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John Nyquist #4
Within Without
In the year 1960, private eye John Nyquist arrives in Delirium, a city of a million borders, to pursue his strangest case yet: tracking down Oberon, the stolen, sentient image of faded film star Vince Craven. As Nyquist tracks Oberon through a series of ever-stranger and more surreal borders, he hears tantalising stories of the Yeald, a First Wall hidden at Delirium's heart. But to get the help he needs to find it, he'll have to journey into the fractured minds of the city's residents, and even into his own....
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First published May 11, 2021
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About the author
Jeff Noon
36 books854 followersJeff 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.
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December 5, 2022
For those of us who LOVE to read tales of extraordinary imagination, Alice in Wonderland, Calvino's Cosmicomics, Borges' Labyrinths, Lem's Star Diaries, it's time to celebrate this Jeff Noon novel under review.
Within Without (Nyquist mystery #4): we're given scene after scene after scene to take the breath away. I could almost not believe the power of Jeff Noon's imagination as I turned the pages.
Sure, there are those mind-boggling happenings in A Man of Shadows, The Body Library and Creeping Jenny (Nyquist #1-3) but with Within Without, as unbelievable as it might seem, the bar is raised high enough to cause signature Jeff Noon-ish technicolor hallucinations to explode into a rainbow of even more dazzling phantasmagoria.
Question: What did I do when I finished reading the final paragraph of Within Without (along with listening to Toby Longworth's superb narration)? Answer: I eagerly turned back to Zone One and set out on a second read of the novel since I wasn't nearly ready to say goodbye to John Nyquist.
Ah, John Nyquist, a private eye as big and as tough as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and as sullen as Arnaldur Indriðason's Inspector Erlendur, a man burdened with a tragic past having lost both parents when age seven and plunged into a hardscrabble fight for survival.
Within Without can be read as a standalone novel but to absorb the full impact of the drama contained in this Nyquist mystery, I heartily recommend you read all the Nyquist novels, most especially Creeping Jenny (Nyquist #3). Why the recommendation? Here's the skinny: for the case in Within Without, sleuthhound Nyquist takes along his new assistant, a twenty-year-old lad by the name of Teddy Fairclough. This is the first time Nyquist, a loner at heart, has worked with anyone. Why would Nyquist do such a thing? We're given the details of how Nyquist developed a strong bond with young Mr. Fairclough in Creeping Jenny.
Quick strokes for context: A Man of Shadows (Nyquist mystery #1) and The Body Library (Nyquist mystery #2) are both urban tales a la Philip K Dick and China Miéville. Creeping Jenny, on the other hand, takes place in an English village and will remind readers of Arthur Machen and Thomas Ligotti. Within Without is set in 1960, in the British city of Delirium, a name that hits the bullseye in a dozen delicious, delirious ways.
Delirium - as in raving, frenzy, fury, fervor and phantasm. What's in store for Nyquist and Teddy? Take a gander at my Within Without highlight reel:
CONUNDRUM CITY
Before taking on celebrity film star Vince Craven as a client, Nyquist has always turned down jobs in Delirium due to the city's terrible reputation: rumors of visitors getting lost forever, getting found in the wrong place and time, getting trapped in tiny spaces or forced to wander endlessly in confusion. And all the many borders, thousands or even millions of borders within the city, separating and sectioning off one part from all the others and many borders requiring a toll or password or a bribe paid to an official.
QUIZZICAL QUEUES
As a first step to gain entry into Delirium, Nyquist stands in the longest line he has ever seen. He shuffles along in a corridor so narrow he must move sideways, forever squeezed in by the person in front and the person behind. According to his watch only twenty minutes passed since he joined the queue but it seems like an age. He hears a great chant rise up from everyone: "WE ARE THE QUEUE! WE ARE THE QUEUE!" Meanwhile, words are written in black ink on the wall: There is only the queue, nothing but the queue, we are the queue. Where's Teddy? Nyquist strains to catch a glimpse of the lad. He's having second thoughts about bringing Teddy along on this case.
And once in the city, men and women and children take delight waiting in long lines in front of stores or at the many border crossings. Are they all on drugs? Actually, even as the Delirium craziness becomes crazier and crazier, there's not even one mention of drugs. Perhaps a good thing - what Nyquist and everyone else must deal with in Delirium is acid trip trippy enough.
BORDER BOONDOGGLES
Nyquist finally makes it to the desk where an official checks his passport and papers. An Officer Maddox asks Nyquist to open his suitcase. He does so. She riffles through the contents then her face shows concern. "She pulled the blue shirt free, revealing the base of the suitcase. There was something hidden there. Nyquist looked on with astonishment. It was a black circle about three inches across, sharp-edged, with a shimmering quality to it."
Another officer picks up the black circle with a pair of tweezers and drops the thing in a glass bowl filled with water, or another type of clear liquid. Once submerged, the circle dissolves, turning a liquid grey and then fades completely. Nyquist looks on dumbfounded and asks the official, "What was that thing?" The burly official doesn't answer but orders Nyquist to move along and make room for the next person.
Just at that point Nyquist spots Teddy standing in another line. Then the unexpected: "The first beam of light caught the young man, setting his face aglow so that every emotion was shown clearly, the joy and then the shock, and then the pain. He screamed....Teddy had fallen to the floor, right in the middle of the borderline. His body writhed about, arms and legs juddering, a high-pitched whine coming from his lips."
THE MULTIPLE PHASES OF IDENTITY
The above happenings are from the opening pages. As you move further into Jeff Noon's astonishing tale, be prepared to explore various dimensions, both within and without, of what it can mean to be fully human. How extreme are we talking here? To take one example: Nyquist looks on as Alice ponders her next chess move as she sits across the board from her opponent - Gregor Samsa in all his six legged dung beetle glory.
British author Jeff Noon, born 1957
June 11, 2022
Frankly, Jeff Noon cannot be beat. When it comes to outright feats of the imagination, there are VERY few writers who can pull off a truly WEIRD, delightfully original, and thoroughly quasi-meta fiction with several hard-core levels. And he does it by writing a basic Noir mystery novel in some kind of 1960s.
It's really easy to read but it's insanely difficult to describe.
Jeff Noon somehow re-invents the fantasy genre while couching it within a mystery, throwing us into some VERY detailed and strict worldbuilding rules. (And each Nyquist adventure is in a completely different kind of reality that Nyquist has to figure out, just as we must.) It gets thoroughly wild.
In brief: we travel between the cities of Delirium and Escher. In Delirium, images of a person can be cut or they can escape. A movie star has his extra persona, his image, go missing. This is where Nyquist comes in.
The place is a paranoic dreamland and Nyquist starts hearing voices and falling under the spell of the city, and that's barely the beginning. People's whole identities are caught up in what's within them, the alter ego that sometimes comes out to play. The alters, themselves, are quite independent and rather literary. The alter that went missing is named Oberon. Nyquist's alter just happens to be a certain Gregor Samsa. And if you know who I mean, you can guess a LOT about what will happen here. And yes, it IS that wild.
And all the while, the many mysteries unfold. I cannot recommend these books enough. They're super smart, amazingly original, and freakishly glorious.
It's really easy to read but it's insanely difficult to describe.
Jeff Noon somehow re-invents the fantasy genre while couching it within a mystery, throwing us into some VERY detailed and strict worldbuilding rules. (And each Nyquist adventure is in a completely different kind of reality that Nyquist has to figure out, just as we must.) It gets thoroughly wild.
In brief: we travel between the cities of Delirium and Escher. In Delirium, images of a person can be cut or they can escape. A movie star has his extra persona, his image, go missing. This is where Nyquist comes in.
The place is a paranoic dreamland and Nyquist starts hearing voices and falling under the spell of the city, and that's barely the beginning. People's whole identities are caught up in what's within them, the alter ego that sometimes comes out to play. The alters, themselves, are quite independent and rather literary. The alter that went missing is named Oberon. Nyquist's alter just happens to be a certain Gregor Samsa. And if you know who I mean, you can guess a LOT about what will happen here. And yes, it IS that wild.
And all the while, the many mysteries unfold. I cannot recommend these books enough. They're super smart, amazingly original, and freakishly glorious.
July 17, 2021
This is the fourth book in the series of weird fiction fantasy novels featuring the enquiry agent John Nyquist. Each book can be read as a standalone since each book takes you to a different world with different rules and there is no connection between them. However, I suggest that you start with one of the other books.
I have enjoyed the other books in the series, I guess I like weird. However, this book is truly WEIRD. Nyquist and his apprentice Teddy are hired to recover the image of a rock star. The image called Oberon, which was tacked on to the exterior of the rock star, has either run away or been stolen. The search for Oberon takes the detectives to Delirium, a world full of multitudes of borders, some only a few feet apart, some intersecting and some that are constantly shifting. “At one point they were encased by four different boundaries, one on each side of a crossroads. To the east was a fragile wall made of a giant sheet of crinkled paper, to the south a fence of corrugated steel, to the west a sturdy wooden gateway across a side-street, to the north a mass of people holding up placards marked with Xs to mark the borderline of a newly formed realm.”
In addition to images and borders, it turns out that everyone has an inverse self that is a literary character living inside of them. And then there are the entities with letters and symbols instead of feet who are stamping out stories. Honestly, the rules in this book changed from page to page. It was entirely too much for me and this was definitely my least favorite book of the series. If the author continues with the Nyquist series (not at all certain) I will read the next book, but I am hoping for a little less crazy next time.
I have enjoyed the other books in the series, I guess I like weird. However, this book is truly WEIRD. Nyquist and his apprentice Teddy are hired to recover the image of a rock star. The image called Oberon, which was tacked on to the exterior of the rock star, has either run away or been stolen. The search for Oberon takes the detectives to Delirium, a world full of multitudes of borders, some only a few feet apart, some intersecting and some that are constantly shifting. “At one point they were encased by four different boundaries, one on each side of a crossroads. To the east was a fragile wall made of a giant sheet of crinkled paper, to the south a fence of corrugated steel, to the west a sturdy wooden gateway across a side-street, to the north a mass of people holding up placards marked with Xs to mark the borderline of a newly formed realm.”
In addition to images and borders, it turns out that everyone has an inverse self that is a literary character living inside of them. And then there are the entities with letters and symbols instead of feet who are stamping out stories. Honestly, the rules in this book changed from page to page. It was entirely too much for me and this was definitely my least favorite book of the series. If the author continues with the Nyquist series (not at all certain) I will read the next book, but I am hoping for a little less crazy next time.
July 12, 2021
"For want of a voice, he made a voice, and he spoke to himself in the emptiness, the only voice in the silence. “My name is… my name is… my name is… my name is… my name is… nothing. My name is No Thing. Nigh Thing. Nything. Night Thing. Night Quick? My name is Night Quest. Nye Quest? My name is Nyquist. Yes. Yes! Nyquist. Yes.” So, he had a name."
