Suzie Shooter

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+

 

A Hard Day’s Knight

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Simon R. Green does love his punny titles. A Hard Day’s Knight picks up immediately after The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny left off. John just gets home from rescuing Tommy Oblivion and killing Walker and is looking forward to some down time with Suzie when she give him some unpleasant news. Something came in the post for him. And when he spots it, that something looks suspiciously sword shaped.

And it is Excalibur. Someone has sent it through ordinary post to John. But why him? If there was every anyone not worthy to hold such an item, its John. And yet clearly he’s meant to be carrying it for some reason. It feels right to pick it up and wield it. When Suzie reaches for it, she just knows that she’s not worthy enough to touch it.

In order to find out the answer to his question, he has to go out to London Proper, to find the London Knights. The London Knights are the descendants of King Arthur’s original round table knights. They have been training down the centuries for the time that Excalibur would come back into the world and Arthur would wake from his long sleep. They know more about the myth and legend (and facts) that is King Arthur than any group or person.

Of course, since they are descended from Arthur’s knights, they very much disapprove of the Nightside and all its denizens (this includes the practically saintly Julien Advent). They are not happy that John has Excalibur rather than one of them, but the Lady of the Lake pops in and tells them all to grow up. Some of you Green fans might recognize the Lady of the Lake, Gayle (Gaea-Mother Earth) from Drinking Midnight Wine. Green so does love to intertwine his story lines, which I love.

John has a destiny (which he really isn’t a happy about). He is to wake Arthur and prevent the Elves from going to civil war with each other. Of course, no one knows exactly where Arthur is sleeping, but that’s minor details! Especially when the aforementioned Elves break into the London Knights’ demesne of Castle Inconnu.  There is a great battle where much ass is kicked and John…manages to lose Excalibur to a man (and former Knight) named Jerusalem Stark (great name).

So of course, he has to get it back. Stark runs to the Nightside to sell Excalibur to King Artur of Sinister Albion. Sinister Albion is an alternate history of Camelot where Merlin Satanspawn accepts the title of Antichrist and everything goes to shit. Quite literally. John and Suzie are so close to getting Excalibur back when she kills Artur and Stark escapes to Sinister Albion. This swordbearer thing is a lot harder than it sounds.

So they go to the Doormouse (and I’d love to see an artist’s rendering of this character because he sounds just so delightfully fuzzy) and get a door to this alternate earth. We see yet more mayhem and ass kicking and John finally gets Excalibur back. The Gaea from this time track sends them back to the Nightside but they’re a bit worse for wear. They’re filthy from the fighting and since they ended up in the wishing well of the Mammon Emporium (poor thing), they decide that cleaning up is the first order of business. Luckily you can find pretty much anything in the Mammon Emporium and that includes heavy duty cleaners. Half an hour and they’re good as new but the night is long and so very far from over.

John heads back to London Proper (with Suzie this time because he gets in trouble otherwise) and they bang on the door of the Castle Inconnu until they’re allowed in. John refuses to let the Knights beat around the bush any longer and insists on talking to their so called Grand Master. Imagine their surprise at coming face to face with Sir Kae, who they ran into in Paths Not Taken. And of course he still remembers them (how many people do you think have brained him with his own mace?) though he holds not grudges.

Turns out that Merlin, in all his nasty sense of humor, made Kae immortal so that something of the old, glorious Camelot would be around when Arthur woke up. And he is the only one who knows where Arthur is buried. And it isn’t Avalon (a rumor Kae started) and it isn’t Glastonbury (a modern myth I believe). It’s the basement of Strangefellows because honestly, who would think to look there. Especially with Merlin being buried right next to him.

Kae leads John, Suzie and Alex (because its his bar god damn it) into the cellars and John lays Excalibur at Arthur’s feet. Arthur pops awake as if its been mere hours, though he has been listening in his sleep this whole time (an easy way to get Arthur to speak modern English, natch). There is much rejoicing between brothers and much drinking by Arthur, whose quite thirsty after almost fifteen hundred years.

Still, they’re not quite sure what exactly they need to do. John doesn’t get much time to enjoy being in the presence of a legend. He gets a call from Julien Advent, who insists on meeting right. Now.  So John fires up the portable timeslip from Walker’s watch (which he stole before Walker took a swan dive) and meets Julien…at the place where Griffin Hall used to stand. Where Walker was killed by John’s own hand.

Julien shows John that Elves have come to the Nightside and are slaughtering people. He doesn’t know which faction they come from but it hardly matters. He demands John do something. John says he has an idea that Julien will almost certainly not like and then whisks himself off to Strangefellows before Julien can object. He tells the others what is happening and asks Kae to get his Knights. It order to do this in a timely fashion however, they have to go back to the Doormouse, who throws himself at Arthur and snuggles. Its rather cute.

