Lilith

That’s a wrap

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Screenshot_20180823-151710Hooboy. I legit almost cried last night reading the afterword on Simon R. Green’s Nightfall. A few years ago or so, Simon was diagnosed with diabetes (or so I heard), which raised some concerns for him about not being able to finish his outstanding series (at the time: Ghost Finders, the Secret Histories and The nightside). This latest book, Nightfall, wraps up both the Secret Histories and the Nightside into one glorious riot of snark. WARNING: Here be spoilers!

The Nightside is necessary. The only place in the world where you truly have freedom of choice. Want to sell your soul? There’s people for that. Can’t fit in with polite society? The Nightside is the place for you. It’s always 3am, the hour of the wolf, and the Authorities only nominally have control of the place.

For as long as anyone could remember, it has always occupied the same space. It’s borders have never changed, not since Lilith – John Taylor’s biblical myth mother – set them down before the age of man began. And no one wants it to expand, not even those in the Nightside. They like where they are and it doesn’t need to change. So when the Street of the Gods suddenly empties of every god (or wannabe god), John Taylor knows something big is on the way. So of course, he’s the one saddled with finding out what and how to stop it.

The Droods have always run things in the regular world, if you believe them. And there’s really no reason not to. They’ve saved the world several times over and keep in line those who would destroy it and those they just don’t like. Run by the Matriarch, the Droods stand for humanity, whether Humanity wants them to or not. When the Nightside’s borders expand without warning, the Droods decide it’s time to take care of the place, just like they’ve always wanted.

Trouble is, no one wants them to do it. Every group they reach out to (the London Knights, the Soulhunters, the Carnacki Institute) tells them to shove off. The Nightside can handle this issue themselves and you really don’t want to invade the place. The Nightside has fought a lot of wars in their time, including against heaven and hell and a biblical myth. They’ve always come out on top.

So what happens when two groups who believe they’re in the right and have never lost a fight go up against each other? Invasion. War. Death. Kind of the usual for both the Droods and the Nightside. The only people who can stop the Droods from tearing down the Nightside are John Taylor and Suzie Shooter, now very pregnant and armed with strange matter bullets. They’re not alone this time though. The Authorities, the Oblivion brothers, Ms. Fate, Alex Morrisey and all your usual Nightside favorites are in the fight to protect their home.

On the other side, Eddie Drood and Molly Metcalf are trying to knock sense into people. Sometimes quite literally. There are pacts laid down by ancient Drood family members and Nightside representatives that shouldn’t be violated, but the Matriarch and the Sergeant at Arms aren’t listening. They’re determined to wipe the Nightside off the map. The problem is, as much as Eddie dislikes the place, he realizes that it serves a purpose. And Molly has spent a lot of time there, has many friends there. She can’t stand by and let the Droods ruin the one truly Drood free place on the planet.

Together, the four of them have to stop the fighting and figure out a fix before everyone dies. But in order to do that, they have to figure out why the borders expanded in the first place and who is behind it. If they figure that out, they might just have a chance to stop the slaughter of not only Eddie’s family, but what passes for innocents in the Nightside.

This book did a beautiful job of wrapping up both the Secret Histories novels and the Nightside novels. I’ve absolutely adored reading both of these series. And while both of them have had quite a few novels each, I’m still saddened to see them come to an end. I still have a few questions I would love to see answered some day, but realize that likely won’t happen. Who are the new New Authorities, now that the New Authorities were whittled down to just Julien Advent? What is the name of John and Susie’s daughter? Do Cathy Barrett (the new Ms. Fate) and Alex stay together? How does Eddie like being the new Walker? Does he actually listen to the New New Authorities?

