The July issue of Slice juuuuust went up on this very website and is making its way out into the metro even now, and already I have an addition to my summer reading list (as detailed on page 18). A couple of days ago our Art Director Scotty O’Daniel handed me a paperback copy of The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes – check out this description from the back cover:
“Once the toast of good society in Victoria's England, the extraordinary conjurer Edward Moon no longer commands the respect that he did in earlier times. Still, each night he returns to the stage of his theater to amaze his devoted, albeit dwindling, audience, aided by his partner, the Somnambulist – a silent, hairless, hulking giant who, when stabbed, does not bleed. But these are strange, strange times in England, with the oddest of sorts prowling London’s dank underbelly. And the very bizarre death of a disreputable actor has compelled a baffled police constabulary to turn once again to Edward Moon for help – inevitably setting in motion events that will shatter his increasingly tenuous grasp on reality.”
I’d probably give it a shot based on that pitch alone if I saw it on a bookstore shelf, but coupled with Scotty’s recommendation it’s moved to the top of my reading list… the more so since he said that while he was enjoying it, he kept thinking that I would love it based on the quantity of “Steve words.” Which, I need hardly tell you, is awesome.
STEVE GILL is unusually tall, has a B.A. in Letters and a minor in Classics from OU, drinks a great deal of coffee and openly delights in writing, editing and catching the occasional typo for Slice – especially since his dream career (millionaire layabout in a P.G. Wodehouse novel) is notoriously difficult to break into. He's probably trying to think of a joke about pirates right now.