John Nyquist has taken a job in the city of Delirium, which instantly sounds like a looovely place. A city of borders, in every conceivable meaning of the word. You can barely take a step without crossing some border or other, or hitting a border you have to first request to be allowed to cross:
"Nyquist had been asked to take on cases in Delirium before today, but he had always turned them down. The city’s reputation was terrible, with rumours of people getting lost forever, or even worse, getting found in the wrong place at the wrong time of day, or getting left behind, or pushed ahead, trapped in tiny spaces, in silent rooms, or walking the streets at night aimlessly, seeking a doorway, an entrance, a port or gate, a border to cross, just any goddamn way to escape the place! It was easy to be caught here forever, for the rest of your life."
So Nyquist and his young assistant, Teddy, find themselves in the employ of destitute rockstar Vince Craven. Craven used to be enchanted with a glamorous 'self', which has the name Oberon. Oberon used to be attached to Craven, and it was what gave him his rockstar charisma. Someone seems to have stolen Oberon, and it's up to Nyquist and Teddy to find it back.
"Nyquist looked past the maid, down the long hallway of the house. He couldn’t make out the exact depth; the corridor was in constant trembling motion and seemed to have no definite end. There was a sudden flicker and a doorway appeared in a wall, or at least he noticed it for the first time. The effect was unnerving."
What follows is the kind of mindbending adventure we've come to expect from Jeff Noon. Not only is there the reality warping effects of the countless borders in the city, there are enchanters who are almost impossible to find. There is a place where everyone gets to speak to the fictional character that has nestled inside their heads.
It's a lot, but it works. The book isn't as impactful for me as Creeping Jenny was, that feels like a more rounded, satisfying story. Still, Noon loves himself some literary psychedelica (and I love to read it) in most of his books, but here he takes it to another level.
"Waxwane spoke to him with many noises, many of them human in origin, some of them sounding like animals: chittering, hissing, howling, weeping, cries of ecstasy, the gnashing of teeth; bellowing and susurration and the sound of lips smacking together, grunts and guffaws, and a constant undercurrent of whispering, whispering…"
I'm left with the question whether John Nyquist will return. I certainly hope so. This series remains unique.
(Thanks to Angry Robot for providing me with an ARC through Edelweiss)
John Nyquist has taken a job in the city of Delirium, which instantly sounds like a looovely place. A city of borders, in every conceivable meaning of the word. You can barely take a step without crossing some border or other, or hitting a border you have to first request to be allowed to cross:
"Nyquist had been asked to take on cases in Delirium before today, but he had always turned them down. The city’s reputation was terrible, with rumours of people getting lost forever, or even worse, getting found in the wrong place at the wrong time of day, or getting left behind, or pushed ahead, trapped in tiny spaces, in silent rooms, or walking the streets at night aimlessly, seeking a doorway, an entrance, a port or gate, a border to cross, just any goddamn way to escape the place! It was easy to be caught here forever, for the rest of your life."
So Nyquist and his young assistant, Teddy, find themselves in the employ of destitute rockstar Vince Craven. Craven used to be enchanted with a glamorous 'self', which has the name Oberon. Oberon used to be attached to Craven, and it was what gave him his rockstar charisma. Someone seems to have stolen Oberon, and it's up to Nyquist and Teddy to find it back.
"Nyquist looked past the maid, down the long hallway of the house. He couldn’t make out the exact depth; the corridor was in constant trembling motion and seemed to have no definite end. There was a sudden flicker and a doorway appeared in a wall, or at least he noticed it for the first time. The effect was unnerving."
What follows is the kind of mindbending adventure we've come to expect from Jeff Noon. Not only is there the reality warping effects of the countless borders in the city, there are enchanters who are almost impossible to find. There is a place where everyone gets to speak to the fictional character that has nestled inside their heads.
It's a lot, but it works. The book isn't as impactful for me as Creeping Jenny was, that feels like a more rounded, satisfying story. Still, Noon loves himself some literary psychedelica (and I love to read it) in most of his books, but here he takes it to another level.
"Waxwane spoke to him with many noises, many of them human in origin, some of them sounding like animals: chittering, hissing, howling, weeping, cries of ecstasy, the gnashing of teeth; bellowing and susurration and the sound of lips smacking together, grunts and guffaws, and a constant undercurrent of whispering, whispering…"
I'm left with the question whether John Nyquist will return. I certainly hope so. This series remains unique.
(Thanks to Angry Robot for providing me with an ARC through Edelweiss)
May 11, 2021
Within Without is the fourth instalment in Jeff Noon’s award-nominated and critically acclaimed Nyquist Mystery series. The year is 1960 and John Henry Nyquist and his ever-present assistant, Teddy Fairclough, decide to take on a case in the city of Delirium. In Delirium where the borders are legion and are constantly changing between the different parts of the city. They multiply and take various forms, from conventional barriers to guard posts, through magical barriers and human chains and people have frequently reported being trapped there forever. The constant reshuffling of the borders of Delirium leads to continuous redistributions of the city and crowd movements which constitute more or less foreign movements of tension and jubilation. Delirium's borders are material, but also magical, and can interact with individuals to mark them. Teddy, is, for example, "spotted" by the "Waxwane Gate", while the enchantress Lizzie Pursglove has many scars on her face from her travels across borders. Despite some natural reservations about visiting the area, Nyquist goes to meet new client Vince Craven, a popular and prominent movie star whose image, Oberon, has gone missing. Oberon’s spirit has somehow, in the grand scheme of things, managed to be involuntarily, or forcibly, removed from his body and now he is left without the vital part of himself he shows to the public.
The journey, as always with Noon, is a wildly unpredictable one and his books provide adults with that childlike mirth and excitement first felt when reading as a child. Can Nyquist and Fairclough retrieve Oberon from a mysterious and devilishly troublesome locale without ending up losing themselves in the process? This is a compulsive, captivating and wonderfully weird addition to the series with Noon’s precise, fascinating and thoroughly imaginative plotting and worldbuilding omnipresent. It's an entertaining and highly original thriller peopled by quirky, idiosyncratic characters that bring the narrative alive, and although I'm not usually a fan of the supernatural, here it never feels forced and holds your interest right from the beginning with all of the rich imagination that has gone into it and you know with Noon you will be getting a masterfully woven plot that is full of intricate detail, details that most other authors would ultimately neglect. The story works its way under your skin and the fantastical elements to it feel like taking a much-needed break from our stressful reality. Infused throughout are the appearances of famous literary characters and philosophical rumination, which I adored. Indeed, you never quite know what you're going to get with a Noon novel, but one thing you can invariably rely on him to do is to weave a magnificent, thoroughly unusual and intriguing read. Highly recommended to those into the avant-garde or looking for a unique piece of escapist literature.
The journey, as always with Noon, is a wildly unpredictable one and his books provide adults with that childlike mirth and excitement first felt when reading as a child. Can Nyquist and Fairclough retrieve Oberon from a mysterious and devilishly troublesome locale without ending up losing themselves in the process? This is a compulsive, captivating and wonderfully weird addition to the series with Noon’s precise, fascinating and thoroughly imaginative plotting and worldbuilding omnipresent. It's an entertaining and highly original thriller peopled by quirky, idiosyncratic characters that bring the narrative alive, and although I'm not usually a fan of the supernatural, here it never feels forced and holds your interest right from the beginning with all of the rich imagination that has gone into it and you know with Noon you will be getting a masterfully woven plot that is full of intricate detail, details that most other authors would ultimately neglect. The story works its way under your skin and the fantastical elements to it feel like taking a much-needed break from our stressful reality. Infused throughout are the appearances of famous literary characters and philosophical rumination, which I adored. Indeed, you never quite know what you're going to get with a Noon novel, but one thing you can invariably rely on him to do is to weave a magnificent, thoroughly unusual and intriguing read. Highly recommended to those into the avant-garde or looking for a unique piece of escapist literature.
May 1, 2021
The best Nyquist mystery so far.
This had the best story, the greatest ideas, the most impressive characters, and the most satisfying ending of the four books starring John Nyquist. Within Without is also LAYERED in literary Easter eggs and homages. One of the many senses of wonder here has to do with the characters finding out who their own inverse characters are, then you find out that those are literally in verse and shit's amazing it just goes from there. There was something about what the actual mystery being solved was that appealed to me, what the reasons for what was happening turned out to be, and while the other books flipped concepts like time and religion and rituals on their ears, this one was more human and dealt with personality and self-image and who you invent yourself to be, it was a much more personal and emotional book. Four books in and you'd think things would become somewhat formulaic by this point. Noon's formula is that he has no formula, he writes some of the most original and intriguing books I've ever read and each one is remarkable for different reasons.
Within Without was fun, fast paced, and it will take you places you ain't never been, sincerely.
I want to thank Netgalley, Angry Robot, and Jeff Noon for the review copy and opinions are always my own.
This had the best story, the greatest ideas, the most impressive characters, and the most satisfying ending of the four books starring John Nyquist. Within Without is also LAYERED in literary Easter eggs and homages. One of the many senses of wonder here has to do with the characters finding out who their own inverse characters are, then you find out that those are literally in verse and shit's amazing it just goes from there. There was something about what the actual mystery being solved was that appealed to me, what the reasons for what was happening turned out to be, and while the other books flipped concepts like time and religion and rituals on their ears, this one was more human and dealt with personality and self-image and who you invent yourself to be, it was a much more personal and emotional book. Four books in and you'd think things would become somewhat formulaic by this point. Noon's formula is that he has no formula, he writes some of the most original and intriguing books I've ever read and each one is remarkable for different reasons.
Within Without was fun, fast paced, and it will take you places you ain't never been, sincerely.
I want to thank Netgalley, Angry Robot, and Jeff Noon for the review copy and opinions are always my own.
March 27, 2021
DNF at 10%.
Aside from a few awkward lines, the writing style is pretty and there is definitely an imaginative story in there.
The problem I have with this book is that, 10% into the story, there are 3 important characters introduced, but I know almost nothing about any of them. I know that Nyquist is a detective of some sort. I know that Teddy is helping Nyquist in some way, is a big fan of Craven, and had a seizure or something like a seizure going through something like customs to enter the city. I know that Craven is a film star who is now less attractive since he has lost some sort of symbiote named Oberone. That is all. I don't know these characters and I don't care what happens to them. I need someone to root for and that is too far overdue. Also, I spent the first 5% of the book reading about one character standing in a line. I'm done.
Thank you NetGalley and Angry Robot for the opportunity to review the Advanced Reader Copy.
Aside from a few awkward lines, the writing style is pretty and there is definitely an imaginative story in there.
The problem I have with this book is that, 10% into the story, there are 3 important characters introduced, but I know almost nothing about any of them. I know that Nyquist is a detective of some sort. I know that Teddy is helping Nyquist in some way, is a big fan of Craven, and had a seizure or something like a seizure going through something like customs to enter the city. I know that Craven is a film star who is now less attractive since he has lost some sort of symbiote named Oberone. That is all. I don't know these characters and I don't care what happens to them. I need someone to root for and that is too far overdue. Also, I spent the first 5% of the book reading about one character standing in a line. I'm done.
Thank you NetGalley and Angry Robot for the opportunity to review the Advanced Reader Copy.
