Our Review
Return of the Dead
It's hard to believe that Dark Sleeper, the opening volume of the Western Lights series, is a first novel. Its author, Jeffrey Barlough, makes one of the more formidable debuts of recent years with a mature, fully developed historical fantasy that is as accomplished -- and enthralling -- as anything that has come my way in many months.

At first, the story appears to be set in the vividly evoked England of the 19th century, a faux-Dickensian society that calls to mind the early work of Tim Powers The Anubis Gates and James Blaylock Homunculus. Then, early in the narrative, we learn that England -- along with the most of the rest of Western civilization -- vanished following a cataclysmic comet strike universally referred to as The Sundering. The events of the novel all take place in a small, surviving corner of that sundered world.

The story begins when a drunken resident of the fogbound town of Salthead meets the reanimated corpse of a recently drowned sailor. This apparition -- which is followed, in turn, by many others, including the ghost of a dead child, the resurrected hulk of a sunken ship, and the impossible image of a grotesque "flying man" -- marks the beginning of a supernatural assault on the citizens of Salthead. Dark Sleeper recounts the desperate efforts of the townsfolk -- led by Titus Tiggs, professor of metaphysics, and his Watson-like companion, Dr. Daniel Dampe -- to understand the nature of this assault, and to protect themselves against it.

What follows is a wild, endlessly inventive entertainment that ranges from the law offices and public houses of Salthead to the mountainous regions where mastodons and saber-toothed cats still dominate the landscape. Along the way, Barlough treats us to a colorful gallery of heroes, villains, and supernatural entities that Dickens would have been proud to call his own. Included among them are a disenfranchised mastodon driver; a mute, Bartleby-like law clerk; a rival pair of ancient Etruscan sorcerers; a miser who makes Ebenezer Scrooge seem philanthropic; and a varied collection of thieves, magicians, madmen, and murderers whose destinies converge in a climactic encounter on the frozen waters of Salthead Harbor.

Jeffrey Barlough is unmistakably a writer to watch. His wit and ingenuity, his careful orchestration of a complex plot and a large cast of characters, and -- most of all -- his flawless re-creation of the language and locutions of an earlier century, distinguish his narrative at every turn. Dark Sleeper is, by any standard, a remarkable debut, and it signals the beginning of what, I hope, will be a long, prolific career.

--Bill Sheehan