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.

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.

Jeff Noon is an ever-favorite. In his latest, Within Without, Noon plays with the universe, genre, and our expectations. A literary speculative text from an author who always offers intriguing work.

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.

This was my first Jeff Noon read and I have to say even though this was the fourth book in a series, it was rather fun to make up my own idea as to the events that came in the three novels before this one.

I really love the cover on this one (and the whole series). This was a perfect mystery with historical elements and a sprinkle of fantasy. If you're looking for a genre-bending novel about weird cities and its weirder inhabitants, pick this one up.