January 7, 2021
I do a lot of freelance proofreading for a variety of publishers but I rarely list those on Goodreads because I consider them to be work rather than reading, and also if I were to list them all I might be less favourable towards some titles which would be wholly unprofessional of me. Suffice to say, I've decided to only list books which I believe I would have sought out and enjoyed independently of 'work'.
Preamble over, this is the third Nyquist mystery I've read and whilst I very much enjoyed the first two this is even better. A mix of noir, fantasy and SF, it's a thoroughly engaging - and in some respects - experimental piece of work, which is beautifully written and contains some excellent ideas. Noon really inhabits Nyquist for this work. Having developed the character over several books he takes him into places both poignant and absorbing. There's a real intelligence on display here, regarding how books work and how to subvert them. I loved it and thoroughly recommend it and can only hope Noon returns to Nyquist's world again.
Preamble over, this is the third Nyquist mystery I've read and whilst I very much enjoyed the first two this is even better. A mix of noir, fantasy and SF, it's a thoroughly engaging - and in some respects - experimental piece of work, which is beautifully written and contains some excellent ideas. Noon really inhabits Nyquist for this work. Having developed the character over several books he takes him into places both poignant and absorbing. There's a real intelligence on display here, regarding how books work and how to subvert them. I loved it and thoroughly recommend it and can only hope Noon returns to Nyquist's world again.
March 30, 2021
I’m never really sure exactly how to review the brilliant mind that is Jeff Noon. The Nyquist novels are amongst my favourite reads ever, yet if you ask me to explain why, explain THEM I really struggle.
This is a series you experience rather than read. I always feel like I’ve gone a bit mad at the end of them and the nights are full of odd dreams every time. Surreal, intuitive and insanely plotted, Nyquist’s world is a world like no other.
In Within Without, Nyquist is literally in Delirium, where the borders are fluid and your inner life comes to, well, life. In this crazy place he must find a glamorous image, save a friend and try to hold onto his sense of self. Aside from that I can’t tell you anything.
Unique in his writing style and with an imagination that blasts past almost anyone else’s, if you are looking for that read like no other, then this author and this series is for you.
My brain hurts.
Highly Recommended.
This is a series you experience rather than read. I always feel like I’ve gone a bit mad at the end of them and the nights are full of odd dreams every time. Surreal, intuitive and insanely plotted, Nyquist’s world is a world like no other.
In Within Without, Nyquist is literally in Delirium, where the borders are fluid and your inner life comes to, well, life. In this crazy place he must find a glamorous image, save a friend and try to hold onto his sense of self. Aside from that I can’t tell you anything.
Unique in his writing style and with an imagination that blasts past almost anyone else’s, if you are looking for that read like no other, then this author and this series is for you.
My brain hurts.
Highly Recommended.
March 22, 2021
Imagine China Mieville went to binge-read Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe books before attempting in an LSD-fuelled fever dream to rewrite Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast in the style of Kafka. That is what Within Without reads like, and I mean that fully and in every way as a compliment.
And this is how you should read the book, too: not in spurts and snatches, but in one feverish nightmare session that leaves you gasping for air, unsure if what you've just read was a dream, a memory (and if so, was it your own?) or a hallucination, and if it wasn't perhaps the best thing that has ever happened to you.
I realise that this review, so far, is not helpful in explaining what this book is about, but I honestly don't think I can. I don't think I understood it, not in the way it wants to be understood. It's like glimpsing greatness and dimly being aware that you lack the intellectual capacity to grasp it.
Let's try again. Nyquist and his friend Teddy travel to Delirium to take on a case - and the name of the town should already tell you where this goes, because they continue going down one rabbit hole after another (and the Alice in Wonderland-reference isn't accidental), in which we follow the thread of the narrative through a setting that becomes increasingly surreal, in much the same way that Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is surreal, another book from which this text has drawn inspiration. Add a dash of Kafka, and perhaps you begin to see why I am rambling the way I am.
It's brilliant. Read it. I think that's the only coherent thing I can say.
By the way, I have read and enjoyed the first in the series but not book 2 and 3 (yet - what can I say, I'm bad at series), and while I'm sure I missed some references because of that, I do think this can well be read as a standalone with no previous knowledge of the other books. You'd be missing out, but that's on you.
I want to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free ARC of this book. All opinions here expressed, however, are my own.
And this is how you should read the book, too: not in spurts and snatches, but in one feverish nightmare session that leaves you gasping for air, unsure if what you've just read was a dream, a memory (and if so, was it your own?) or a hallucination, and if it wasn't perhaps the best thing that has ever happened to you.
I realise that this review, so far, is not helpful in explaining what this book is about, but I honestly don't think I can. I don't think I understood it, not in the way it wants to be understood. It's like glimpsing greatness and dimly being aware that you lack the intellectual capacity to grasp it.
Let's try again. Nyquist and his friend Teddy travel to Delirium to take on a case - and the name of the town should already tell you where this goes, because they continue going down one rabbit hole after another (and the Alice in Wonderland-reference isn't accidental), in which we follow the thread of the narrative through a setting that becomes increasingly surreal, in much the same way that Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is surreal, another book from which this text has drawn inspiration. Add a dash of Kafka, and perhaps you begin to see why I am rambling the way I am.
It's brilliant. Read it. I think that's the only coherent thing I can say.
By the way, I have read and enjoyed the first in the series but not book 2 and 3 (yet - what can I say, I'm bad at series), and while I'm sure I missed some references because of that, I do think this can well be read as a standalone with no previous knowledge of the other books. You'd be missing out, but that's on you.
I want to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free ARC of this book. All opinions here expressed, however, are my own.
May 10, 2021
Weird fiction by its very nature can be an acquired taste, but Jeff Noon has been putting out just the right kind of weird out there. I’m a huge fan of his John Nyquist series (and I don’t even like series) and was very excited to find book four out on Netgalley. I didn’t even read the plot summary, because I kind of had a pretty good idea of what to expect based on the first three books. And sure enough, expectations met. Another strange, exotic and completely bonkers world for Nyquist’s latest investigation.
This time it’s a world defined by its numerous boundaries, with every border delineating a new set of rules and social norms. And there are so really strange things occurring within and without those. There are also personality enhancing transplants that may or may not be sentient and literary characters residing in the attics of one’s mind. If it’s sounds completely wild and out there, it’s because it is. So much so it’s actually difficult to do justice describing, especially after reading Noon’s descriptions. And so I’ll just leave it at that.
Suffice it to say, Noon’s got a wildly prodigious imagination on a permanent overdrive setting and it results in some of the most spectacular worldbuilding speculative fiction has to offer.
And having that been said, I should also mention that this one didn’t quite wow me the way its predecessors did. I’m not completely sure why. Something about this world wasn’t as exciting as the others or maybe it just veered down too many too strange alleys. Or maybe I wasn’t entirely in the mood for it this time. To be fair, having just revisited my review of book three, this is much of the same reaction as I’ve had then. Madly loved first two and then not quite getting the same high with the last two. Still though, even if it isn’t love as such, there’s so much to appreciate here and the entire thing is just so original and different and wild that it’s absolutely worth a read. Not sure where it’s going to go after that ending, but trust Noon to come up with something awesome. After all, he’s really got a knack for it.
Strange, bizarre, trippy…what an adventure. There’s nothing like it out there, nothing to compare it to. Which is excellent in and of itself. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
This time it’s a world defined by its numerous boundaries, with every border delineating a new set of rules and social norms. And there are so really strange things occurring within and without those. There are also personality enhancing transplants that may or may not be sentient and literary characters residing in the attics of one’s mind. If it’s sounds completely wild and out there, it’s because it is. So much so it’s actually difficult to do justice describing, especially after reading Noon’s descriptions. And so I’ll just leave it at that.
Suffice it to say, Noon’s got a wildly prodigious imagination on a permanent overdrive setting and it results in some of the most spectacular worldbuilding speculative fiction has to offer.
And having that been said, I should also mention that this one didn’t quite wow me the way its predecessors did. I’m not completely sure why. Something about this world wasn’t as exciting as the others or maybe it just veered down too many too strange alleys. Or maybe I wasn’t entirely in the mood for it this time. To be fair, having just revisited my review of book three, this is much of the same reaction as I’ve had then. Madly loved first two and then not quite getting the same high with the last two. Still though, even if it isn’t love as such, there’s so much to appreciate here and the entire thing is just so original and different and wild that it’s absolutely worth a read. Not sure where it’s going to go after that ending, but trust Noon to come up with something awesome. After all, he’s really got a knack for it.
Strange, bizarre, trippy…what an adventure. There’s nothing like it out there, nothing to compare it to. Which is excellent in and of itself. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
January 23, 2022
Even weirder than the others, which is saying something.
It did remind me of the atmosphere of his earlier (I mean, 30 years ago) fantastic output (Vurt etc), and it also rang a Neal Stephenson bell (!!!), although that of Snow Crash and Diamond Age rather than the historical stuff.
This being said, it's Noon so there's only one thing to do: try it out, as no review can do justice to this most fantastic, weird and obstinately original writer: one of a kind.
It did remind me of the atmosphere of his earlier (I mean, 30 years ago) fantastic output (Vurt etc), and it also rang a Neal Stephenson bell (!!!), although that of Snow Crash and Diamond Age rather than the historical stuff.
This being said, it's Noon so there's only one thing to do: try it out, as no review can do justice to this most fantastic, weird and obstinately original writer: one of a kind.
May 19, 2021
A noir mystery viewed through the lens of a psychedelic fever dream.
April 29, 2021
Jeff Noon has been one of my favorite writers ever since his debut novel Vurt came out in 1993. Recently, Noon has been writing a series of surreal detective mysteries, focusing on his detective figure, John Nyquist. Each volume places Nyquist in a different bizarre setting, and the novels are more about their mind-blowing environments than they are about plot or character. It is less a matter of solving a case for Nyquist, than of soaking up the environment like a sponge, and being twisted into strange new shapes as a result. I reviewed the first Nyquist novel, A Man of Shadows, here on goodreads. It was set in a city, one half of which is always brightly illuminated daytime; the other half of which is always dark and nocturnal. The second Nyquist book, The Body Library, was set in a Borgesian city of words; the third, Creeping Jenny, in a British small town where the inhabitants performed different bizarre rituals for each day of the year.
Within Without, the fourth Nyquist novel, takes place in the cities of Delirium, a place of multiple borders, and Escher, where everybody is inhabited by literary characters (Gregor Samsa, Edward Hyde, Alice) who seek to engulf and control them. In Delirium, you cannot go two blocks without being held up by a barrier, subject to bureaucratic scrutiny, searched, and compelled to show your passport and perhaps slip a bribe to the border guards. In Escher, which seems to be a pocket inside Delirium, life seems to consist in a series of drunken gatherings and masquerades; everyone is constantly muttering to themselves -- or rather, their muttering is not themselves really, but the literary characters hidden within them and who seek to escape. Escher itself leads to the ultimate border, separating the Yeald, separating the world we know from a mirror realm in which the constant rustle of language will drive you crazy, unless you are somehow shielded by one of the Sentine, the native inhabitants, who are able to filter this endless language into the coherence of stories.
