacque, posta alla periferia di entrambe, chiamata Crepuscolo e coperta da una densa coltre di nebbia che via via guadagna terreno.
I punti di contatto con China Miéville si sprecano, a partire già dallo scenario post-apocalittico di due città in cui si avvicendano giorno, notte e crepuscolo, luci, ombre e mezzi toni. L’aspetto fantascientifico non è marcato, accostata a elementi che troviamo nei giorni nostri la super tecnologia che Noon ci propone è legata principalmente alla cronestesia: gli abitanti non seguono il consueto ritmo circadiano, a loro basta regolare le lancette dell’orologio per personalizzare e adattarsi alla linea temporale che più si preferisce ed è possibile muoversi attraversandone più di una. Lo stesso Patrick Bale ha fondato il suo impero economico mercificando il tempo.
Tuttavia questo concetto della frammentazione del tempo a Diurna, che è portante ai fini dell’intreccio, trovo non sia stato sviscerato come realmente meritava di essere.
Jeff Noon riesce a tenere alto il livello di pathos spronandoti, quindi, a proseguire la lettura, possiede uno stile immediato di cui si è servito per comporre una trama avvincente in cui fantascienza e detective story danno vita a una combo pazzesca; anche con lo sviluppo della psicologia dei personaggi se la cava discretamente presentando un intreccio di vite sfilacciate dove amore, disaccordo e interessi personali la fanno da padrone, Nyquist è l’indiscusso protagonista e non è ritratto come l’emblema della prodezza e della perfezione, tutt’altro, l’autore ne sottolinea il suo senso dell’etica e della morale incerto, punta i riflettori sui difetti che lo caratterizzano così da risultare ai nostri occhi più umano e autentico.
Le ombre citate nel titolo sono così consistenti che quasi mi son rimaste addosso, si percepisce proprio sulla pelle un forte senso del perturbante. Io stessa mi sono persa negli anfratti labirintici di queste città.

PS: Se vi incuriosisce la dualità luce-buio a carattere fantascientifico vi consiglio anche di leggere “Dark Star” di Oliver Langmead.

[Adrian Dooley · Rating 2 out of 5]

A sci-fi thriller of sorts. Interesting if slightly confusing ideas and ultimately too much of a narrative on the world created rather than on telling the story left me cold.

The story takes place in a city made up of three distinct parts - Dayzone, which is permanently bright thanks to the billions of neon lights covering the area, Nocturna, which is permanently dark and Dusk, which seperetaes the two areas, a type of no mans land which is avoided at all costs, neither light nor dark and covered in fog.
The city has numerous time zones. Companies work to their own time zones. More and more time zones are becoming available and being sold by private corporations.

Our main protagonist is a Private Detective called John Nyquist, a washed up heavy drinking man, confused and weary from the numerous time zones and their constant changing as he moves across the city. He is hired by the head of the biggest corporation that develope and sell these different time zones, to try and find his runaway daughter.
That's the basic premise of the story and as it developes we are introduced to a serial killer that can kill in broad daylight without anyone seeing him, street drugs that can alter time and let you see into the future and some ghostly elements thrown in for good measure.

So, I didn't really enjoy this book. The story felt like it took an age to tell. The descriptive narrative of the city continuously interrupted the flow of the story progressing. Yes it's a sci-fi novel with a surreal city but, just as the story is moving along we get pages of descriptive prose of the surroundings etc. It just left me cold. The characters were just smothered by this and as a result played second fiddle and were extremely two dimensional. Nyquist, our main character is literally nondescript and therefore held little or no interest.
The second half of the book is certainly better than the first. The story did move along and there chapters of real interest and page turning elements as you were finally sucked into the story. But that didn't last ultimately as the descriptive prose took over again and all momentum of the story was lost. The ironic thing is, with so much time spent by the author describing the world and its workings, so much wasn't really explained and many elements just vaguely gone through, not really making sense to the reader.

There are some really interesting ideas here but the vagueness with which they are executed left me cold on the whole world the book inhabits. The story seemed to play second fiddle to the surroundings. In the end it was a bit of a chore to finish this one. Not one for me I'm afraid.


Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8⭐
Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler meet J.G. Ballard in this surrealistic, science fiction/noir mystery. John Henry Nyquist (he had the middle name added to his office door even though it cost more, because he liked the sound of it) is your quintessential hard boiled private eye. He lives in a city divided between Dayzone, with it's perpetual light, and Nocturna, a place of eternal dark. In between is the eerie and ominous Dusk, which seems to be expanding at the expense of the other two districts.

Nyquist is hired by a plutocrat to find his runaway teenaged daughter. The book really rests on Noon's lush and lurid descriptions of his imaginative setting. Putting aside the weird elements, this really is a very conventional private detective story. Nyquist strikes me as a blend of Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade and Jake Gittes. Although for a big, tough looking, streetwise gumshoe, Nyquist 1) gets beaten up an awful lot 2) always seems to be on the verge of a mental meltdown. Just part of his charm.

As for being science fiction, it's a borderline case. The story is not very futuristic in its technology, even featuring steam trains. The year given is 1959 but that's not to be relied upon because everyone in the city has the option of living on their own, or multiple, timelines. In some key plot elements the book's closer to fantasy or even horror, but, hey sci-fi's a big tent, so why not? Noon keeps everything fluid and ambiguous as to the the exact time and location of his story and in this case it successfully adds to the atmosphere.

Even though the writing edges close to "creative" at times, the story was sufficiently original and imaginative to keep me closely engaged, all the way through. I look forward to reading the two sequels. -30-
.

[Chris Berko · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all consuming fascination with Jeff Noon continues. A Man of Shadows isn't as mad-hatter down-the-rabbit-hole crazy as Vurt but the slower pace and more deliberate story line doesn't mean it's boring. The plot has the main character running around all over the place and that gives Noon the opportunity to showcase the imaginative and wonderful world this takes place in. The world is as much a part of the story as any of the characters. You can't really put the story into words and it really shouldn't make sense but it all does and it is truly one of the more original settings and mysteries. There is a killer, family secrets, totally bizarre and captivating concepts of time and time manipulation, a city split in a way you just gotta read about to appreciate, kidnapping, awesome/scary sounding drugs, and twenty other wonders per page.

Jeff Noon is quickly becoming a I-NEED-to-Hoover-up-everything-he-has-written author for me with each sentence read.

[Patrizia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Governare il tempo è un desiderio comune. Regolarne il flusso, stabilire quanto deve durare il giorno è quello che fanno a Diurno, città dei divertimenti in cui non si dorme mai e, soprattutto, dove non fa mai buio. Il cielo è fatto da file sovrapposte di lampadine colorate, un inganno di luci che stordisce e crea dipendenza. Si cammina attraversando più linee temporali, girando continuamente le lancette dell’orologio per adeguarsi alla linea preferita. Per chi è nuovo del posto orientarsi è difficile, ma dopo un forte disorientamento iniziale, ci si abitua. Guai però abusarne! Il tempo può risucchiare in un vortice di minuti saltati, di ore perdute e quando si esaurisce l’ultimo orologio resta la follia. Di solito a Diurno si lavora e poi si va a dormire a Nocturna, in un’oscurità innaturale e profonda. Per le vie di Nocturna ci si orienta seguendo finte costellazioni fisse, fili di lampadine appese in alto per cui la gente cammina con la testa in su.
Chi è nato in questa città non ha mai visto né il sole né il cielo. Un treno unisce le due parti, attraversando una zona maledetta, fatta di nebbia filamentosa e gelida, su cui circolano leggende spaventose, forse non così terribili come la realtà. È Crepuscolo, i cui confini si stanno estendendo pericolosamente.
In questa realtà complessa John Henry Nyquist fa l’investigatore privato. La sua vita è al limite, ignora i normali ritmi di veglia e sonno, si fa coinvolgere dai casi che segue. Dall’ultimo in particolare: riportare a casa Eleanor Bale.
Adrenalinico, angosciante, inquietante.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars

A Man of Shadows by John Nyquist is a terrific summer science fiction read. I absolutely loved it and had a blast with this one.

