After Mad Norwegian Press's wild, diverse, beautiful, and bizarre run of Faction Paradox books came to an end, it was subsequently picked up by New Zealand–based publisher Random Static for a healthy, extensive line of one (1) whole book: Newtons Sleep by Daniel O'Mahony. And despite the comical level of diversity in Mad Norwegian's output, Random Static still managed to form a new and distinct identity for the series. Of all the Faction books so far, Newtons Sleep comes closest to the core tone of the franchise: it's convoluted, mired in real historical events, impenetrably dense, very timey-wimey, and generally bizarre, with a hint of gratuitous edge. It commits to being esoteric in a way that no Faction Paradox book before it did, which is a feat given what the rest of the franchise up til now looks like. This level of commitment is both to its benefit and its detriment.

For once, I will not attempt to provide a plot summary for this book. It's simply too messy and convoluted, and I would inevitably get details wrong and omit important plot points in my vain attempt to puzzle together everything this book was about. There's this guy named Nate Silver who got resurrected, plus historical writer Aphra Behn, and an evil bioengineered thing, and lots of sex, and Faction Paradox is hanging around too – that's as far as I'll go in attempting to explain. And don't even get me started on themes – this book zig-zags through so much real-life history, time-travel insanity, supernatural/scifi phenomena (depending on how you look at it), and political intrigue, that I spent too much energy just trying to understand what was happening before I could intake the underlying ideas that powered the plot.

Put in this position, some reviewers would criticize the book for being so hard to understand that the thematic points were buried in the complex plotline and fantastical writing style. Me? I'd rather just acknowledge this book was made for someone with a lot more patience and ability to put threads together than I, and with a lot more interest in understanding 17th-century British politics to boot. Newtons Sleep is a book that absolutely knows what it's doing, but when it intentionally obfuscates the plot for the sake of ~the vibes~, it alienates part of its audience in the process. It feels like it knows that too, and does it all anyway. I'm halfway to denouncing it for being pretentious, but I'd rather play devil's advocate and treat it as simply not being designed for me.

But enough about how dense this thing is: let's talk about what I did gather. Because while Newtons Sleep was a tangle of oddities, plenty of those oddities did stick out to me along the way. Most of the political and historical context was lost on me (which undoubtedly damaged my understanding of the plot and themes), but there's lots to enjoy within the plot's connections to the Faction Paradox mythos. You've got the Faction itself, the babels, the Order of the Weal, posthumans, loa, the whole shebang, and they're all filtered through the perspective of people from the 17th century. O'Mahony runs with the "dark fantasy masquerading as sci-fi" tone and uses this lens to take it up to eleven. It makes these lore details feel extra otherworldly and astounding, with especial shout-outs to the portrayal of Larissa, the renegade Homeworlder who flits in and out of Aphra's life. The fanciful, old-timey writing style is laid on a little thick ("The Faction of Paradoxes"? Really?) but it very much lands the vibes it's going for, and the scifi stuff hits great as a result. Fucked-up incomprehensible gothic fantasy scifi is the stuff I came to this franchise for, and Newtons Sleep absolutely delivers on that front.

The characters are also worth mentioning. Everyone's got good points and big flaws, but all of the main cast stands out and gives you something to be invested in by the book's end. My personal favorite was naturally Greenaway, a member of Faction Paradox who's trying a bit too hard to prove herself to her superiors, and who harbors a secret throughout the second half of the book that completely changes the way she experiences the world. I definitely wanted to see more of her character, but what was there felt rock-solid; I could've spent a whole book with just Greenaway. The other perspective characters, Nate Silver and Aphra Behn, are also portrayed vividly, and the side cast feels lively too. (I hated Nick Plainsong, but that seems intentional, and you can't deny he's memorable.)

Everything so far: the book has solid characters and knows what it's doing, and I liked it when it dug its claws into Faction Paradox mythos, but otherwise felt alienated by its density and references to historical events. That's mostly everything out of the way, but there is one elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. Namely: Daniel O'Mahony is obsessed with mentioning sex in this book. Practically everyone in this book has sex or thinks about having sex with everyone else, prostitutes are all over the place, at one point a character gets pissed on for some reason, and the relationship between a certain two characters pretty much amounts to grooming. It becomes especially bothersome when real-life historical figures get involved, who are too busy being dead to sign off on this use of their persona. It's thankfully less prevalent during the book's climax, so I didn't finish the book with a bad taste in my mouth, but the sheer gratuity of it all still wore me down. I'm not the most Puritan of beings, but I vastly prefer when sex scenes in mostly-SFW media are tasteful and really contribute to the plot and characters (cf. Lawrence Miles' Dead Romance). Newtons Sleep flies past that line and never looks back. I legitimately think I would have given this book at least one more point out of ten if it hadn't been smattered in sex scenes and idle mentions of characters wanting to f**k each other. Some of it seems character-relevant, most of it is just gratuitous.

clears throat

Beyond that. Newtons Sleep is a fine book. It commits to the Faction Paradox ethos of being obtuse and complex, and it does it to an extreme extent; this naturally has the result that some will love it and some will feel entirely alienated by it. I fall somewhere in the middle, depending on which aspect of the book we're talking about. Sure, Faction Paradox–brand density is a classic and it's what I'm here for, but this book takes it a step too far and loses me somewhere in the esoteric morass of the plot and writing style. I'd love to give this book a higher rating based on the parts I did like, but it's trying a little too hard to be impenetrable for my liking. There were some scenes I cringed at, some I really loved, and in the end I had a fine time but don't think I'll be jumping to re-read this one.