A border, like a biological membrane, both separates and joins. It keeps the outside away, but also offers a path by which the outside can come insde. When the Sentines, the inhabitants of the realm beyond, the realm of pure language, cross over into the everyday world, they become beautiful images, creatures of pure glamour. Magicians are able to attach these images to physical bodies; and the people with these attachments become pop stars, with irresistible charisma. But the Sentines also have wills of their own, and they do not always enjoy being so attached...
By summarizing the book's premises in this way, I fear I am making it seem more schematic than it actually is. To the extent that subgenre distinctions are useful at all within speculative fiction, Within Without seems to me to really be science fiction (rather than either a mystery novel or some sort of fantasy or magic realism), precisely because its underpinnings turn out to involve this underlying and fairly rigorous logic of personalities composed of insides and outsides, internal voices and external coverings, all of which are mapped onto regions of a carefully delineated space. But all this is a retrospective reconstruction, which I was only able to work out (and I have merely given the barest outline here) after finishing the novel. It is sort of a secret structure, grounding what otherwise would seem to be the sheerest extravagance.
That is to say, the process of reading the novel does not feel schematic or predetermined at all. Rather, from page to page the experience is one of dizzying twists and turns. You have a sense of pure delirium (as the novel itself instructs us, with the name of its first city). The narration is in the third person, and sticks closely to Nyquist's point of view. And despite being a detective, Nyquist is passive and mostly clueless, as he stumbles from one crazy, destabilizing encounter to the next. The book reads like a cross between the metafictional displacements and linguistic games of Noon's evidently favorite authors (Kafka, Borges, Lewis Carroll; perhaps Calvino as well) and the roller coaster peaks and dips of an LSD trip (neither a bad trip nor a good, ecstatic one, but rather a lateral series of disorienting torsions and shifts). And all this is conveyed in dazzling prose: Noon's style is rich and overloaded, though in a way that retains enough of its pulp/genre roots to ever become obliquely experimental. I think that one of the reasons I love to read Noon's novels is precisely -- if I can put things this way -- how literary it actually is, without ever feeling "literary" (in the conventional and -- to me -- pejorative sense).
All in all, Within Without summarizes the themes and the feelings of much of Jeff Noon's work throughout his career (going back to his early masterpieces Vurt and Pollen). It both both offers the reader a wild and unpredictable ride, AND slyly proposes a sort of sciencefictional model of the psyche in an age of celebrities and incessant media distraction.
Within Without, the fourth Nyquist novel, takes place in the cities of Delirium, a place of multiple borders, and Escher, where everybody is inhabited by literary characters (Gregor Samsa, Edward Hyde, Alice) who seek to engulf and control them. In Delirium, you cannot go two blocks without being held up by a barrier, subject to bureaucratic scrutiny, searched, and compelled to show your passport and perhaps slip a bribe to the border guards. In Escher, which seems to be a pocket inside Delirium, life seems to consist in a series of drunken gatherings and masquerades; everyone is constantly muttering to themselves -- or rather, their muttering is not themselves really, but the literary characters hidden within them and who seek to escape. Escher itself leads to the ultimate border, separating the Yeald, separating the world we know from a mirror realm in which the constant rustle of language will drive you crazy, unless you are somehow shielded by one of the Sentine, the native inhabitants, who are able to filter this endless language into the coherence of stories.
A border, like a biological membrane, both separates and joins. It keeps the outside away, but also offers a path by which the outside can come insde. When the Sentines, the inhabitants of the realm beyond, the realm of pure language, cross over into the everyday world, they become beautiful images, creatures of pure glamour. Magicians are able to attach these images to physical bodies; and the people with these attachments become pop stars, with irresistible charisma. But the Sentines also have wills of their own, and they do not always enjoy being so attached...
By summarizing the book's premises in this way, I fear I am making it seem more schematic than it actually is. To the extent that subgenre distinctions are useful at all within speculative fiction, Within Without seems to me to really be science fiction (rather than either a mystery novel or some sort of fantasy or magic realism), precisely because its underpinnings turn out to involve this underlying and fairly rigorous logic of personalities composed of insides and outsides, internal voices and external coverings, all of which are mapped onto regions of a carefully delineated space. But all this is a retrospective reconstruction, which I was only able to work out (and I have merely given the barest outline here) after finishing the novel. It is sort of a secret structure, grounding what otherwise would seem to be the sheerest extravagance.
That is to say, the process of reading the novel does not feel schematic or predetermined at all. Rather, from page to page the experience is one of dizzying twists and turns. You have a sense of pure delirium (as the novel itself instructs us, with the name of its first city). The narration is in the third person, and sticks closely to Nyquist's point of view. And despite being a detective, Nyquist is passive and mostly clueless, as he stumbles from one crazy, destabilizing encounter to the next. The book reads like a cross between the metafictional displacements and linguistic games of Noon's evidently favorite authors (Kafka, Borges, Lewis Carroll; perhaps Calvino as well) and the roller coaster peaks and dips of an LSD trip (neither a bad trip nor a good, ecstatic one, but rather a lateral series of disorienting torsions and shifts). And all this is conveyed in dazzling prose: Noon's style is rich and overloaded, though in a way that retains enough of its pulp/genre roots to ever become obliquely experimental. I think that one of the reasons I love to read Noon's novels is precisely -- if I can put things this way -- how literary it actually is, without ever feeling "literary" (in the conventional and -- to me -- pejorative sense).
All in all, Within Without summarizes the themes and the feelings of much of Jeff Noon's work throughout his career (going back to his early masterpieces Vurt and Pollen). It both both offers the reader a wild and unpredictable ride, AND slyly proposes a sort of sciencefictional model of the psyche in an age of celebrities and incessant media distraction.
March 24, 2021
The fourth novel in his Nyquist series, Within Without, is Jeff Noon firing on all cylinders and exhibiting true mastery of his craft. He is one of those rarified authors who can inextricably tie together worldbuilding, story, and character. While you can read them in any order, once you meet Nyquist in his 2017 debut A Man of Shadows, you’ll want to grab them all. Nyquist is the noir detective you may not have known you were missing in your reading life.
The first novel follows the orphaned John Henry Nyquist who grew up in Dayzone, a city that is terrified of the dark neighborhoods that lie a train ride away through the hallucinatory terrain of Dusk. Solving this first murder mystery will require Nyquist to travel within the strange landscapes of commoditized time itself and come to terms with his fraying sanity.
The second novel, The Body Library, picks up with Nyquist traveling to the city of Storyville where stories themselves become the centerpiece of reality. How do you know if you are the main character in your own story or only a passing participant in someone else’s tale? What happens when storytelling has real power?
Its follow-up, Creeping Jenny, has Nyquist heading to his birthplace, Hoxley-on-the-Hale, in search of his past. Every day of the year a new Saint is selected and the town’s inhabitants, who find comfort in understood rituals, must adhere to the rules of the day. Nyquist and the reader are thrown into the deep end from day one navigating this bucolic village meets simmering horror while once again trying to solve a series of murders. For the first time in the series one of the characters, the earnest Teddy Fairclough, will be assisting Nyquist on his further adventures.
You’ll know immediately that you’re in for the wildest ride yet because Within Without is taking you to a city named Delirium and the small town at its heart named Escher. This is a story about boundaries, being caught betwixt and between them, and all the symbolism and imagery that comes with borders internal and external. Every chapter unveils a new element of this mysterious city like a marvelously strange revelation. You’re in for the most mind-bending and philosophical Nyquist experience to date. You’ll uncover the enigma behind asymmetrical ladybugs. You’ll meet Vince Craven, a popular movie star whose image has gone missing, and have an audience with the gelatinous Royal Highness King Edwyn III King of Freemantle. Square Circle Square Circle will have you thinking about it long after you’ve put that ingenious chapter behind you. You’ll run into Gregor Samsa from Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Mr. Hyde and Alice Liddell and Miss Havisham. Did I mention the cartoonish black holes peppering the cityscape? Much beyond that and we get into spoiler territory. You should experience Within Without with all the delight of sinking into the carefully orchestrated madness that Noon constructs here with his trademark flourishes of wordplay. The Inception-like journey of this novel leads to a satisfying and elegant ending that feels well and truly earned.
I cannot wait for more.
** Thank you Angry Robot Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest, unbiased review **
The first novel follows the orphaned John Henry Nyquist who grew up in Dayzone, a city that is terrified of the dark neighborhoods that lie a train ride away through the hallucinatory terrain of Dusk. Solving this first murder mystery will require Nyquist to travel within the strange landscapes of commoditized time itself and come to terms with his fraying sanity.
The second novel, The Body Library, picks up with Nyquist traveling to the city of Storyville where stories themselves become the centerpiece of reality. How do you know if you are the main character in your own story or only a passing participant in someone else’s tale? What happens when storytelling has real power?
Its follow-up, Creeping Jenny, has Nyquist heading to his birthplace, Hoxley-on-the-Hale, in search of his past. Every day of the year a new Saint is selected and the town’s inhabitants, who find comfort in understood rituals, must adhere to the rules of the day. Nyquist and the reader are thrown into the deep end from day one navigating this bucolic village meets simmering horror while once again trying to solve a series of murders. For the first time in the series one of the characters, the earnest Teddy Fairclough, will be assisting Nyquist on his further adventures.
You’ll know immediately that you’re in for the wildest ride yet because Within Without is taking you to a city named Delirium and the small town at its heart named Escher. This is a story about boundaries, being caught betwixt and between them, and all the symbolism and imagery that comes with borders internal and external. Every chapter unveils a new element of this mysterious city like a marvelously strange revelation. You’re in for the most mind-bending and philosophical Nyquist experience to date. You’ll uncover the enigma behind asymmetrical ladybugs. You’ll meet Vince Craven, a popular movie star whose image has gone missing, and have an audience with the gelatinous Royal Highness King Edwyn III King of Freemantle. Square Circle Square Circle will have you thinking about it long after you’ve put that ingenious chapter behind you. You’ll run into Gregor Samsa from Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Mr. Hyde and Alice Liddell and Miss Havisham. Did I mention the cartoonish black holes peppering the cityscape? Much beyond that and we get into spoiler territory. You should experience Within Without with all the delight of sinking into the carefully orchestrated madness that Noon constructs here with his trademark flourishes of wordplay. The Inception-like journey of this novel leads to a satisfying and elegant ending that feels well and truly earned.
I cannot wait for more.
** Thank you Angry Robot Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest, unbiased review **
May 6, 2021
The term “bordering on madness” is one everyone will be familiar with, and might well have used themselves without really thinking too much about it. Jeff Noon seems to have thought about it a lot though, if the peculiar nature of the city of Delirium is anything to go by. It’s a place of borders, varying in permeability and construction; some physical, some magical, some internalised, all winding their way through the city and the minds of its inhabitants. At a time when the topics of borders and mental health are on a lot of people’s minds, it’s a clever and timely marriage of two seemingly disparate themes. The theme of liminality, of the effect a border has on something’s state as it goes from being a thing that WAS there to a thing that IS here, makes for extremely fertile ground here.