An awesome start to a series.

Fabulous.

[Jan vanTilburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I raced thru this book. Time flew by! It was mesmerizing. A solid 5*.

Atmospheric. Intriguing. Noir. Weird. Eloquently written. A great book!!

Weird as in world building. Noir as in a depressed private eye; Nyquist. A mystery set in a fantasy sci-fi city. A fusion between Miéville’s Perdido Street Station. Scandinavian detective noirs with their morose, melancholy investigators and Philip K. Dick’s hallucinatory novels. Quite an achievement! Three of my most favorite genre authors combined in one book.
And the city is as much part of the story as is Nyquist.

For sure I will read more of him.

Time is of the essence! Noone has ever enough! Everyone has its own timeline. And the limits of time are being reached. People are falling of the clock. Time is being lost.

A city where one half is always light: Dayzone and one half always dark: Nocturna, with a transition zone called Dusk. Combine that with the notion that time is not what it seems and we have the world of Nyquist. A private investigator (p.16), “…a big man, tough looking..[..] with many raw edges; it gave the impression he wasn’t quite completed. It was scary.”

It’s an ominous world. Apocalyptic. Gloomy. Especially Dusk. Where fact and fiction are blurred. Where “Time is a fluid substance, with no when, now, then, if, was, no past, present or future.” And that’s where Nyquist ultimately has to go to solve this mystery of the invisible serial killer, nicknamed Quicksilver. The runaway girl, Eleanor seems to hold the key to this enigma. And that key is in the fearsome twilight zone of Dusk. Where nothing is as it seems. Where shadows lurk. Where primordial fear threatens to overtake the mind. Where time is fluid.

Only thru catharsis, by “falling away from time”, is Nyquist able to solve this. His journey brings him from Dayzone, to Nocturna and finally to Dusk.

In the beginning we get introduced to the surreal city scape where Nyquist lives. Himself a native born citizen. It’s like a city outside of reality. The world around it is normal.
Two books come to mind with a simular idea:
The City and the City from China Miéville and Dhalgren Samuel R. Delaney.

Where Miéville’s book also has two distinct parts of the same city, Delaney’s city is just plain weird. Time and place change constantly. It’s a dream like reality.
Here we have a blend of the two.

About the strange workings of time. p.35, description of a disturbed junky: ”She got no numbers left on her clock.”…”Midnight of the soul.” It’s called Chronostasis. A time syndrome: the mind could not take all the different kinds of time on offer. It slowed down to zero. Nothing ever happened anymore.

I like to think that the theme of time, so important in the book, is also a message. A message to “unhaste”. In this society everything goes by the clock. People seem always to be in a hurry. Time is money. Deadlines and such.

Also that the solution is to be found in Dusk. As a reminder, for us people, that nothing is as black and white, clear-cut or without compromise.

But then, everyone can read whatever one wants into a book. Regardless what the writer intended. And that is fine. It’s all about the readers experience. And mine was wonderful!
For sure I will read more of him. In fact I’ve already lined up his next Nyquist book: The Body Library. Set in a total different environment.

[Raffaello · Rating 4 out of 5]