Simon R. Green is one of my all time favorite writers and I haven’t read a book of his that I haven’t devoured. I hope he has many more years of writing left in him and suggest that if you need a fix, pick up his Ishmael Jones books. And if you haven’t read them yet, the Twilight of the Empire, Deathstalker and Forest Kingdom books are absolute musts. Rating: A+

 

Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth

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Next up on the hit parade is Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth. After the events of Paths Not Taken, the Nightside is at war with Lilith. John just knows that he has to be the one to defeat his mother. No one else really stands a chance but first, he has to rescue his secretary Cathy from the tender clutches of Walker. Its here that we find out, to no one’s surprise, that he thinks of Cathy as a daughter more than a secretary.

John discovers that Walker is keeping her in the Necropolis with protections that means he can’t see what sort of trap he (and Suzie) will be walking into. Still, he goes anyway. He can’t not. Alex helps him leave Strangefellows without being seen, an old family secret for a rainy night. From there, John goes to the Doormouse, a life-size bipedal mouse that deals in transportational doors. After some haggling and a bit of growling by Suzie, the Doormouse transports them right to the outside of the Necropolis (never inside any establishment, its too dangerous), where they run into Razor Eddie.

Razor Eddie had heard of Cathy’s plight and came to help, if only to stick it to Walker. Eddie uses his newly enhanced pearl handled straight razor and opens up the dimensional wall between the Nightside and the Necropolis’ graveyard. There they find necromancer Sandra Chance (formerly involved with the Lamentation) and Tommy Oblivion. Tommy thinks he’s doing the right thing. Sandra just wants revenge. With nothing for it, Tommy wakes up the sleeping Cathy, who promptly kicks him in the balls because he doesn’t want to kill John, just keep him busy.

And Sandra does a stupid. She tries to take her revenge by raising the dead but they are seriously protected. Which is of course just when Walker double crosses them all and locks them in the Necropolis. The group fights together to keep the guardian of the dead from killing them all until John points out to Eddie right where his previous opening had been. That area is weak and Walker didn’t know Eddie would be there. Luckily, they escape but the hardship isn’t over yet.

John sends Tommy to escort Cathy to Strangefellows while the rest of them go to the Street of the Gods. When they get there, they find it utterly destroyed. Lilith had already been there, making a grand entrance and killing quite a lot of things, almost including Walker himself. Walker survives and he and John finally get on the same side. John sends them off to Strangefellows to heal Walker while he goes to find Dead Boy and Julian Advent.

He finds Dead Boy working as a bouncer and cajoles/threatens him to joining John. They find Julian Advent being Julian Advent and help him rescue a bunch of fairies in a sweat shop for magic items. After that’s finished, John tells Julian and Dead Boy that he needs to be sent into the future to talk to his Enemies, the ones who had haunted him throughout his life with the Harrowing. And to do that, he needs to summon an angel. There is a lot of argument about how this is very stupid but John is insistent, besides he knows this angel-the former succubus Pretty Poison.

She is more than a little mad at his presumption but she helps him anyway. She sends him into the future. He has to dodge monstrous, hate-filled creatures to get to his enemies but he does it. And he talks his way out of immediate death, so there’s that. He gets information from them and promises to change this future because he really doesn’t want it either. In the end, they agree to send him back but they’re a little off with their timing. They send him back a week after he left and a lot of people think he’s done a runner. Idiots. When has John ever done a runner?

John goes to a magic crystal type shop and uses up pretty much every crystal ball and scrying pool to catch up on what he’s missed. And it isn’t pretty, not at all. Luckily though, most of the people he considers friends are still alive. Lilith has done some awful things including destroying the Time Tower and raising all the dead of the Necropolis to us as an army. Once he’s done catching up, John uses one last pool to contact Walker. They need to get in touch with the Authorities now.

The twosome meet up at the Londinium Club, naturally. Unfortunately, the Authorities turn out to be the cowardly, nasty jerks we all took them for. So its kinda nice that Lilith kills them all, even if it does shock the hell out of Walker. Now they’re really on their own. John pulls Tommy Oblivion out of Strangefellows via his membership card and forces Tommy to existential them to St Jude’s to find the Lord of Thorns, who unfortunately turns out to be no help at all.