There’s a wealth of interesting and entertaining ways Noon chooses to use his setup. The very first border that Nyquist crosses, for example, is the one into the city itself, and is in the form of an eery green mist known as Fontanelle. Taking its name from the soft spot in a baby’s skull, it perhaps implies that the only way to get to the city is to go out of one’s mind, or even that someone - or something - else’s mind has to be entered. There is as much mystery woven into the nature of the setting itself as there is in the plot, which sees Nyquist attempting to track down the missing sentient image of a film star (and is every bit as beguilingly strange as it sounds).
This investigation unfolds through what feels almost like a series of vignettes - although given the nature of the setting, perhaps “episodes” is a more appropriate term - which vary considerably in their tone. Encounters with the strange inhabitants of the city make up plenty of them, as do struggles with borders, and there are amusing moments of farce, chilling encounters that test Nyquist’s sanity and bouts of introspective questioning to stretch his mental fortitude to its limits. While that might seem like it might lack cohesion, this isn’t the case at all - Delirium is a modern-day Wonderland, with gleefully madcap moments sitting comfortably side by side with body horror and witchcraft.
Accompanying Nyquist on his investigation is newcomer Teddy Fairclough, last seen in previous novel Creeping Jenny, and whose backstory is recapped with laudable brevity. He’s a welcome and likeable presence, with the two playing off each other well; Teddy is bright-eyed and keen, whilst Nyquist is the world-weary gumshoe who really has seen it all. Certainly in the earlier part of the story, the feeling of isolation that Nyquist has had to contend with before is less of an issue thanks to Teddy’s presence, and for all that Nyquist chides him (and himself, for bringing him along), it’s clear from the start how important the younger man is to him.
With his now customary skill, Jeff Noon has once again turned the detective novel on its head whilst simultaneously turning it inside out. Within Without is yet another unique prospect from a mind replete with off the wall ideas and engaging premises, and is sure to please fans and baffle unsuspecting newcomers in the best way possible.
There’s a wealth of interesting and entertaining ways Noon chooses to use his setup. The very first border that Nyquist crosses, for example, is the one into the city itself, and is in the form of an eery green mist known as Fontanelle. Taking its name from the soft spot in a baby’s skull, it perhaps implies that the only way to get to the city is to go out of one’s mind, or even that someone - or something - else’s mind has to be entered. There is as much mystery woven into the nature of the setting itself as there is in the plot, which sees Nyquist attempting to track down the missing sentient image of a film star (and is every bit as beguilingly strange as it sounds).
This investigation unfolds through what feels almost like a series of vignettes - although given the nature of the setting, perhaps “episodes” is a more appropriate term - which vary considerably in their tone. Encounters with the strange inhabitants of the city make up plenty of them, as do struggles with borders, and there are amusing moments of farce, chilling encounters that test Nyquist’s sanity and bouts of introspective questioning to stretch his mental fortitude to its limits. While that might seem like it might lack cohesion, this isn’t the case at all - Delirium is a modern-day Wonderland, with gleefully madcap moments sitting comfortably side by side with body horror and witchcraft.
Accompanying Nyquist on his investigation is newcomer Teddy Fairclough, last seen in previous novel Creeping Jenny, and whose backstory is recapped with laudable brevity. He’s a welcome and likeable presence, with the two playing off each other well; Teddy is bright-eyed and keen, whilst Nyquist is the world-weary gumshoe who really has seen it all. Certainly in the earlier part of the story, the feeling of isolation that Nyquist has had to contend with before is less of an issue thanks to Teddy’s presence, and for all that Nyquist chides him (and himself, for bringing him along), it’s clear from the start how important the younger man is to him.
With his now customary skill, Jeff Noon has once again turned the detective novel on its head whilst simultaneously turning it inside out. Within Without is yet another unique prospect from a mind replete with off the wall ideas and engaging premises, and is sure to please fans and baffle unsuspecting newcomers in the best way possible.
January 22, 2024
New Weird. No kidding! Right in the beginning strange things happen already. But then what can you expect in a town called Delirium. Full of borders and (p.18) about the bad reputation of the city: "it was terrible, with rumours of people getting lost forever, or even worse, getting found in the wrong place at the wrong time of day, or getting left behind [...]...,"
A rock stars image is lost. And Nyquist, together with Teddy Fairclough, his apprentice, picked up in his previous case described in "Creeping Jenny", are hired to retrieve it.
To track down this image they have to cross many borders. What ensues is a journey into hallucinatory dreamland. Literary characters cross their path. And their minds. What is real and what is an image?
Kafkaesque circumstances as he is trapped in a border. Mindbogling questions by his case officer to determine if he is allowed to cross this border. Utterly indifferent to his confusion.
In more than one way Nyquist enters a make belief world.
p.303: "we are the written world. Language makes us what we are."
p.320, upon loosing himself: "As I think of myself, I come into being, into existence." Here Nyquist conjures Descartes to realise he exist: Cogito ergo sum: "I think, therefore I am." Descartes personified. It's Nyguist's lifeline in the end...
Noon captures in his writing this utter madness. This dreamlike quest into the mind. I was amazed that somehow it was still readable. Because it was weird. Confusing. For Nyquist and certainly for me. And even that is an understatement.
The first book in the Nyquist series: A Man of Shadows, I though was brilliant. One of my favorites. From there on I liked them gradually less.
written: 2021
Jeff Noon: 1957 -
A rock stars image is lost. And Nyquist, together with Teddy Fairclough, his apprentice, picked up in his previous case described in "Creeping Jenny", are hired to retrieve it.
To track down this image they have to cross many borders. What ensues is a journey into hallucinatory dreamland. Literary characters cross their path. And their minds. What is real and what is an image?
Kafkaesque circumstances as he is trapped in a border. Mindbogling questions by his case officer to determine if he is allowed to cross this border. Utterly indifferent to his confusion.
In more than one way Nyquist enters a make belief world.
p.303: "we are the written world. Language makes us what we are."
p.320, upon loosing himself: "As I think of myself, I come into being, into existence." Here Nyquist conjures Descartes to realise he exist: Cogito ergo sum: "I think, therefore I am." Descartes personified. It's Nyguist's lifeline in the end...
Noon captures in his writing this utter madness. This dreamlike quest into the mind. I was amazed that somehow it was still readable. Because it was weird. Confusing. For Nyquist and certainly for me. And even that is an understatement.
The first book in the Nyquist series: A Man of Shadows, I though was brilliant. One of my favorites. From there on I liked them gradually less.
written: 2021
Jeff Noon: 1957 -
May 3, 2021
My thanks to Angry Robot and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this science fiction novel.
Jeff Noon continues the adventures of John Nyquist, private eye, in the fourth book of the series Within Without. The title is a pun, maybe, a clue possibly, for the tale which involves a famous singer actor in the 1960's hiring Nyquist to find a missing person, the actor's missing image. Nyquist and his sidekick travel to the town of Delirium to begin the search. And everything from the start goes weird.
The book is filled with allusions and illusions, literary and sensory. The characters are a pastiche of the cast in a film noir, the actor who's not telling all he knows, the nightclub singer with secrets, the mysterious importer, magicians and others. The story goes in places that you don't expect nor even thought to expect. The book has a rhythm that might be hard to find, but patience and knowing that what is odd early is nothing to what is coming later. The writing, the imagination, the ideas poured onto paper and formed into this book just make you want to keep reading.
Jeff Noon continues the adventures of John Nyquist, private eye, in the fourth book of the series Within Without. The title is a pun, maybe, a clue possibly, for the tale which involves a famous singer actor in the 1960's hiring Nyquist to find a missing person, the actor's missing image. Nyquist and his sidekick travel to the town of Delirium to begin the search. And everything from the start goes weird.
The book is filled with allusions and illusions, literary and sensory. The characters are a pastiche of the cast in a film noir, the actor who's not telling all he knows, the nightclub singer with secrets, the mysterious importer, magicians and others. The story goes in places that you don't expect nor even thought to expect. The book has a rhythm that might be hard to find, but patience and knowing that what is odd early is nothing to what is coming later. The writing, the imagination, the ideas poured onto paper and formed into this book just make you want to keep reading.
April 22, 2021
The John Nyquist series is extremely inventive: the subject matter is the matter is stories itself, the genre is noir mystery and fantasy and this latest installment really divides into those two genres. The first half sees our hard-boiled detective following leads to break open his latest case in a new and bizarre cityscape. Noon is not concerned with world-building but rather city-building and the urban landscapes he creates are dark, warped and mysterious and Delirium is no less any of these.
The second half slips into more of a fantasy land led by magical rituals. With this change, we see less dialogue and more stream of consciousness style narration, which really takes the reader inside the crazy world Nyquist has landed himself in.
This installment of the Nyquist mysteries had a lot more action and traditional detection in it which I enjoyed. I enjoyed the second half less so but overall this was yet another wild twist in the takes of Nyquist, demonstrating Noon's innovation with plot, story and genre.
#netgalley review
The second half slips into more of a fantasy land led by magical rituals. With this change, we see less dialogue and more stream of consciousness style narration, which really takes the reader inside the crazy world Nyquist has landed himself in.
This installment of the Nyquist mysteries had a lot more action and traditional detection in it which I enjoyed. I enjoyed the second half less so but overall this was yet another wild twist in the takes of Nyquist, demonstrating Noon's innovation with plot, story and genre.
#netgalley review
April 17, 2021
A fabulous book. A heady mix of genres, including science fiction, fantasy and noir, this is better than the previous Nyquist novels. I didn't think it possible but Noon manages it very, very well. There are many literary influences on show here - including Peake, Kafka, Chandler and even some Mieville - and yet, through a style all of his own, Noon gives some entirely new and exciting. At times experimental, this fits in with the character and the writer. Read this. Read it now.
An incredible book, and I'll be waiting on the next.
An incredible book, and I'll be waiting on the next.
January 6, 2022
(Written for the British Fantasy Society by Robin C.M. Duncan, extract 6.1.22)
Within Without is the fourth John Nyquist novel by paragon of the cyber-weird, Jeff Noon. It is preceded by A Man of Shadows (2017), The Body Library (2018), and Creeping Jenny (2020), each a distinctive and enjoyably kaleidoscopic head-frag, deep-fried in enigma, wrapped in yesterday’s pulp noir mystery.
John Nyquist is a hard-wearing detective for hire, a relentlessly put-upon soul who has suffered Dayzone’s endless illumination / Nocturna’s endless night pursuing an invisible killer in A Man of Shadows; the perpetually manifesting personal fictions of Storyville’s residents in The Body Library; and arguably one of the most nightmarish (literally) novel premises of recent times haunting the village of Hoxley-on-the-Hale in Creeping Jenny.
What follows in the form of Within Without is a marvellously intricate tale, high on hallucinatory tableaus, and bristling with Noon’s urgent and engaging beat narrative. The story cleaves to its detective framework, for the first third or so at least, but does thereafter find its way over a wall and under a fence into the febrile fields of Mr. Noon’s imagination, unchained.