La parte centrale, ovvero l'investigazione, mi ha ammorbato abbastanza, a conferma del mio scarso feeling con i libri gialli. L'ultima parte mi ha davvero conquistato a colpi di weird, anche più del worldbuilding che comunque resta - senza dubbio - uno dei punti di forza di questo strano romanzo.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book came onto my radar kind of randomly. I downloaded Body Library by Jeff Noon on Netgalley to try a new author only to realize that it was a sequel. So I figured why not check out the original and got the Audible version of that. Very glad I did too. Usually I’m content for the audio book just to entertain me sufficiently on my walks, this one surpassed expectations by actually encouraging long walks to find out how the plot unfolds. Mind you, it’s quite a strange book, not sure what the genre for this would be, it might be somewhere along the lines of the New Weird. Not really fantasy or science fiction, but somewhere of the adjacent fictional realms, noir in tone and slightly supernatural in flavor, this is a story of place that’s…well, chronologically interesting and a private investigator hired to find a girl who may have an even stranger relationship with time. Imagine a city where natural order of day following night following day was eradicated. The sky is an ever bright menagerie of light bulbs and time has become customized and customizable with countless timelines readily available for business, pleasure and all things in between. Wild, right? Actually, my brain struggled to wrap itself around the multiple timeline aspect…much like some of the time obsessed locals. Weren’t timelines originally invented to allow things like train schedules and so on to be in sync? If everyone functions on different timelines, how does it all work? In Noon’s universe it sort of does, but like so much fiction it requires a certain suspension of disbelief or something like just going with it. Good fiction has a way of doing that, just enveloping the readers in its own world. Like traveling somewhere very strange, very different, very original…this was a really fun trip. And the audio narrator did a terrific job, absolutely first class read. Very enjoyable book, great introduction to a new author. Ideally the second in the series will maintain the quality and expand upon the world building and bring exciting new mysteries to solve. Recommended.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read once that taking away watches and clocks from people and not allowing them to know the time will slowly drive them mad. After reading this book I can believe it.

It starts out as a hard-boiled detective story set in a world that feels like a futuristic version of the 1950's. The city is split into three different zones, Nocturna that is eternal night, Dusk, a place of fog and monsters where it is always twilight and no-one dare go, and Dayzone, a world of bright neon lights where it never goes dark and the citizens are constantly switching between the hundreds of different timelines.

John Nyquist is hired to find the teenage daughter of one of the richest men in the city. But like any good detective story, nothing is what it seems.

I loved the first half, the atmosphere created and the characters and the sense of place are almost perfectly done. Towards the middle it starts to feel surreal, it's like a bad dream where Nyquist is losing his sense of time and reality. I struggled with reading this, I've never enjoyed dream sequences and this was more confusing than most. It messed with my mind, and it made me feel a bit ill reading it!

It settles down towards the end though and it got a bit easier on my brain.

The writing is brilliant, and it's full of plot twists that I didn't predict. The atmosphere and the world building is just right, I could see Dayzone in my mind, and I loved the contrast between the frantic pace of life there and the calm and quiet in Nocturna.

I do struggle sometimes with books that leave you to decide what's real and what's not, but if you don't mind that then I highly recommend this book as it's very well done, with an interesting story, good characters, and original ideas.

I received a free copy from the publisher in return for an honest review.

[Fiona Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a book! Jeff Shadows does a remarkable job of bringing a thoroughly surreal setting to life.

Dayzone and Nocturna, two cities separated by Dusk, each having decided to live in perpetual light or dark. Citizens run on separated zones of time; and into this dazzlingly original setting steps John Nyquist, detective on a mission. And it's with his introduction that I realised this - no matter the setting - was a classic noir novel. We never step foot in his office, dead messages, unpaid bills, and a lazy ceiling fan with a bullet hole in one blade, but there's a troublesome dame who quickly turns out to be conduit to a much larger mystery.

This was largely very surreal. I absolutely adore the setting, but there are some sacrifices made to the genre gods, and one of those is character development; I'm just hoping Nyquist's mysterious handkerchief-making wife pops back up in book two. Overall though, this was a book that drew me in and had me wanting more. I'm very much on board for book two!

[Pilar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un detective, un misterio, un territorio dividido entre el día eterno y la noche eterna (y dividido por el crepúsculo), y muchos, muchísimos relojes que marcan horas distintas. Me ha parecido una gran mezcla entre un pasapáginas noir y una fantasía urbana muy original, casi surrealista. Todo bien. Ah, y, como ya imaginaba, Noon escribe muy bien.

[Milliebot · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review and others posted over at my blog.

I don’t know how to describe this book because I feel there are two potential stories here and the way they were blended together left me confused and a little underwhelmed.

My main issue with this book stems from the feeling that there were two different worlds, or, I don’t know, major story elements maybe, that belonged in two different books. There is one world with the cities of Dayzone, Nocturna and Dusk (that apparently reside in a seemingly normal world that has a regular 24-hour day/night cycle) and another world where everyone can live in their own time stream.

