Yup, people really DO go nuts when they can't sleep. Ripping-limbs nuts.

So much more plausible to me than the zombie tropes, the three main story lines -- peppered with mounting horror -- obliquely intersect near the end, in a most satisfying way. ( )

I went to such an effort to find this book, but sadly it wasn't worth the trouble, being just another zombie story in insomniacs' clothing.

It's well known that sleep deprivation is fatal so I'm not sure how these zombies lived for months without sleep.

The characters were very hard to keep track of and at times it was hard to distinguish between action, history and dream.

There were also inconsistencies such as some neighbourhoods having power and water and others not. And the ladder to the billboard not being retractable, then suddenly becoming so (although as I skim read to see what happened in the end, perhaps these anomalies were dealt with).

There was some clever stuff, such as the new dialect invented by the author for the insomniacs to speak, quite creative really.

The description of a character's inflamed reaction to a sex aid pill instead of a sleeping pill was well done.

But I just never really engaged with the story, found it easy to put down, and never wondered what I was missing when I did.


( )

An apocalyptic zombie novel disguised as literary fiction. What we have here are "sleepless", people who are affected by never-ending insomnia. They gradually lose their mental faculties and become enraged and murderous whenever they come upon a sleeper. So yeah, zombies. The book follows a handful of survivors who haven't succumbed to the mysterious condition or who are fighting it. The writing is good, but I feel like we've seen this concept so many times in recent years. Also, zombies. ( )

This book nearly received a 3 star review, but after some thought, I gave it 2 because NOTHING gets resolved, but so many things get started for all the characters. We start learning all these things about these people and seeing stuff happen to them that leaves us wondering "what next?" but then their chapter ends and by the time we see them again, time has jumped and that thread is dropped.

Over all, this story had an interesting premise and the writing was good, but it just was not executed like it needed to be. ( )

This book nearly received a 3 star review, but after some thought, I gave it 2 because NOTHING gets resolved, but so many things get started for all the characters. We start learning all these things about these people and seeing stuff happen to them that leaves us wondering "what next?" but then their chapter ends and by the time we see them again, time has jumped and that thread is dropped.

Over all, this story had an interesting premise and the writing was good, but it just was not executed like it needed to be. ( )