Read my full review on the website of the British Fantasy Society, here:
RCMD review on britishfantasysociety.org
Within Without is the fourth John Nyquist novel by paragon of the cyber-weird, Jeff Noon. It is preceded by A Man of Shadows (2017), The Body Library (2018), and Creeping Jenny (2020), each a distinctive and enjoyably kaleidoscopic head-frag, deep-fried in enigma, wrapped in yesterday’s pulp noir mystery.
John Nyquist is a hard-wearing detective for hire, a relentlessly put-upon soul who has suffered Dayzone’s endless illumination / Nocturna’s endless night pursuing an invisible killer in A Man of Shadows; the perpetually manifesting personal fictions of Storyville’s residents in The Body Library; and arguably one of the most nightmarish (literally) novel premises of recent times haunting the village of Hoxley-on-the-Hale in Creeping Jenny.
What follows in the form of Within Without is a marvellously intricate tale, high on hallucinatory tableaus, and bristling with Noon’s urgent and engaging beat narrative. The story cleaves to its detective framework, for the first third or so at least, but does thereafter find its way over a wall and under a fence into the febrile fields of Mr. Noon’s imagination, unchained.
Read my full review on the website of the British Fantasy Society, here:
RCMD review on britishfantasysociety.org
April 3, 2021
The wizard of weird, Jeff Noon, in his fourth Nyquist mystery, provides a fun and strange romp through Delrium, a portal to an infinite number of strange lands that are inhabited by ghosts, magicians, supernatural entities and literary characters including Alice in Wonderland and Mr. Hyde. This was well written and easy to read novel. I highly recommend this novel and all the other novels
July 9, 2024
John Nyquist returns for a fourth outing in Jeff Noon’s surreal, layered novel, Within Without. These mysteries are not for everyone. They are deeply weird, as I first learned in Creeping Jenny. Noon effectively transplants a veneer of mystery—Nyquist is a private investigator—onto a very thick layer of New Weird. This entry sees Nyquist paired with a partner for a trip to the city of Delirium, which is crisscrossed with replicating borders, bizarre rules, and captivating glamour. It’s also a place he’s managed to avoid up until now, and it isn’t long before we know why...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.
July 1, 2021
This was my first John Nyquist book and also the first book by Jeff Noon, but now will definitely not be the last of either. I love a good mystery and I love weird challenging fiction and this book delivers both in spades.
I would attempt to try to summarize, however obliquely, the plot of the story, but the story is so rapturously unconventional that it's difficult to do so. But here's my best:
A private detective and his assistant travel to a city with many "borders" (a concept that even after having finished the novel, I'm at difficulty defining) and are hired by a has-been movie star on a very strange, all-be-it understandable missing "persons" case. At about four chapters into the story, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. But as the story progresses, it gets increasingly more insane, in a great way, and my original suspicions or thoughts about how the story might progress were absolutely blown out of the water at every turn.
This is a highly surreal and highly cerebral story, which honestly is just in my wheelhouse. This will NOT be to everyone's liking. This is the kind of fantasy that few fantasists have the imagination for. There are increasingly bizarre and heady sections that twist and turn and become increasingly difficult to visualize but are magnificent in their splendor.
The good: The world-building and philosophical ideas. Nowhere outside of Mieville (and this may top even him in its psychedelia) have I read about a world so strange but also rooted in a series of philosophical rules that ultimately have internal logic, consistency, and GREAT thematic relevancy. Like a good Raymond Chandler mystery, many things throughout the story seem to be unrelated, but as the story progresses, everything comes to a connected point. This is a story about language, about dualities, about loneliness, about sharing yourself with other people (in the most literal sense). Its imagination is exceptional but also purposeful. Incredibly impressive.
The prose is also beautifully written, especially as things get progressively topsy-turvy. Noon has a wonderful way of creating momentum with his language. There are several sections in the book when we're essentially trapped inside the very subjective experience of the protagonist who is often trapped in difficult to relate circumstances. One of the first of these was an instance in which both the detective and his assistant are trapped in a border of "themselves", essentially tiny still statues of immobility in the middle of a bustling city square, and Noon is faced with not only the challenge of making our viewpoint character standing still for an hour interesting, he makes it enrapturing.
I also really enjoyed the variety of characters and the mechanisms of the plot. For as absolutely surreal as the story gets, it's essentially about a series of characters trying to achieve understandable goals in an essentially understandable fashion. There are twists and turns, and despite being sort of a mystery (and me having read a ton of them) I was constantly thwarted by my expectations and I love that in any story.
My quibbles:
I do have a few personal criticsms. In fact, enough that I'd ultimately give this more like 4.75 stars instead of a full five.
1st and biggest - While we very much get inside the head of the protagonist, he's often so resolutely stoic that he's pretty hard to engage with on an emotional level. Also, since this was the fourth book of a series, I figured that no matter what happens I wouldn't have to worry about the ultimate fate of our hero... so while my intellect and particularly my imagination were consistently engaged by the story, I wasn't emotionally engaged with the story. I plan to read the other books in this series now, but it is NOT because I love the protagonist so much. It's because I so admire the gall of Noon's imagination.
Contrast this with a similarly surreal book, Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke. While I would say that this book outshines that one in terms of philosophical outlandishness and imaginative scale (an impressive feat!), I really grew to love the main character of that book. I cannot say the same for any of the characters in this one, even Teddy.
My only other quibble and this may be somewhat related: this is a very grimly written story. Given how potentially whimsical many of the premises the story uses could have been, this must have been very deliberate. Even particularly eccentric and ridiculous characters are given a sheen (often literally) of repellentness. There was only one part of the entire book that made me laugh, and it was literally the last page of the book, and I'm pretty sure the intention was to give me goosebumps, but instead I thought it was just clever and sort of delightful.
---------------------
That being said, I LOVED this book, and just because I like my literature with a bit more humor and likeability, doesn't mean I should fault the author. He gave me the kind of book I've been looking for for quite some time: An increasingly bizarre and delightful puzzle to solve, weirdness that isn't weird for weird's sake but weirdness that makes sense on a thematic and literal level, and explosive and galvanizing prose. Chef's kiss!
I would attempt to try to summarize, however obliquely, the plot of the story, but the story is so rapturously unconventional that it's difficult to do so. But here's my best:
A private detective and his assistant travel to a city with many "borders" (a concept that even after having finished the novel, I'm at difficulty defining) and are hired by a has-been movie star on a very strange, all-be-it understandable missing "persons" case. At about four chapters into the story, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. But as the story progresses, it gets increasingly more insane, in a great way, and my original suspicions or thoughts about how the story might progress were absolutely blown out of the water at every turn.
This is a highly surreal and highly cerebral story, which honestly is just in my wheelhouse. This will NOT be to everyone's liking. This is the kind of fantasy that few fantasists have the imagination for. There are increasingly bizarre and heady sections that twist and turn and become increasingly difficult to visualize but are magnificent in their splendor.
The good: The world-building and philosophical ideas. Nowhere outside of Mieville (and this may top even him in its psychedelia) have I read about a world so strange but also rooted in a series of philosophical rules that ultimately have internal logic, consistency, and GREAT thematic relevancy. Like a good Raymond Chandler mystery, many things throughout the story seem to be unrelated, but as the story progresses, everything comes to a connected point. This is a story about language, about dualities, about loneliness, about sharing yourself with other people (in the most literal sense). Its imagination is exceptional but also purposeful. Incredibly impressive.
The prose is also beautifully written, especially as things get progressively topsy-turvy. Noon has a wonderful way of creating momentum with his language. There are several sections in the book when we're essentially trapped inside the very subjective experience of the protagonist who is often trapped in difficult to relate circumstances. One of the first of these was an instance in which both the detective and his assistant are trapped in a border of "themselves", essentially tiny still statues of immobility in the middle of a bustling city square, and Noon is faced with not only the challenge of making our viewpoint character standing still for an hour interesting, he makes it enrapturing.
I also really enjoyed the variety of characters and the mechanisms of the plot. For as absolutely surreal as the story gets, it's essentially about a series of characters trying to achieve understandable goals in an essentially understandable fashion. There are twists and turns, and despite being sort of a mystery (and me having read a ton of them) I was constantly thwarted by my expectations and I love that in any story.
My quibbles:
I do have a few personal criticsms. In fact, enough that I'd ultimately give this more like 4.75 stars instead of a full five.
1st and biggest - While we very much get inside the head of the protagonist, he's often so resolutely stoic that he's pretty hard to engage with on an emotional level. Also, since this was the fourth book of a series, I figured that no matter what happens I wouldn't have to worry about the ultimate fate of our hero... so while my intellect and particularly my imagination were consistently engaged by the story, I wasn't emotionally engaged with the story. I plan to read the other books in this series now, but it is NOT because I love the protagonist so much. It's because I so admire the gall of Noon's imagination.
Contrast this with a similarly surreal book, Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke. While I would say that this book outshines that one in terms of philosophical outlandishness and imaginative scale (an impressive feat!), I really grew to love the main character of that book. I cannot say the same for any of the characters in this one, even Teddy.
My only other quibble and this may be somewhat related: this is a very grimly written story. Given how potentially whimsical many of the premises the story uses could have been, this must have been very deliberate. Even particularly eccentric and ridiculous characters are given a sheen (often literally) of repellentness. There was only one part of the entire book that made me laugh, and it was literally the last page of the book, and I'm pretty sure the intention was to give me goosebumps, but instead I thought it was just clever and sort of delightful.
---------------------
That being said, I LOVED this book, and just because I like my literature with a bit more humor and likeability, doesn't mean I should fault the author. He gave me the kind of book I've been looking for for quite some time: An increasingly bizarre and delightful puzzle to solve, weirdness that isn't weird for weird's sake but weirdness that makes sense on a thematic and literal level, and explosive and galvanizing prose. Chef's kiss!
April 5, 2022
Within Without (John Nyquist #4) - Jeff Noon | 378 pgs, 2020, Angry Robot | Lido de 13/03/21 a 23/03/21 | Nota 3.8 em 5 | | NITROLEITURAS
SUMÁRIO
O terceiro livro do amplamente aclamado 'Nyquist Mysteries' de Jeff Noon encontra nosso protagonista preso em um novo mistério que investiga pesadelos, santos e a resposta para o desaparecimento de seu pai
Nyquist se encontra em uma vila onde todos os dias são um tipo diferente de pesadelo e cujas regras bizarras são governadas por qualquer que seja o santo que governa aquele dia. Entre dias sem conversa, sem sair de casa e apenas contando mentiras, Nyquist deve encontrar a resposta para o mistério que ele nunca poderia resolver; o desaparecimento de seu pai.
RESENHA
Quarto livro da série de romances de fantasia de ficção estranha com anti-herói noir, o Detetive John Nyquist.
Cada livro dessa tetralogia pode ser lido de forma independente, com Nyquist indo à um mundo diferente com regras diferentes, com poucas referências dos romances anteriores. Entretanto, recomendo a experiência surreal e completa de toda a série, uma narrativa diferente de tudo que já li e um exemplo brilhante da Nova Literatura Estranha dos últimos vinte anos.
Parece que o autor Jeff Noon resolveu se desafiar para escrever um livro ainda mais estranho do que os anteriores.
