Customer Reviews

Something from the Nightside

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(46)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

In Something From the Nightside, Simon R. Green takes us on the initial exploration of a fascinating hidden world located far below the civilized streets of London. In the Nightside, it is always 3 AM; people (and other things) come from all kinds of worlds (including fictional ones) and times to indulge in the secret and oftentimes perverse pleasures they can never pursue in their own worlds; and anything and everything is possible - the sight of a fallen angel burning eternally in a blood-sealed circle qualifies as a mundane sight. Native Nightsiders all possess a gift of some sort - oftentimes a deadly one. It's a dangerous place, which is exactly why John Taylor left it five years ago. Now ensconced in the real world of London, he is a private detective of the film noir sort. When a rich dame comes seeking his help in finding her lost daughter, though, he finds himself returning to the secret world he vowed never to set foot in again. John Taylor's natural-born gift is an uncanny power to find things, especially within the confines of the Nightside. If anyone can find the missing girl, he can - whether he can survive long enough to do it, is a completely different matter.

Despite his misgivings, the journey back feels like going home. Little has changed in the Nightside. At Sidefellows bar, Alex Morrisey is still tending the bar (but of course, he is cursed to always remain there); Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor and Nightside's most proficient eternal killer, is still coming in for free drinks; Suzie Shooter is still around to shoot first and ask questions later; and young punks still have no better sense than to challenge John Taylor's powers. Taylor's gift can be deadly, and he is soon given the opportunity to prove that five years away have not lessened his powers. The secret of Taylor's childhood and mysterious destiny are fleshed out as the story progresses, but the one thing Taylor has been unable to find is the meaning and significance obviously attached to his life - although he's pretty sure it has something to do with his non-human mother who disappeared after he was born. Some unknown but very powerful someone (or something) has been trying to kill him ever since he was a kid, and the blank-faced, pseudo-beings called The Harrowing soon appear to claim their long-stalked prey. They are just one of several deadly problems Taylor encounters on his mission to find the missing young girl.

The actual climax of the story is a little less satisfying than what comes before, but that's about the only small weakness in this action-packed, fast-paced novel. Green proves himself a master of sly, dark humor in these pages, mixing a sharp wit with sociopolitical satire and plenty of campy hard-boiled detective adventure to create a portal to a wondrously enigmatic world where anything can happen and usually does. While the search for the missing girl remains the center of the novel, the story really shifts to that of the mysterious John Taylor himself, as we learn about his past and - thanks to a Timeslip phenomenon - a cataclysmic future he will supposedly bring about. Messiah-like references to him by the likes of the Brittle Sisters of the Hive raise intriguing questions, questions John Taylor wishes he knew the answers to himself.

The prolific Simon R. Green has created other worlds of great fascination in the fields of science fiction and fantasy, but the Nightside may be his most memorable creation, as it truly takes on a unique life of its own. Something From the Nightside leaves many a door open for Green to continue his dark and highly entertaining jaunts into this fascinating world, and the intriguingly complex life of John Taylor is guaranteed to bring delighted readers along for the ride as long as it lasts - especially if it takes us to more places where plague rats travel in pairs because they are afraid to venture out alone.

Something from the Nightside is a wonderfully written fantasy under the guise of a private detective mystery. If you only read the first few pages, you're doing a disservice to yourself. It isn't until John Taylor ventures into the Nightside that we actually experience the true genius of Simon R. Green.

This was my first exposure to the work of Green. I picked this book up after reading a referral from Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files. What's funny though is I only read Butcher because of a referral from Tanya Huff, one of my favorite authors. So, ultimately, Huff led me to Green. Funny how these things work sometimes.

Back to the story. Taylor has an unnatural ability to find things, including people. This is what led him to his current profession of private detective. In walks Joanna Barrett. She's looking for her daughter and has exhausted all her leads. She turns to Taylor as her last hope. The only thing that Joanna knows about her daughter's disappearance is that she's ventured into the Nightside. Joanna doesn't know what this is, but Taylor does. He left there 5 years earlier and vowed never to return. He's strapped for cash though, and Joanna seems to be his only prayer. So together, they journey into the Nightside.
And so begins the story.
Green is a very talented author that has mastered the art of creating believable characters and painting a magical scene. This novel incorporates suspense, humor, fantasy, horror and romance, and it does it well. The Nightside is a magical creation and hopefully we will see many more novels in this series.
I eagerly await the next novel, Agents of Light and Darkness.

Hidden in the dark core of London is The Nightside, a place where it is always 3 A.M., and every arcane and twisted appetite can come for satiation. Creatures from all the planes gather here, and not for idle chitchat. And the gods, for the most part, avoid it like the plague.

John Taylor is a 'finder.' It you pay him enough he can find anything, whether you want him to or not. For the past five years Taylor has refused to enter The Nightside, fearful of a heritage that has made him one of the most feared an hunted men in a place where everyone hunts. But nothing is forever, and the detective is offered a huge fee to discover the whereabouts of a young runaway who was last seen wandering the streets of The Nightside, drawn like a moth to the fire.

