Books Tasted - Everything bookly (and a few other things)

I finished The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes over a week ago, but life has been busy so I haven't had the time to post my review. I am not entirely sure about my feelings for this book, but I think they can mostly be summed up as "phht."

The book is set in post-Victorian London, shortly after the Queen has died, and is both a murder mystery and a gothic horror fantasy. The main character is a magician/detective with a companion, the Somnambulist, who is a giant white mute who drinks gallons of milk and doesn't really care about eating anything else. Think that will be explained in the book? Spoiler Alert - it won't. Most things in the book aren't explained. Normally, I don't have a problem with fantasy books not explaining why, but this book is set in a real historical backdrop, so I found it incredibly irritating. If you are going to make most things everyday, then the fantastical should be explained. It's like Barnes wanted to make a new mythology, but he doesn't build up the appropriate framework to do so. A review on the back of the book compares him to Neil Gaiman, but Neil Gaiman provides foundations for his fantasies that take place in the real world. Barnes does not.

When I picked up the book and read the first few chapters, I was intrigued and expected to really like it. But the further I got, the weirder it got with little explanation or reason, and the grosser and gorier it got. The ending was unsatisfying and full of loose ends. I had high hopes for this book, but they went unfulfilled. I tried looking at it from a literary viewpoint - iwhat does it signify that the book is titled after a relatively minor character? - but came up with little suggesting a deeper meaning.

I do not recommend The Somnambulist.