“Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green (Nightside: Book 1)
3.5 Stars.
Hmm. how to describe this book.... How about this: Take Moning's Fever series, minus most of the romance, and combine it with the Dresden Files and perhaps a bit of Sam Spade and voila, you have Something from the Nighside.
The book's on the short side, coming in at just over 200 pages. It has some terrible dialog, several shallow characters, a plot that's thinner than my 8yr old's socks with at least as many holes, several very repetitive sections, and yet...I couldn't put it down.
The main character is this Sam Spade like, hard edged, PI named John Taylor who specializes in finding things. It seems he has the ability to find anything, whether it wants to be found or not. When the classic dame comes through the bullet hole ridden door to his office and we find that she's looking for her lost teenaged daughter, it's just the kind of case that John can't say no to...even when it takes him to a hidden part of London that John was born in and swore through the blood bubbles 5 years ago that he'd never go back to.
What kept me moving through this book was that despite its flaws, a lot of which could have been addressed by better editing, it had so many wonderful elements. We have the Nightside which is sort of like the lost sections in the Fever series mixed with Vegas when it wasn't safe enough to bring your family to. It's filled with these cool characters and monsters and is un apologetic in its moral abandon. We find out that John has a bit of a reputation in the Nightside and we aren't quite sure why. There's magic and monsters and traps, and wicked fights, and just a lot of cool stuff.
I have no idea at this point if the series gets a little cleaner, editorially speaking, as it progresses or not, but I've seen enough that I'm going to give book two a try. Onto the TBR it goes.
If you like Dresden, magic, and dark interesting characters, and you can make it past the books flaws, then you might want to give this novel and it's Nightside a try.”
Patrick Haggerty wrote this review Tuesday, April 24, 2012.
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