With this beginning, Simon Green opens a new series about a run down noir detective whose territory is a place where no sane person would ever go. Taylor is a strange cross between Angel and Philip Marlowe - full of attitude, wisecracking, and haunted by his past. And The Nightside has a great deal of Los Angeles in its bones.

Green's error is in getting carried away with the Raymond Chandler imitation. The plot is excellent, and The Nightside, if a bit derivative, is the kind of place where a hard-boiled detective with a 'private' third eye should be able to find countless interesting cases. The prose is a bit too over-blown. Caught by the necessity of establishing Taylor's character and the overarching weirdness of this little bit of occult geography, Green has allowed the writing to outrun itself. The result is something that sounds like Chandler but without that writer's ability to stab an image through the heart in the space of a sentence.

Everything said and done thought, this was an interesting story despite some predictable twists. Hopefully, the narrative will calm down a bit as the series establishes itself. Green has a lot of experience writing top grade popular fiction, so I suspect that The Nightside will become yet another success for this talented writer.

For those who have read Gaimon's "Neverwhere," the idea of a London that exists in parallel but separately from the everyday London will be familiar. But Simon Green's alternate London, which he calls "the Nightside," is a far grimmer place than Gaiman's quirky Neverwhere. It's populated by the likes of Shotgun Suzy Shooter, Razor Eddie, pedestrian-eating cars, and the supernatural dregs of uncounted worlds and times. The Nightside is a dangerous place, but it can be equally enticing to those who live there.

"Something from the Nightside" is the first of a series of novels about John Taylor, a man with the gift of finding things. He grew up in the Nightside but left it for the safety of ordinary London. As the story opens, he's barely making it as a private investigator. In walks Joanna, an obviously desperate (and rich) woman in search of her missing daughter. The two venture into the Nightside, where Taylor encounters friends and enemies (sometimes they're the same) and must deal with a macabre and deadly series of events.

This slim book begins at a furious pace, and the author keeps the action revved up through all of its 230some pages. Taylor's background (and he has an intriguing history) is important to the plot, but it's given briefly, almost as if the book were a sequel trying to bring new readers up to speed. Green's tried to combine the feeling of hard-boiled detective fiction with horror and dark fantasy. It's an interesting mix, and partially successful. There's not a lot of character development, just scene after scene of bizarre encounters and narrow escapes. In many places the characters feel like stereotypes and the plot twists are expected. But Green writes with an energy that keeps the reader going, "Something from the Nightside" is not a book with any deep meaning or particular literary merit. But it is a good read--and a fast one.

OK, I get it. Anything can happen in the Nightside. Yep, everything is different in the Nightside. Agreed, nothing can prepare you for the Nightside. Got it...this book takes place in the Nightside...understood that since page ten.

It is like listening to someone who refers to themselves in the third person. It might be mildly amusing at first but after a while your eyes just glaze over and you wait for it to end.

I have not finished the last fifteen or so pages but I can honestly say, I really don't care what happens in the Nightside anymore. The characters were not well developed and I could not generate any sympathy for the mother or, after a while, her daughter.

One of the reasons I was interested in giving this book a try was Jim Butcher's jacket endorsement. Even at his most reduntant, Butcher never beat a point to death so much as Simon Green pounded home the fact that you are in the Nightside. Just as important, Butcher's books engage you and suck you in so even if he mentions the "Everafter" in every other sentence, you would not notice because the story had enveloped you.

Funny, this is the first snarky review I have given, but the Nightside drove me to it. Blame it on the Nightside. If it were not for the Nightside, I would have responded differently to the Nightside.

Nightside!


PS. Dont forget...

This book takes place in the Nightside.

Something From the Nightside (2003) is a fantasy detective story. It is a pastiche of the Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer styles and is both a satire and a tribute to the genre. The detective lives in his cramped office in a seedy London neighborhood, with a lawyer's office on one side and a dentist's on the other. The door has a frosted glass window with a flaking name -- "Taylor Investigations" -- and a bullethole. On a very wet and dark evening, the investigator is listening to an angry creditor on the phone when a good looking dame comes in to hire him.

In this novel, John Taylor is a finder. He doesn't do insurance work, divorces, or solve crime, but he can find anything. It is just one of his talents. Moreover, he is from the Nightside and there he has a third, Private, eye.

Joanna Barrett hires John Taylor to find her daughter. Joanna has already been to the police and the big agencies, to no avail. Now she has come to Taylor as the result of a tip saying that only he could find Catherine in the Nightside. For 50,000 pounds up front and another 50,000 if she is returned, Taylor agrees to find the girl. However, Joanna has one condition: she is to go along on the hunt.

Taylor begins by entering the Underground; all this is new to Joanna, so he buys the tickets and shows her how to use them to get into the station. Once in, he follows his instincts til he finds a sign in Enochian, an artificial language developed to talk to angels, that points the way to a maintenance closet, where he picks up a phone and says "Nightside". The wall then opens into a tunnel leading to the Nightside of the station, where they catch a train.

