The Domino Men »

Jonathan Barnes, author of the critically acclaimed novel The Somnambulist, graduated from Oxford University with a first in English literature. He reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and lives in London.

In an earlier century, Queen Victoria made a Faustian bargain, signing London and all its souls away to a nefarious, inhuman entity. Now, generations later, the bill has finally come due....

An amiable, unambitious London file clerk, Henry Lamb leads an unremarkable life—until the day he learns he's expected to assume the covert responsibilities of his universally despised, now comatose grandfather. London is at war, and a shadowy organization known (to a very few) as the Directorate wishes to recruit Henry to the cause. All he has to do is find "the girl," save the world from the monster Leviathan, and defeat the unspeakable evil lurking in the cellar of 10 Downing Street: the serial-slaying schoolboy twins known as the Domino Men.

The Washington Post - Jeff VanderMeer

…remember the book's title, which turns the spotlight on the Domino Men, those "creatures of fire and sulphur." Introduced in The Somnambulist, this leering pair, otherwise known as Hawker and Boon, are terrifying in a jovial, vaudevillian way: a demented, supernatural Tweedledum and Tweedledee who take pleasure in pain. They are Barnes's greatest achievement in this novel, and he gives them unmatched life and verve.