I found the concept of a city of constant day and one of constant night (and the mysterious, ghostly realm of Dusk) an interesting one and I wanted to know more about how these cities came to be. Many residents of Dayzone seem borderline obsessed with the endless light and heat – as much as I love the sun and being warm, I don’t think I could handle it all day every day. I wouldn’t care to live in the dark either and the city of Dusk is unknown to many. These three cities blended together to create an excellent setting for a sci-fi novel.

Then the different time zones come crashing in and wreck everything. There was nothing in the book’s description that led me to believe there would also be timey-wimey details to mess with my head. People can buy different time streams/zones to live in and somehow switch between them whenever they want? And different companies or sections of the cities run on their own time zones? And there are even time crashes (like stock market crashes maybe?) that can drive people insane. What drove me insane was not knowing how any of that worked. Nyquist was constantly changing his watch to match whatever time of whatever building he was in and I didn’t see why any time matters if you can just constantly adjust your watch.

The mixture of the day and night zones and the endless switching of times gave this book a dreamlike feel. Sometimes that works for me, but in this case it didn’t. I was incredibly confused. Near the halfway point I decided to glaze over any details regarding the switching of times or Nyquist’s confusion about what time it was (which was pretty much constant – I mean, how could anyone function like that? Why have time at all!?) so I could focus on the mystery aspect.

That didn’t do much for me either. Nyquist is your typical alcoholic, down-on-his-luck, divorced detective who gets in over his head. I normally don’t mind that cliché if the character has some substance but Nyquist fell flat for me. None of the other characters really made an impression on me and when the convoluted ending came along I was so over everything.

I don’t actually understand what happened in the end or how the story was resolved and I really don’t care. This book was a disappointment – I thought I’d be instantly in love and I wasn’t even eventually in love. I hate to say it, but I almost think this would be better as a movie – shortened and simplified a bit. I wonder what it would be like if the different timelines had been left out and the focus kept on the two cities…alas, I’ll never know.

If you’re a fan of sci-fi that focuses on time and detective novels, you might enjoy this. Maybe you’ll understand it a hell of a lot better than I did!

I received a copy of this book for free from Angry Robot in exchange for an honest review.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Time, time, time/See what's become of me"

While reading A Man of Shadows I found myself becoming wary of every timepiece in my house. Why does the microwave clock read 11:45 when the oven clock reads 10:32 and the wall clock reads 2:55?
Which is th correct time? If I call the speaking clock number will anyone answer? Can anyone tell me "at the tone the time will be..." or am I on my own? Who decides what time it is for me?

In short this book has caused me a great deal of anxiety. With a major birthday looming soon I find myself fretting over the passing of time, current time, future time, how many minutes I have left in this lifetime etc. John Nyquist was also running away from time but simultaneously running towards a certain time. Once again Jeff Noon serves up a major mindfuck disguised as a story. Don't get me wrong, this book is fantastic and the story is gripping and well done. Maybe too much so.

Part hardboiled derivative story, part noir, part speculative fiction, part literary acid trip etc.

Even now looking at the window at what appears to be sunlight I wonder if this light is actually sunlight or if bulb monkeys are somewheee high above me replacing bulbs. When dusk comes will it bring along a foggy mist? Is the impending darkness truly nighttime or am I just on an alternative timeline?

At the tone the time will be...

