My review of The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes just went up at The Washington Post Book World. I really wanted to like this book more but the unevenness of tone and passivity of the narrator ultimately deep-sixed it for me (despite liking the opening and the title characters).

I thought Barnes’ first novel was great fun and felt really bad about having to write this review. I look forward to reading more by Barnes and plan to seek out whatever his third novel turns out to be, although I won’t be reviewing it unless I like it.

Finally, I’ll just note that if you don’t read the second half of the novel it becomes glaringly obvious in your review–I don’t believe reviewers for a couple of trade publications actually read the whole thing.