Before John could come up with his next move, he’s ambushed by Sandra Chance and a bunch of fellow ruthless bounty hunters (and no Suzie is not among them). It seems the Reasonable Men, whom he killed two books ago, have parents who put out a major bounty on his head. Stupid people. John and Suzie kill them (Tommy was severely injured) and the three of them hobble back to Strangefellows.

John’s next idea: Retrieve the Speaking Gun from Old Father Time. Unfortunately with the Time Tower destroyed, John has to get to Shadows Fall the hard way, through the Tube. John leads Suzie, Dead Boy and Tommy Oblivion (newly healed and a bit of an idiot) out to the night once more. One by one, they all fall behind but John makes the train, gets to Old Father Time and retrieves the Speaking Gun. Time immediately sends him catapulting back to the Nightside…and right to Lilith.

No, Time is not conspiring with Lilith, she’s just that good. And it turns out that the Speaking Gun was a bad idea. If you recall, it was made of a person, all meat and gristle and bits of skin. Well, that person? You guessed it, Lilith. The gun gets incorporated back into her and she’s just about to get a hold of John and start her Master Plan when in swings the Collector with a weird ass timey-wimey device. He blinks in, grabs John and blinks out before Lilith can move. She is not a happy kitty.

Back in Strangefellows, all seems lost until Walker says something that give John the ultimate idea. You see, Lilith had been banished to Limbo a very long time ago. Only Walker, the Collector and John’s father Charles opening the Babalon Working back in the sixties let her back into the world. Only they were so shaken by it not working out correctly, they didn’t bother closing the working.

John realizes the way to fix this is to shove Lilith back through that propped open door to Limbo. And that the three people who are needed to do it are actually available, thanks to Lilith. John’s father drank himself to death when he was a kid and all dead people in the Nightside get buried in the Necropolis. The Necropolis that Lilith emptied by bringing the dead back to (some semblance) of life. John finds his father holed up in the Library (his sanctuary when he was alive) and Merlin (newly arisen without Alex’s help for once), retrieves him.

John has just moments to explain his plan and the threesome (reluctantly I must say) agree to close the Babalon Working. Of course, while they’re doing this, Lilith finally breaks down Strangefellows defenses and kills Merlin. John distracts her by demanding she explain her master plans (which she does in Bondian fashion). The door to Limbo springs back open and sucks her right to the edge but someone has to close the door from inside Limbo. John gets ready to do it but his father tackles Lilith, gives him the I’m-proud-of-you-son and the working shuts down. Crisis averted.

This book has its moments. Dead Boy, John and Julian Advent tearing apart a sweat shop was great…but kind of out of place in the grand scheme of this book. The Doormouse is lovely and introduces a character that comes back a couple times. Still, I think that perhaps he could have gone with a slightly longer book, just to drag things out a bit. This is supposed to be the dramatic bit. Still, very good book. Rating: B+.

Paths Not Taken

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Next up on the hit parade is Paths Not Taken. Set immediately after the previous book, John Taylor is on his way to his office to figure out how to start facing his mother. He needs allies and he needs information. So he heads to his office for the very first time. To his surprise, he finds it in a fairly well off business area of the Nightside, protected by his secretary Cathie and very powerful magicks.

His current plan is to go to the Time Tower and ask Old Father Time (a character from the book Shadows Fall) and forewarned is forearmed. So he’s sitting and waiting for his ultra high tech computers to give him anything to work with, a client falls in his lap. Almost literally. Eamonn Mitchell is an average worker bee from real London who got shunted to the Nightside and is now being accosted by previous versions of himself. And what do you know, he just happens to John’s business card in his hand, saying he could help. Too bad John doesn’t have business cards.