Nesse lidamos não só com uma, mas com DUAS cidades estranhas, com Delirium, uma cidade completamente repartida em diversas "fronteiras", onde um visitante corre o risco de ficar preso caso não conheça os procedimentos para cruzar essas barreiras invisíveis e mágicas. É uma cidade onde muitos de seus cidadãos se auto-denominam Reis e Rainhas dos territórios de suas casas, e exigem tributos, referêncais e até passaportes para serem visitados.
A outra cidade, ou melhor, uma não-cidade é uma dimensão onde as imagens das pessoas, a aura que as pessoas projetam a partir de suas individualidades, ganham vida e consciência, ou melhor, são seres dimensionais que vivem em simbiose com celebridades, lhes conferindo seu carisma e charme.
É um conceito bizarro mas que, pelo talento de Jeff Noon, funciona dentro da história.
A narrativa começa com Nyquist e seu aprendiz Teddy sendo contratados para recuperar a imagem viva de uma celebridade e estrela de cinema.
Essa imagem, uma entidade dimensional chamada Oberon, que foi ligada à superfície da pele dessa celebridade, fugiu ou foi roubada.
A busca por Oberon leva os detetives a Delirium, uma cidade cheio de multidões de fronteiras, algumas a apenas alguns metros de distância, algumas se cruzando e algumas que estão constantemente mudando de forma.
Além dessas imagens sentientes e fronteiras invisíveis, verifica-se que todos quem entram em Delirium um eu inverso, que é um personagem literário que vive dentro deles.
E o personagem que vive dentro de Nyquist é ninguém menos que Gregor Samsa, o caixeiro viajante que se transforma em uma barata no famoso "Metamorfose" de Kafka!
Fantástico!
Além disso, Nyquist entra em contato com entidades com letras e símbolos em vez de pés que estão esmagando histórias.
O que se segue é o tipo de aventura alucinante bem típica dessas obras de Jeff Noon, com um final tão ambíguo quanto intrigante.
E fico na torcida de novas aventuras estranhas do Detetive Nyquist no futuro!
Recomendadíssimo!
SUMÁRIO
O terceiro livro do amplamente aclamado 'Nyquist Mysteries' de Jeff Noon encontra nosso protagonista preso em um novo mistério que investiga pesadelos, santos e a resposta para o desaparecimento de seu pai
Nyquist se encontra em uma vila onde todos os dias são um tipo diferente de pesadelo e cujas regras bizarras são governadas por qualquer que seja o santo que governa aquele dia. Entre dias sem conversa, sem sair de casa e apenas contando mentiras, Nyquist deve encontrar a resposta para o mistério que ele nunca poderia resolver; o desaparecimento de seu pai.
RESENHA
Quarto livro da série de romances de fantasia de ficção estranha com anti-herói noir, o Detetive John Nyquist.
Cada livro dessa tetralogia pode ser lido de forma independente, com Nyquist indo à um mundo diferente com regras diferentes, com poucas referências dos romances anteriores. Entretanto, recomendo a experiência surreal e completa de toda a série, uma narrativa diferente de tudo que já li e um exemplo brilhante da Nova Literatura Estranha dos últimos vinte anos.
Parece que o autor Jeff Noon resolveu se desafiar para escrever um livro ainda mais estranho do que os anteriores.
Nesse lidamos não só com uma, mas com DUAS cidades estranhas, com Delirium, uma cidade completamente repartida em diversas "fronteiras", onde um visitante corre o risco de ficar preso caso não conheça os procedimentos para cruzar essas barreiras invisíveis e mágicas. É uma cidade onde muitos de seus cidadãos se auto-denominam Reis e Rainhas dos territórios de suas casas, e exigem tributos, referêncais e até passaportes para serem visitados.
A outra cidade, ou melhor, uma não-cidade é uma dimensão onde as imagens das pessoas, a aura que as pessoas projetam a partir de suas individualidades, ganham vida e consciência, ou melhor, são seres dimensionais que vivem em simbiose com celebridades, lhes conferindo seu carisma e charme.
É um conceito bizarro mas que, pelo talento de Jeff Noon, funciona dentro da história.
A narrativa começa com Nyquist e seu aprendiz Teddy sendo contratados para recuperar a imagem viva de uma celebridade e estrela de cinema.
Essa imagem, uma entidade dimensional chamada Oberon, que foi ligada à superfície da pele dessa celebridade, fugiu ou foi roubada.
A busca por Oberon leva os detetives a Delirium, uma cidade cheio de multidões de fronteiras, algumas a apenas alguns metros de distância, algumas se cruzando e algumas que estão constantemente mudando de forma.
Além dessas imagens sentientes e fronteiras invisíveis, verifica-se que todos quem entram em Delirium um eu inverso, que é um personagem literário que vive dentro deles.
E o personagem que vive dentro de Nyquist é ninguém menos que Gregor Samsa, o caixeiro viajante que se transforma em uma barata no famoso "Metamorfose" de Kafka!
Fantástico!
Além disso, Nyquist entra em contato com entidades com letras e símbolos em vez de pés que estão esmagando histórias.
O que se segue é o tipo de aventura alucinante bem típica dessas obras de Jeff Noon, com um final tão ambíguo quanto intrigante.
E fico na torcida de novas aventuras estranhas do Detetive Nyquist no futuro!
Recomendadíssimo!
April 30, 2021
This review originally published in Looking For a Good book. Rated 5.0 of 5
If you've read any of my other reviews of Jeff Noon's John Nyquist series, you already know that these books are really unlike anything else.
John Nyquist is a detective who takes on the oddest jobs - or the oddest jobs find him. In either case, Nyquist goes to the most unusual, mind-bending, confusing communities to bring a small sense of order to the disorder around him.
In two of my three previous reviews of Noon's book, I compare Noon's worlds with the worlds of Franz Kafka's work. In case the comparisons weren't obvious enough for some, Noon introduces Nyquist to a resident of this new world by the name of Gregor Samsa who is in the process of turning into a beetle. We'll also meet Alice Liddell and Mr. Hyde. If you don't know who any of these people are, you can just skip this review and this book.
The locations have been every bit as much a character as the people in Noon's books and that is still true here. Nyquist is in the city of Delirium and in the center of Delirium is a town called Escher. ("That's right. Escher is a town within Delirium.")
Nyquist's quest here is to help pop movie star Vince Craven. Craven has lost his image. Doesn't quite make sense? Yeah, that's a Jeff Noon book. Trust the author - he'll make it work.
Opening a Jeff Noon book makes me feel like a kid again. I wasn't even a full page in when I realized I was grinning widely and absolutely giddy with excitement. Noon puts Nyquist, and the reader, into a unique situation and describes it so completely we feel we are there. He gives us a situation that we can't help but know we're in for something unusual. A packed corridor with slow, steady movement but no one seeming to have a destination.
"Wait for it. Wait. It's almost four o'clock. Wait, wait! Any second now..." an individual in the crowd tells Nyquist. Then:
A great cry went up, all along the line from both directions, every traveller shouting out at once, in one voice: "We are the queue!" ... the cry came again, even louder now: "We ARE the queue!" ... and then the cry a third time.
"WE ARE THE QUEUE!" ...
And then the fellow tells Nyquist, "Every two hours on the hour, we need to assert ourselves, our place in the world, our glory."
Noon's writing is just brilliant and we appreciate Nyquist, our Everyman, who takes everything unusual in stride which is why we the reader are comfortable moving forward in this unusual world - if Nyquist can go on, so can we.
And what is it about British authors that they come up with some of the best character names?
"Her name was Dandelion. Dandelion Applegood. ... Dandelion was a woman with a blue shadow. Sometimes entirely blue, but often speckled with tiny silver stars."
I'd love to go on and share everything I highlighted in the book, but it would be a lot easier if you just go ahead and read it for yourself.
Mr. Noon, to quote John Nyquist: "I enjoyed having you inside my head."
Looking for a good book? If you pick up Jeff Noon's Within Without, you've found it.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
If you've read any of my other reviews of Jeff Noon's John Nyquist series, you already know that these books are really unlike anything else.
John Nyquist is a detective who takes on the oddest jobs - or the oddest jobs find him. In either case, Nyquist goes to the most unusual, mind-bending, confusing communities to bring a small sense of order to the disorder around him.
In two of my three previous reviews of Noon's book, I compare Noon's worlds with the worlds of Franz Kafka's work. In case the comparisons weren't obvious enough for some, Noon introduces Nyquist to a resident of this new world by the name of Gregor Samsa who is in the process of turning into a beetle. We'll also meet Alice Liddell and Mr. Hyde. If you don't know who any of these people are, you can just skip this review and this book.
The locations have been every bit as much a character as the people in Noon's books and that is still true here. Nyquist is in the city of Delirium and in the center of Delirium is a town called Escher. ("That's right. Escher is a town within Delirium.")
Nyquist's quest here is to help pop movie star Vince Craven. Craven has lost his image. Doesn't quite make sense? Yeah, that's a Jeff Noon book. Trust the author - he'll make it work.
Opening a Jeff Noon book makes me feel like a kid again. I wasn't even a full page in when I realized I was grinning widely and absolutely giddy with excitement. Noon puts Nyquist, and the reader, into a unique situation and describes it so completely we feel we are there. He gives us a situation that we can't help but know we're in for something unusual. A packed corridor with slow, steady movement but no one seeming to have a destination.
"Wait for it. Wait. It's almost four o'clock. Wait, wait! Any second now..." an individual in the crowd tells Nyquist. Then:
A great cry went up, all along the line from both directions, every traveller shouting out at once, in one voice: "We are the queue!" ... the cry came again, even louder now: "We ARE the queue!" ... and then the cry a third time.
"WE ARE THE QUEUE!" ...
And then the fellow tells Nyquist, "Every two hours on the hour, we need to assert ourselves, our place in the world, our glory."
Noon's writing is just brilliant and we appreciate Nyquist, our Everyman, who takes everything unusual in stride which is why we the reader are comfortable moving forward in this unusual world - if Nyquist can go on, so can we.
And what is it about British authors that they come up with some of the best character names?
"Her name was Dandelion. Dandelion Applegood. ... Dandelion was a woman with a blue shadow. Sometimes entirely blue, but often speckled with tiny silver stars."
I'd love to go on and share everything I highlighted in the book, but it would be a lot easier if you just go ahead and read it for yourself.
Mr. Noon, to quote John Nyquist: "I enjoyed having you inside my head."
Looking for a good book? If you pick up Jeff Noon's Within Without, you've found it.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
May 20, 2021
"Within Without" is the fourth instalment of the Michael Nyquist mysteries, following private eye Michael Nyquist as he is invited to Delirium, the city of a million borders and is charged with finding the lost image of superstar Vince Craven.
General Impressions
I went into this book blindly without having read or even heard of the first books and having barely glanced at the synopsis but I didn't feel adrift for long. The author was able to create a complex and believable world, that sucks you in at once.