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really interesting piece of science-fiction meets existential noir. It reminded me a lot of The City and the City by China Mieville which I just read as it's essentially the same sort of themes and plot lines. I particularly enjoyed the world building of this novel and the setting was something I found really fascinating and wanted to know a lot more about. I also really liked the characters although I wish they were a little more developed as a lot of the dialogue in the first half of the book was really forced. Apart from this, a very innovative piece of weird fiction that takes after the likes of Mieville and Kafka although the writing and ideas are nowhere near as developed.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my teens I read Jeff Noon's delightfully bizarre sci-fi, including Vurt, Pollen, and Automated Alice. Although I remember very little about the plots, the weird technologies stuck in my mind, notably virtual reality feathers and nanotech pollen. When I saw he'd started publishing a new series I was a little wary of the crime noir concept, but decided to give 'A Man of Shadows' a try nonetheless. The setting is strange and vivid: an unnamed city half in permanent artificial darkness and half in permanent artificial light. Between the two is a dangerous and mysterious strip of Dusk. In the Dayzone, timezones have been privatised to improve productivity and hundreds of them compete for popularity. The result is constant extreme uncertainty about what time it is. All three zones of the city are vividly imagined and surprisingly spooky. Chronological confusion is especially unsettling to read about in the current Covid Time. A train trip through Dusk was genuinely frightening; the book's most memorable scene. Noon shows the ways that various incidental characters have been damaged by the city's peculiarities rather well. Indeed, the most striking scenes had little to do with the plot.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the protagonist John Nyquist. It was difficult to understand how such a weird place could produce such a thoroughly dull man. Perhaps he was meant to subvert noir tropes by embodying them all, however I found no signs of subversion or parody. He ticks every box: private investigator, estranged ex-wife, trouble paying the rent, alcohol problem, whisky specifically, embittered by life, daddy issues, no hobbies, no friends, no family. The only innovation is that he never knows what time it is. The plot follows him on a case locating a runaway teenage girl named Eleanor. This he does, then becomes obsessed with her situation, presumably because there is literally nothing else going on in his life except drinking. Eleanor doesn't much appreciate his stalking. Nyquist begins the book with fresh wounds from a fight and gets progressively more beaten up, drunk, tortured, drugged, and sleep-deprived as it goes on. By the end, I found it almost impossible to believe that he was still alive, let alone on his feet. Given the perpetual drinking and sleep deprivation, he was in desperate need of an intervention and detox throughout. I completely lost patience with him when he had a drug-induced hallucination of himself murdering Eleanor and immediately decided that he must emulate it, rather than protecting her. His two settings 'protect girl' and 'murder girl' make a very stupid dichotomy, frankly. You don't have to do things just because you saw them during drug-induced psychosis! It's like he has eradicated all critical thinking functions by drinking and not sleeping, which makes for a very frustrating narrative perspective. Take a nap, man.

I would have liked to read the story told instead from the perspective of Eleanor, a teenager whose parents are keeping secrets and hire a large, drunk, injured man who keeps following her. Looking back on the plot, Nyquist did not need to be involved at all. Could this have been a deliberate subversion of noir tropes? Who knows. Based on Noon's earlier books, I was also expecting more fun. 'A Man of Shadows' is gloomy in the extreme, with no levity at all. The dialogue is all like this:

She handed it to him. He lifted the lid and listened, searching for a memory, something from his own childhood.
It wasn't there. It was dead. Dead and buried.
He threw the box to the floor and brought his boot heel down on it, breaking it in two.
"Oh my god!" cried Eleanor. "What is wrong with you?"
Nyquist stared at her. Her hands punched the air.
"You're crazy," she yelled. "I think you're actually halfway disturbed."
"I'm doing what needs to be done." He wiped at his face with his hand. "What does the time seven past seven mean to you?"
"Nothing. Why?"
"Think! Seven minutes past seven. It must mean something."
Eleanor ignored the question. Instead she started to push her belongings back in the bag. She stood up.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I need to get out of here."
"That's not going to happen."
"This is ridiculous. I'm leaving. Open the door."
"Sit down."
"Give me the key."
"Sit the hell down!"
Nyquist's face had a brutal look, there was no arguing with it. Eleanor sat down on the edge of the bed. She said, "You're as bad as they are, as bad as Kinkaid and Bale."
"Yes. I'm sorry."
"What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong with you?"
Nyquist took a breath. His eyes held too much darkness. And then he said, "I have no parents. None."

Quoted in isolation that sounds like a Batman parody. I'm not sufficiently fond of crime fiction to swallow such verbiage, even when the setting is rather fascinating. Adding this to the 'great setting, shame about the protagonist' pile with Aurorarama, Europe in Autumn, and Senlin Ascends.