After two previous Eamonn’s wreak havoc in his office, he heads to Strangefellows on the basis that both he and his new client need very large drinks. That and Merlin’s magic will likely protect them from any serious harm. How wrong his is. Two older versions of Eamonn show up, equipped with probability wands like the previous two. After handling them, John and Eamonn hook up with Tommy Oblivion, the existential detective (he specializes in cases that may or may not have actually happened).

Figuring that the best place to get answers is the Nightside branch of the client’s company, they wander off into the night and eventually make it to the Widow’s Mite Insurance company. Turns out the company, with some prompting from Walker, used Eamonn as bait for Count Video (no longer skinless). A brief battle later and things work out for poor Eamonn, and for John and Tommy who get generous checks from the Widow’s Mite.

John talks Tommy into time traveling with him and they head for the Time Tower. They’re waylaid by some seriously scary Walkerness called the Shadow Men. They are just shadows who can carry you off to wherever Walker is. Apparently it is very much less than pleasant. Tommy uses his gift of existentialism to get them to Time Tower Square and away from the Shadow Men and they are met by Suzie Shooter.

Turns out, Old Father Time was expecting all three of them, which can be either good or bad depending on how you look at it. So they ask him to send them back to the beginning of the Nightside so they can figure out how to beat Lilith. Only Lilith has other ideas and stops their trek some hundreds of years before present time, just after King Arthur’s death (yeah, he’s totally real). They don’t know why they were stopped here but they go exploring and eventually figure that they need Merlin’s help to get them further back in time.

They go to Strangefellows (eventually) which was then called Avalon and run by former cup bearer to the gods Hebe. They don’t succeed in sweet talk or logic so they get Merlin drunk off his ass. And then they steal his heart right out of his chest. At this point Tommy grows a conscience (because young witch Nimue died trying to save Merlin’s life) and tries to change what they’re doing. He wants to bring Merlin back, bring back the age of Arthur. John and Suzie kick the crap out of him and send him back to the Nightside (we see where he ends up in an earlier book. Ah, time travel).

John figures out how to trigger the magic in Merlin’s heart and they end up several hundred years further back in Roman times. Still, it isn’t far enough back. So they go in search of a god or a power to send them back again. Only they run afoul of people more desperate than even they are and they are turned over to Herne the Hunter and his wild hunt. To win their freedom, John must run the gauntlet and make it from the wild woods to the city limits. But Herne underestimates John’s sheer deviousness and though he is mortally wounded, he makes the city.

Once there, Herne tries to give further chase, feeling cheated from his prey. He tries to follow and the Lord of Thorns strips him of his power, binding him to wander the Nightside doing penance. He then heals John of his wounds and sends them the rest of the way back.

John and Suzie end up a long time before humans are even a thought on the horizon. They watch Lilith create the Nightside with a single word. And then, with the help of two angels (one from above and one from below), they go face down Lilith in her newly created paradise. It almost goes horribly wrong but then John pulls a trick. Lilith tried to kill him by sucking out his life force through their bond as mother and son. So he reverses it and weakens her to the point where she can be banished later on like they know happens. And then they go home. What happens next? That’s answered in Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth, which is what I’ll be reading next.

This book was great. There’s great drama and just the right amount of humor. Rating: A.

A Little Something from the Nightside

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My brother got me into British author Simon R. Green around ten years ago with Green’s Hawk and Fisher story arc.  I love Simon R. Green. He is one of my favorite authors.  One of his newer story arcs is his Nightside novels, featuring the not-quite-human P.I. John Taylor.  The Nightside novels take place in modern day London, in the secret, dark and hidden heart of it called the Nightside where it is always 3 o’clock in the morning.

I was originally a little suspect of these books, I must confess.  I had previously read all the books of Green’s I could get my hands on, the Hawk and Fisher novels and the Deathstalker series, both of them very good.  However, neither of those arcs are set in modern times, so I was a little worried that Green’s  graphic and extraordinary imagination wouldn’t mix well with “the real world” of London, or anywhere else for that matter. Thinking back on it now, this was really my first introduction to anything that was both urban/contemporary/modern mixed with fantasy.

