I'm not entirely sure what this book was. Like it was so basic and obvious in terms of the plot and the characters had no development, but so weird that I don't know if I can describe it. It read like a jumbled mess, but the weirdness kept me interested to a degree that I feel like I ought to give this three stars.

This book asked so many questions and offered so many weird elements, but gave no answers. It's literally called The Somnambulist and the Somnambulist was a major character from start to finish, but I couldn't begin to tell you anything about him. He existed? And apparently a somnambulist, by modern definition, is a sleepwalker, but I'm not entirely sure what that had to do with the Somnambulist? I was trying to google for different definitions because sleepwalker didn't seem quite right, but I got nothing.

There's also a character who experiences life backwards, like Benjamin Button-esque, but weirder and more time travel-y. But that was never explained? Or really delved into? He existed on the periphery and you just kind of have to take him at his word and ask no questions. You'll get no answers or resolution. There wasn't even much use for it in the story.

There were a couple of random English schoolboy prefects who were magical assassin things. I'm not sure why or what their purpose was.

There's a narrator who turns out to be a bit of a plot twist and that could have been cool, but it felt like it had no bearing on the story whatsoever. Like the narrator could have been anyone and it wouldn't have made a difference. I quite liked the idea of that plot twist, but in practice it felt lacking.

I just don't know. It felt messy and weird and jumbled, but it also felt like all of those things lacked purpose. Like he was just making things as weird as possible for the sake of making them weird. Which I kind of appreciated because there was nothing else in the book that drew my interest. If it hadn't been so weird, there wouldn't have been anything even remotely interesting about it.

So I wouldn't recommend this book. I feel like I'm in more agreement with a lot of the negative reviews than the positive ones. It wasn't a well constructed book and I don't really understand what Barnes was going for. But I had to give this three stars because if I'm being honest, it was just so absurdly weird that I couldn't help but enjoy some of the jumbled mess of it.