[Steven Shaviro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Jeff Noon ever since his debut novel, VURT, from 1993. Noon's latest novel is a noir detective thriller, set in a city divided into two zones, Dayzone, where it is always bright daylight. and Nocturna, where it is always nighttime. In both cases we have artificial day and night: Dayzone is lit with so much artificial light, bulbs and neon lights and whatever, that you cannot see the sky at all -- it is huamn-made illumination however high up you go. Nocturna also seems to be domed away from the sky; bulbs high up are like stars, making for artificial constellations. Between these two main regions is the ambiguous realm of Dusk, an area of ambiguity, of mist and shadows and diffuse artificial moonlight, where it is dangerous to go. People who enter Dusk are most often never seen again. Trains traverse the Dusk as they shuttle people between Dayzone and Nocturna, but the trains never stop in Dusk itself.

A Man of Shadows is about day and night, or light and darkness; but it is also about time. There are multiple time streams in Dayzone and in Nocturna -- every activity and every place seems to have a different time. People are always manically switching the time on their watches and clocks, in order to keep up with whatever region they are in, or whatever activity they are following. In Dayzone, the incessant light supposedly boosts industrial productivity; everyone is always busy and nobody gets enough sleep -- nobody even knows when it is time to sleep. Rest and sleep are possible in Nocturna, but there are also plenty of nighttime activities -- bars and clubs and the like -- as well as mysterious zones where it is always midnight, so time barely seems to pass at all.

The novel's protagonist, John Nyquist, is a down and out detective drawn straight from the realms of film noir. He is hired by the richest man in Dayzone to find his missing daughter, and from there he is drawn into ever-deeper regions of mystery and ambiguity. I won't go into the plot in detail, but suffice it to say that Nyquist discovers the seamy underside both of Dayzone's frantic capitalist activity, and of Nocturna's hidden underworld. There are mysterious illicit drugs that alter your sense of time, murders by an invisible killer that turns out to involve time theft, and art works that expand or contract light and shadow, time and stasis. Nyquist struggles to figure out what is going on, and to rescue the young woman Eleanor who seems to be in danger from her involvement in all these activities, at the same time that he struggles through his own neurotic difficulties. The threat of a "time crash" -- sort of like the financial crisis of 2008, but involving everyone's existential sense of duration (since after all, time is money) hangs over everything.

What really makes the book, though, is its surreal, poetic evocations of the three realms of daylight, nighttime, and dusk. The novel's emotional center lies in these descriptions: the exultation and madness of the day, the alluring mystery and menacing coolness of the night, the physical heaviness of the mist of dusk.

[Clair · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful blend of sci-fi and mystery with a noir feel. Jeff Noon is a master of descriptive prose. Intricate writing and vivid depictions bring the complex world to life. Its dark, disturbing with plenty of bizareness thrown into the mix. Amazing world building in a city where time is a commodity and citizens move from one time to another adjusting their wristwatches to match one of the different timelines on offer. The city is split into 3 zones: Dayzone where darkness has been banished by billions of light sources and it is always bright. Nocturna where darkness lives. And the area in between which people refer to as Dusk where it is rumoured ghosts, shadows and dark shapes live within the mist.

Nyquist’s latest job is to track down a runaway girl Eleanor. But the case turns out much more complex as it appears Eleanor may hold the key to the city’s future. Whilst a vicious serial killer known as Quicksilver stalks the streets of Dayzone adding another dimension of horror to the tale. The writing is deeply layered as we follow Nyquist on his quest more and more complexity is revealed. There were plot twists I didn’t see coming which I love in a good mystery. Because it was a complex book this one took me a while to read but I still really enjoyed it.

John Nyquist is an interesting many-layered protagonist, a noir detective, a tough looking man with raw edges and a sharp mind. Eleanor Bale is another complex character an 18 year old girl, combining beauty and fragility with amazing strength. There are a multitude of other interesting and varied characters all well fleshed out.

I loved the book so much its going in my must read again pile. I can’t wait for a sequel. Its certainly changed the way I think of time.

I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys, sci-fi, urban fantasy, mystery, detective noir, wierd fiction and likes complex and layered stories.

I received a free advanced reader copy via Netgallery and Angry Robot in return for an honest review.