I was pleasantly surprised by the first novel, Something From the Nightside.  Green was the snarky, dry British writer that I’d enjoyed previously and he created such an amazing, if somewhat frightening and disturbing, place in the Nightside.  Anything can happen there, and often times does.  His lead character, John Taylor, is severely flawed and you can’t quite figure out if you love him or hate him.  But Taylor’s enough of an underdog that you just have to root for him.

Green’s novels aren’t for anyone who can’t stand graphic descriptions of blood, guts, gore and anything else he can come up with.  He is so wonderfully descriptive that you’re almost there with the characters, like it or not.  I love a writer who can make you feel like you’re there.  If I could meet any one of the writers in enjoy reading, I think it would be him.

His Nightside arc is currently 11 novels long, with a 12th to be released in 2011 (can’t wait!!!). I think originally it was supposed to be far less, but either her really loves this arc or his fans do. Or both. Either way, I’m not complaining.

The books:

  • Something from the Nightside: First book of the series and it does a good job of introducing the characters. John Taylor gets pulled back into the Nightside after years of trying to make it in real world London as a specatcularly failing P.I. I personally thought it wasn’t the best of the bunch, but it grabbed my interest enough to read the next one.  B-
  • Angels of Light and Darkness: Angels from Above and Below (yes, the caps are needed) come to the Nightside looking for an extremely powerful, but not quite holy, relic.  Taylor is highered to find it before they do. More Razor Eddie (one of my personal favorite characters) in this one. B+
  • Nightengale’s Lament: An interesting concept of a singer whose voice is powerful enough to sway people’s emotions…but something’s not quite right with her. Enter John Taylor and one of my other personal favorite characters, Dead Boy. Solid story, but not quite as good as later stories.  Doesn’t add much to John Taylor’s “mysterious past”, but a good break from the overall seriousness. B
  • Hex and the City: John Taylor is hired to look into the mysterious origins of the Nightside and, just possibly, his long lost and most definitely not human mother.  You’re just starting to get into the meat of Taylor’s mystery with this one.  A
  • Paths Not Taken: This one starts off delightfully light and off beat, with a plain and simple human from real London getting lost in the Nightside.  This little side bit is fun and snarky and gives you a little break from the seriousness of the rest of the book, in which Taylor travels back in time, still investigating the origins of the Nightside.  He is accompanied by Susie Shooter (otherwise known as Oh Christ, it’s her RUN!) and Tommy Oblivion, the existential detective.  A
  • Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth: *Spoiler Alert-sorta* End to the Lilith story.  I think that this story could have been cut short a bit and tacked on the end of Paths Not Taken.  I liked it, but I felt it took just a bit too long. B
  • Hell to Pay: This is the first novel after the Lilith War ended. I was really, really interested in how Green handled the fact that Taylor had relatively more freedom now that he changed his fate, and I was pleased to see it was done well.  Taylor is still Taylor, he doesn’t let his new found relative freedom get to his head. A
  • The Unnatural Inquirer: This one is just fun.  Sure it still has it’s moments of gore and violence, but you just can’t help but have fun with Taylor is teamed up with a Demon Girl Reporter who is, in fact, half Succubus. A+
  • Just Another Judgment Day: The Walking Man comes to the Nightside and all hell breaks loose. Again. B+
  • The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny: Walker, the man who passes for law and order in the Nightside, is dying and is looking for someone to take his place when he goes.  Enter John Taylor, who really doesn’t want the job. At all.  But not all is as it seems. It never is, with Walker.  A
  • A Walk on the Nightside: This is a compilation of the first three novels of the Nightside.  Since I gave them all a different score, I guess I can just put this in as a solid B.

I can’t wait for the next novel which is, supposedly, called A Hard Day’s Knight.  This can, of course, change as the release date comes closer, but it seems to fit with his pun-tastic titles.