![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yesterday, I finished reading "Something from the Nightside" by Simon R. Green, which is the first book in his Nightside series about the private eye slash ESP-or-whatever John Taylor who lives in your plain and boring London but he knows that there is a much more colorful world hidden deep in the city, the Nightside.
One day, a client comes to John Taylor. A female client. The rich Joanna who is on search for her missing daughter Cathy. She knows WHERE her daughter is but everybody refuses to help her get Cathy out of there. Why? Cathy ended up in the Nightside. And John Taylor is the only guy who can help Joanna. Because he knows the Nightside better than his own shoes - he was born there and he fled from there five years ago, promising never to return. But John has always been a knight in shining armor and so he reluctantly agrees to fetch Cathy from that dangerous, exciting place... and he also agrees to take Joanna with him - he is a sucker for everything family oriented.
I won't say anything about the search itself or how it ends since I don't want spoil it and the book is really a short one too, but wow, what a ride. This book reminded me a lot of Matrix because in the Nightside, everything is possible. You want to see a fallen angel burning forever in Hell's flames in a circle drawn with child's blood? Why not. Time jumping is nothing unheard of there and there is always 3 AM there, on the Nightside. But even though the Nightside is in London, it's not really in London but IN London. You can stumble there by mistake or you have to know exactly how to get there - the pay phone trick is another Matrix-y thing but really cool too :) And when the wall parts in front of you and you step into a world that's turned upside down and inside out for a good measure too, please, don't behave like a tourist and don't gap.
The characters and not just the main ones are totally engaging. I mean, a talking horse who owns a fiacre, cars that eat passers-by or a café that burned to ground and appeared as a ghost again and where it's always the sixties are not your usual stuff. Not to mention poltergeists and dog-eating female bouncers XP
But I was especially fascinated by the main characters - John Taylor and his two "friends", Shotgun Suzie and Razor Eddie. Why the quotation marks? Because in the Nightside, nobody is anybody's friend. And the ones who appear to be just haven't betrayed you yet.
John Taylor appears to be your average guy but he has a gift - he can find anything in the Nightside. And he can stare you down until you piss your pants. His father drunk himself to death and his mother... well, his mother is something so unnatural that everybody refuses to even talk about it, leaving John, who never knew his own mother, in the dark. Everybody in the Nightside fears John to the point of running away simply hearing his name. But he himself has no idea why. But there are still some shady characters who want to kill him. And nobody knows why. Especially he. And usually when he is in troubles, either Razor Eddie or Shotgun Suzie are there to help him out. Not that they are friends or something. Where Suzie is your simple shoot-first-talk-later girl (kind of like Revy in Black Lagoon), Eddie is much more mysterious and sinister, being also known as Punk God of the Straight Razor, killing bad guys with a razor that nobody can see but everybody can feel.
I think that this book is a great beginning of a great series and I can't wait to read the other books. I'm especially curious about who John's mother is. I see that a lot of people compare this book to Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" and usually, this one comes out lacking. Not in this review though. Green's series is much more engaging than Butcher's. The books are shorter because he doesn't drag the story out unnecessarily and John Taylor is not as annoying as Harry Dresden (with his hypocrisy that justifies the betrayal of promises made to any non-human being out there). If I should choose, I would definitely go with Green and his John Taylor. 4 stars out of 5!
One day, a client comes to John Taylor. A female client. The rich Joanna who is on search for her missing daughter Cathy. She knows WHERE her daughter is but everybody refuses to help her get Cathy out of there. Why? Cathy ended up in the Nightside. And John Taylor is the only guy who can help Joanna. Because he knows the Nightside better than his own shoes - he was born there and he fled from there five years ago, promising never to return. But John has always been a knight in shining armor and so he reluctantly agrees to fetch Cathy from that dangerous, exciting place... and he also agrees to take Joanna with him - he is a sucker for everything family oriented.
I won't say anything about the search itself or how it ends since I don't want spoil it and the book is really a short one too, but wow, what a ride. This book reminded me a lot of Matrix because in the Nightside, everything is possible. You want to see a fallen angel burning forever in Hell's flames in a circle drawn with child's blood? Why not. Time jumping is nothing unheard of there and there is always 3 AM there, on the Nightside. But even though the Nightside is in London, it's not really in London but IN London. You can stumble there by mistake or you have to know exactly how to get there - the pay phone trick is another Matrix-y thing but really cool too :) And when the wall parts in front of you and you step into a world that's turned upside down and inside out for a good measure too, please, don't behave like a tourist and don't gap.
The characters and not just the main ones are totally engaging. I mean, a talking horse who owns a fiacre, cars that eat passers-by or a café that burned to ground and appeared as a ghost again and where it's always the sixties are not your usual stuff. Not to mention poltergeists and dog-eating female bouncers XP
But I was especially fascinated by the main characters - John Taylor and his two "friends", Shotgun Suzie and Razor Eddie. Why the quotation marks? Because in the Nightside, nobody is anybody's friend. And the ones who appear to be just haven't betrayed you yet.
John Taylor appears to be your average guy but he has a gift - he can find anything in the Nightside. And he can stare you down until you piss your pants. His father drunk himself to death and his mother... well, his mother is something so unnatural that everybody refuses to even talk about it, leaving John, who never knew his own mother, in the dark. Everybody in the Nightside fears John to the point of running away simply hearing his name. But he himself has no idea why. But there are still some shady characters who want to kill him. And nobody knows why. Especially he. And usually when he is in troubles, either Razor Eddie or Shotgun Suzie are there to help him out. Not that they are friends or something. Where Suzie is your simple shoot-first-talk-later girl (kind of like Revy in Black Lagoon), Eddie is much more mysterious and sinister, being also known as Punk God of the Straight Razor, killing bad guys with a razor that nobody can see but everybody can feel.
I think that this book is a great beginning of a great series and I can't wait to read the other books. I'm especially curious about who John's mother is. I see that a lot of people compare this book to Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" and usually, this one comes out lacking. Not in this review though. Green's series is much more engaging than Butcher's. The books are shorter because he doesn't drag the story out unnecessarily and John Taylor is not as annoying as Harry Dresden (with his hypocrisy that justifies the betrayal of promises made to any non-human being out there). If I should choose, I would definitely go with Green and his John Taylor. 4 stars out of 5!