At this point, it has become obvious that John Taylor is very well known in the Nightside and not much liked by the majority of the population. However, he is feared; in his words, "I could have been a contender". Enough so that the lowlifes recognize him and back off from confrontations.

This novel is linked to Shadows Fall through internal reference and to the author's other urban fantasy, Drinking Midnight Wine, through its similarities in setting and ambience. However, this one seems to be somewhat of an experiment in the classic American detective style.

Some reviewers of Drinking Midnight Wine objected to the emphasis on character development as opposed to action. The action in this story will probably fulfill their expectations in that regard, although the main character is still nicely developed. The other characters are only minimally fleshed out, yet much more than cardboard.

Recommended for Green fans and anyone else who enjoys detective stories within an urban fantasy.

-Arthur W. Jordin

If you want a GOOD vampire-PI novel, go read "Already Dead" by Charlie Houston.
Two stars for a good plot. But that's about it. The author uses a lot of words but says little. The protagonist has to tell us everything that's happening - long paragraphs of explanation that just bog down the action. The description also tended to be along the lines of "you don't really want to know what's behind that door; it's really, really bad and will gross you out." Yes, and? So? My imagination isn't that good; it's the author's job to fill in those blanks.
And the dialogue! Talk about stilted. The female character actually says 'forfend' at one point. Come on!
I know I'm one of the dissenters of this, but the author just didn't convince me about the setting or the characters.
I bought this because 'someone' had thought enough about his writing that they had published more than one novel. So much for that method of picking up new authors....

It's a place where the sun doesn't shine, a locale where past, present and future converge at times. It is where one' darkest dreams and desires are met, a place not of this earth but connected to it so that people travel to and from it. John Taylor lived his entire life in the Nightside, abandoned by his father when he discovered the woman he married wasn't human. John has a gift of being able to locate anyone anywhere and he used that extra sense to help people.

He finally got sick of lies, betrayals and mistrust of those who would turn from friend to foe in the blink of an eye. He left the Darkside and set up shop as a private detective in mundane London and for five years etched out a living, safe and secure. One day Joanna Barrett comes to his office asking for help in locating her runaway daughter in the Darkside. Unable to refuse a damsel in distress, John travels to the Darkside, a place he's secretly happy to have a reason to return to because it is home and so very much alive.

Cross the X files with The Twilight Zone, add a pinch of The Outer Limits and a dash of Eerie, Indiana and one might have a glimmer of an idea what the Darkside is like. Simon R. Green has written this fascinating little gem that makes people want to walk on the wild and visit his extraordinary world. For though it is the focus of darkness, the Nightside has packets of goodness, which means that those who want to can defeat evil anywhere.

Harriet Klausner

I nabbed this solely because Jim Butcher (of the Harry Dresden series) recommended it on the cover. I hope that this is a first book in a series, as there's a lot of good groundwork here, and a heck of a lot expository prose that would be entirely wasted if it wasn't a set up for more to come.

John Taylor (no relation to the singer) is a detective in London, who escaped "the Nightside" five years ago. What's the Nightside? Think Twighlight Zone, or Outer Limits, but add in a heavier dash of macabre, evil, shadow, whatever you'd like to pull from your worst nightmares and darkest impulses.

It is a place that is not really in the world, but sort of beside it, buried in the heart of London, where all manner of dark and horrible things await - and where John Taylor is going with his new client, to rescue her child from something truly evil.

In the Nightside, John can find anything - it's one of his many psychic gifts (that only function in the Nightside), and people fear him (although why he isn't sure, though he's pretty sure it has something to do with his mother, whom he doesn't really know, and about whom he's even less enlightened).

This was good. I'll read more if it turns into a series, though I heartily recommend you skip the passage with the large insects. It was very very gross.

'Nathan

I picked up this book because the concept interested me and because I've enjoyed other books by Simon R. Green. I very quickly learned that things are different, in the Nightside. Things are also apparently very repetitive in the Nightside. One particular instance that sticks out was that cars are not always cars in the Nightside, sometimes they are something else, in the Nightside, and one would be wise to avoid stepping out in to traffic lest one of the not cars should eat you. In the Nightside. Since I was told that little tidbit about cars twice in two pages, I figured that, in the Nightside, cars might be different. It was so blatent that I checked to make sure I just wasn't reading the same page twice, because, as you may have figured out, things are different, in the Nightside.

I got the feeling that this series may be for those with a short attention span. Several concepts and ideas were very interesting, but I could not get past being continually reminded that things are not as they seem, in the Nightside. Unless you are particularly fond of being constantly remided of the same thing over and over and over again, you may want to stay away from these books. If you have a tolerance for being continually reminded over and over and over again that you are indeed in the Nightside, then you might just enjoy these books. But remember, things are not what they seem, in the Nightside.

You get the idea, in the Nightside.