Description:

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Exclusive: Barry Eisler Reviews Sleepless

Sleepless:

One of the great things about Sleepless is about zombies, and a dystopian Los Angeles that's as real as tomorrow, and horribly believable government/corporate conspiracies, and a stylish and awesomely capable assassin--and you realize when you finish (tears in your eyes, in my case), that it's really about the unlikely human bonds that transcend shock and horror and trauma.

There are so many things I loved about this book. That sly Huston humor, lurking just beneath the tilted and terrifying zombified world he depicts, is one:

"Movies themselves had not stopped shooting. Certainly production had been scaled back, and more than one studio had gone under or, more accurately, been consumed whole by somewhat heartier competitors, but even as energy costs spiked, even as all cities, most suburbs, and many rural areas, experienced outbreaks of organized violence, even as the standing army was deployed with obvious permanence to the oil fields in Alaska, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and Brazil, even as the draft was reinstated and the gears of the economy audibly snapped their teeth and ground to a squealing halt, even as the drought extended and crops withered, even as the ice caps melted and coastal waters rose, people still liked a good picture."

And Charlie isn't only skilled with the broad brush. His grace notes, the little asides that animate the larger images and characters and themes, are legion. It felt so right that sufferers from the sleepless disease call the non-afflicted "snorers"... and there's Vinnie the Fish, the ex-criminal and current open-air seafood restauranteur who believes the height of dining elegance is a meal served with a real fork, not a spork... and the lethally poised Lady Chizu's carefully arranged collection of typewriters "upon which suicide notes were written. And not another word, after."

Some of what's in the book felt so real I had to Google it to know more. A role-playing game called Chasm Tide. The etiology of Fatal Familial Insomnia and the sleepless prion. I won't tell you what I found, but I was all the more impressed.

I could go on, but I'm running out of room. So let me just note again the aforementioned assassin, Jasper. If you've read my Rain books, you know I like assassins possessed of style, exceptional lethality, and unusual self-awareness. Jasper has all that, and more. He's the best fictional assassin I've come across in a long time: believable, fascinating, ruthless. A joy to spend time with, as is the book itself.

The characters, the vision, the atmosphere... long after the final page surrenders the last of the story's surprising and utterly satisfying secrets, Sleepless will stay with you. It's Charlie's best yet--his most ambitious, his most engrossing, his most affecting. A strong statement, you'll agree, if you've read his other terrific stories. But see for yourself--and prepare to be wowed._ --Barry Eisler_

From Publishers Weekly

In Huston's impressive, challenging thriller set in a postapocalyptic Los Angeles, a devastating illness renders the afflicted unable to sleep. In about a year, those with SLP (as the sleepless illness is known) deteriorate and die. Amid the city's rampant violence and lawlessness, LAPD cop Parker Park Haas tries to persuade himself that a future exists for his newborn daughter. As the outside world becomes increasingly dangerous, Park pursues an undercover investigation that takes him deep into the milieu of an online game called Chasm Tide, into which many people have retreated. As in the author's Joe Pitt vampire series (_My Dead Body_, etc.), this book has at its heart a love story: Park's wife is dying from SLP, and Park begins to fear he may be getting it, too. Can the mysterious mercenary known only as Jasper help? Some fans of Huston's crime fiction may not be comfortable with a novel that itself resembles a role-playing game, but it will gain him a whole new readership. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.