I liked and feared Delirium from the onset and adored all its borders. More than stone and magic, each border was made out of completely different things, could appear or disappear almost at will and followed completely different rules and affected the people who crossed in different ways. I loved that tension, as you couldn't not cross them but every crossing was a gamble, from barely any effects to losing your mind or life.
And yet, as weird and wonderful as the city with all its rules and citizens were, the thing that surprised me the most about this book was Michael himself, not because he was smarter or stronger or more honest than any other character I have ever read but because of what he was not. He was not a hero or a specialist in guns or physical combat, an arrogant know-it-all or an inexplicable sex symbol that every statuesque woman half his age wanted. In fact, he doesn't even have a romance plot, which I really enjoyed. He was just a man doing his job to the best of his abilities while dying to be done with his client and get the hell out of there. That's something a reader can actually relate to.
The LGBTQ presence is not too pronounced but at least it's there and is never made a big deal out of. People simply are queer and none of the characters uses that as a target.
More than a mystery or my first example of weird fiction I think I'll always remember this book as a love letter to fairytales and the books that make us, its characters, being real voices in our heads and part of us.
Conclusions
As the story progresses the book keeps getting weirder and weirder until it becomes almost nonsensical. At a certain point Within Without becomes a Russian doll: stories inside stories so it's easy to lose sight of yourself and the plot. And right when you think this couldn't get weirder, it ends. And now guess who has more books to add to their TBR?
Rating: 4/5
Thank you to Angry Robot Books for sending me a copy.
Liked this review? You can find me on Instagram @lucsbooks
General Impressions
I went into this book blindly without having read or even heard of the first books and having barely glanced at the synopsis but I didn't feel adrift for long. The author was able to create a complex and believable world, that sucks you in at once.
I liked and feared Delirium from the onset and adored all its borders. More than stone and magic, each border was made out of completely different things, could appear or disappear almost at will and followed completely different rules and affected the people who crossed in different ways. I loved that tension, as you couldn't not cross them but every crossing was a gamble, from barely any effects to losing your mind or life.
And yet, as weird and wonderful as the city with all its rules and citizens were, the thing that surprised me the most about this book was Michael himself, not because he was smarter or stronger or more honest than any other character I have ever read but because of what he was not. He was not a hero or a specialist in guns or physical combat, an arrogant know-it-all or an inexplicable sex symbol that every statuesque woman half his age wanted. In fact, he doesn't even have a romance plot, which I really enjoyed. He was just a man doing his job to the best of his abilities while dying to be done with his client and get the hell out of there. That's something a reader can actually relate to.
The LGBTQ presence is not too pronounced but at least it's there and is never made a big deal out of. People simply are queer and none of the characters uses that as a target.
More than a mystery or my first example of weird fiction I think I'll always remember this book as a love letter to fairytales and the books that make us, its characters, being real voices in our heads and part of us.
Conclusions
As the story progresses the book keeps getting weirder and weirder until it becomes almost nonsensical. At a certain point Within Without becomes a Russian doll: stories inside stories so it's easy to lose sight of yourself and the plot. And right when you think this couldn't get weirder, it ends. And now guess who has more books to add to their TBR?
Rating: 4/5
Thank you to Angry Robot Books for sending me a copy.
Liked this review? You can find me on Instagram @lucsbooks
March 24, 2025
Jeff Noon’s Within Without is a hall of mirrors with no clear exit—a novel that commits fully to its dream logic and refuses the comfort of narrative handrails. Set in Delirium, a city within the surreal nation of Borderland, the fourth Nyquist Mystery plunges detective John Nyquist and his uncanny companion Teddy into a landscape where reality is pliable, homes can become kingdoms, and alter egos—known as Images—walk, speak, and sometimes vanish of their own volition.
This time, Nyquist is tasked with finding Oberon, the lost Image of a famous singer. But, as with all of Noon's books, the "mystery" is less the point than the pretext. What unfolds is an intricate and often baffling meditation on identity, artifice, and the porous nature of the self. There are echoes of Shakespeare, Kafka, and countless other literary spirits who seem to haunt the book not as references but as participants. Gregor Samsa manifests as a kind of spirit guide; the borders between fiction, mind, and physical world collapse.
And yet, despite its inventiveness, the novel is exhausting. The prose swings between vivid grotesquerie and lyrical beauty—“sometimes absolutely beautiful, sometimes incredibly confusing,” as you put it—and the plot spirals so far into abstraction that even the most patient reader may feel unmoored. There’s a perverse pleasure in surrendering to Noon’s delirium but also a sense of erosion: character agency dissipates, motivations blur, and by the final stretch, the narrative dissolves into a chaotic ritual that feels more like a fever breaking than a climax reached.
What ultimately falters is the emotional tether. Nyquist, once a haunted man driven by guilt and duty, now drifts as a cipher. Teddy, initially a curious foil, never fully evolves. The philosophical core—something about the fragmentation of identity in a world where we perform versions of ourselves—never crystallizes into resonance. Like much of Noon's work, this book is less a story than a literary experiment. That’s part of its charm—and its undoing.
Ratings:
- Plot: 2/5
- Prose: 3/5
- Pacing: 1/5
- Characters: 1/5
- Worldbuilding: 3/5
Total: 10/25 = 2.0 stars
Verdict: A rich but fatally convoluted book. For those attuned to Noon's brand of high-weirdness, there’s treasure here. For the rest of us, it’s a kaleidoscope that eventually spins too fast to follow.
This time, Nyquist is tasked with finding Oberon, the lost Image of a famous singer. But, as with all of Noon's books, the "mystery" is less the point than the pretext. What unfolds is an intricate and often baffling meditation on identity, artifice, and the porous nature of the self. There are echoes of Shakespeare, Kafka, and countless other literary spirits who seem to haunt the book not as references but as participants. Gregor Samsa manifests as a kind of spirit guide; the borders between fiction, mind, and physical world collapse.
And yet, despite its inventiveness, the novel is exhausting. The prose swings between vivid grotesquerie and lyrical beauty—“sometimes absolutely beautiful, sometimes incredibly confusing,” as you put it—and the plot spirals so far into abstraction that even the most patient reader may feel unmoored. There’s a perverse pleasure in surrendering to Noon’s delirium but also a sense of erosion: character agency dissipates, motivations blur, and by the final stretch, the narrative dissolves into a chaotic ritual that feels more like a fever breaking than a climax reached.
What ultimately falters is the emotional tether. Nyquist, once a haunted man driven by guilt and duty, now drifts as a cipher. Teddy, initially a curious foil, never fully evolves. The philosophical core—something about the fragmentation of identity in a world where we perform versions of ourselves—never crystallizes into resonance. Like much of Noon's work, this book is less a story than a literary experiment. That’s part of its charm—and its undoing.
Ratings:
- Plot: 2/5
- Prose: 3/5
- Pacing: 1/5
- Characters: 1/5
- Worldbuilding: 3/5
Total: 10/25 = 2.0 stars
Verdict: A rich but fatally convoluted book. For those attuned to Noon's brand of high-weirdness, there’s treasure here. For the rest of us, it’s a kaleidoscope that eventually spins too fast to follow.
February 11, 2022
Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.
Within Without is the 4th Nyquist SF/fantasy mystery by Jeff Noon. Released 11th May 2021 by Angry Robot, it's 373 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is such a very surreal and weird book. The writing is superb and the characters are clearly written - but the background scenery and settings so very surreal and dreamlike and written in such an unvarnished and realistic way as to instill a creeping sense of dread in the reader which just doesn't dissipate. It's not populated with jump scares in any way; the author dispassionately describes horrific scenes (free-floating disembodied skinlike "images" (enhancers) in liquid tubes for an example from the beginning of the book) completely deadpan without any sense of outrage - and it's supremely unsettling.
The mystery itself is very well constructed, precisely engineered and clever. The characters are (mostly) believable, and the dialogue is well written and never clunky or awkward (except where it's *clearly* meant to be such). Someone described it as Kafkaesque and I would agree with that assessment.
After reading the book, I'm not entirely sure if I actually *liked* it... but it intrigued me enough to go back and pick up the first three books in the series. Fans of China Mieville, Guillermo del Toro, and Mervyn Peake (and especially those who love all of the above) will find much to enjoy here. Cleverly written and constructed, it's weird and wonderful.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Within Without is the 4th Nyquist SF/fantasy mystery by Jeff Noon. Released 11th May 2021 by Angry Robot, it's 373 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is such a very surreal and weird book. The writing is superb and the characters are clearly written - but the background scenery and settings so very surreal and dreamlike and written in such an unvarnished and realistic way as to instill a creeping sense of dread in the reader which just doesn't dissipate. It's not populated with jump scares in any way; the author dispassionately describes horrific scenes (free-floating disembodied skinlike "images" (enhancers) in liquid tubes for an example from the beginning of the book) completely deadpan without any sense of outrage - and it's supremely unsettling.
The mystery itself is very well constructed, precisely engineered and clever. The characters are (mostly) believable, and the dialogue is well written and never clunky or awkward (except where it's *clearly* meant to be such). Someone described it as Kafkaesque and I would agree with that assessment.
After reading the book, I'm not entirely sure if I actually *liked* it... but it intrigued me enough to go back and pick up the first three books in the series. Fans of China Mieville, Guillermo del Toro, and Mervyn Peake (and especially those who love all of the above) will find much to enjoy here. Cleverly written and constructed, it's weird and wonderful.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
March 27, 2025
It’s now 1960 and Nyquist has brought his new assistant, Teddy, on an investigation in the city of Delirium, a city rumored to have people get lost forever, getting found in the wrong place, or be left behind in an effort to leave. Upon arriving, Nyquist sees that the city is made up of infinite borders that one must cross when traveling. The reason they showed up in such a place? They must find the person who employed them, a celebrity by the name of Vince Craven who had his sentient image stolen and needs them to find it for him. The image that was stolen made Craven into the celebrity he is today, and without it he’s lost and confused and needs it to be found as soon as possible. But as Nyquist learns more about the case and talks to a couple leads, he starts to realize just how dire the situation is; for Craven, and now himself and Teddy.
This was the 4th and final book in the John Nyquist series (they definitely could all be read as standalones), and while I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite, they were all very unique and funky in their plots. As always, I never quite know how to articulate what the book is about, because it’s so vague in describing what is actually going on and instead relies heavily on letting the reader imagine the story to make it make sense. I really did enjoy the weirdness of this book and the very interesting plots that Noon was able to come up with, but the writing didn’t blow me away or make me think too hard about where the story was going. Glad I read this series, but wouldn’t necessarily recommend unless you want some creepy/unconventional stories to read that you won’t be able to fully understand.
This was the 4th and final book in the John Nyquist series (they definitely could all be read as standalones), and while I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite, they were all very unique and funky in their plots. As always, I never quite know how to articulate what the book is about, because it’s so vague in describing what is actually going on and instead relies heavily on letting the reader imagine the story to make it make sense. I really did enjoy the weirdness of this book and the very interesting plots that Noon was able to come up with, but the writing didn’t blow me away or make me think too hard about where the story was going. Glad I read this series, but wouldn’t necessarily recommend unless you want some creepy/unconventional stories to read that you won’t be able to fully understand.
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