The Doormouse is how the Elves got into Castle Inconnu earlier and though he isn’t entirely unrepentant, he does agree to send them back. There’s much rejoicing (yay) by the Knights at seeing their king alive and well. Arthur rouses them to battle and the whole lot of them (around a thousand in all) head into the Nightside via the Knights’ own dimensional doors (which I can only imagine must be operated from within the hall because otherwise why wouldn’t Kae use that instead of the Doormouse?).

Elves and Knights clash until the Elves are beaten down. John is pissed at this whole thing because there are people, his people, dead and dying in the streets and buildings mere ruins now. He’s damn well tired of the carnage and demands that Mab, Oberon and Titania parley with Arthur. And it is Arthur’s presence that ensures they actually do, because the Elves still have honor and they have old agreements with Camelot and her king.

In order to press upon every one that a civil war is most definitely a bad idea, John brings them all to a place he’s been working to erase since Something from the Nightside. The dead future timeline where he killed Razor Eddie is still a possibility (and he wishes he knew why, because he really wants to avoid it). Arthur and Kae are shocked and horrified. Oberon and Titania agree that perhaps a civil war is a bad thing but what can they do?

Its then that Arthur tells them of the Doormouse and his doors to alternate earths. There is a pristine earth behind one of those doors. An earth that has never known a sentient being, let alone something like and elf or a human. The Elves can thrive there, can be themselves there. Oberon and Titania agree but Mab, crazy Mab, does not. She’s all set to kick off some major carnage when she’s taken out (very trickily) by her own son, Puck.

And so war is averted for now. The Elves go to their paradise, where they can thrive. Oberon locks the door to that plane and disappears into Shadows Fall. He and Titania don’t belong in the new world. They are far too old fashioned for it. Arthur goes off with the Lady of the Lake, to await the Final Battle (whenever and wherever that may be). Kae gets to stay through the coming years the hard way. Again.

And John gets a bit of surprising news from Suzie. But we’ll wait until the next book to spill that little tidbit. 🙂 This was great. I loved the whole thing, beginning to end. If you could read just one of the Nightside books, I’d have to say that this should be it. Rating: A+.

Just Another Judgement Day

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So last book we had a bit of a lighthearted romp (can’t believe I just typed that) in The Unnatural Inquirer. So of course Simon R. Green has to go darker in Just Another Judgement Day. This book starts out with John and Suzie drinking away a bad case in Strangefellows. A Spring heeled Jack meme invaded the Nightside from a timeslip and started completely overwrite the people it took over. It turned into a huge bloody mess that killed a lot of people. No one was happy, not even when John figured out where it was coming from and had it shut down.

So here they are, drinking and clearly wanting to be left alone when a clownishly dressed man famous for just being famous (i.e.-the Kardashians and Paris Hilton. Ugh) demands that John help him figure out what’s going on with his former party pals. These people are pretty much professional partiers. They go to all the in clubs and parties, do all the drugs, drink all the drinks and live a hard life. But his friends aren’t looking like they’re having any ill effects. They look young and healthy and vital and this poor man (with the unfortunate name of Percy d’Arcy) is aging. And he can’t get in to the health club they’re going to. An obscenely large sum of money is offered, so John and Suzie accept the case.

They head to the health spa and are almost immediately given the boot. That doesn’t stop them though. They hang around for a while, lulling the spa people into a false sense of security (good lord, I’m going for all the cliches tonight), before breaking in and finding out the secret. Someone has stabilized a timeslip and are kidnapping alternate version of the well-to-do partiers and doing a bit of reverse voodoo on them. That is to say the kidnapped people are strapped to tables and feel all the effects of anything the partiers do (drugs, alcohol, plastic surgery etc). Percy didn’t get in because his alternate was already dead in the other world.

Turns out that the (supposed) original Dr. Frankenstein was just using this place as a way to fund his ongoing and really quite horrible research. John and Suzie shut him and his creations down with prejudice and let Walker take care of the victims. Much later, having gone home after this, Walker comes around with some really bad news. One, he thinks of John as a son. Two, the Walking Man is in town and are threatening the New Authorities. Which may really be three bad things depending on who the New Authorities turn out to be.

They need John’s help and want to meet with him. Who are the New Authorities? Julien Advent (natch), Jessica Sorrow, the King of Skin, Count Video and Anne Abattoir. Sound familiar? John has a panic attack wondering what it all means before they confirm what Walker said. The Walking Man is in town, the wrath of god (literally) in the world of men. He goes anywhere and kills anything that he perceives as being evil or against god. Which in the Nightside is damn near everything. No one has ever stopped a Walking Man (its a title or position. There have been many in the past).  So no pressure.

John accepts the charge by the New Authorities and heads out (with a bit of assistance from Walker) with Suzie Shooter and new character Chandra Singh (holy warrior and monster hunter extraordinaire from India) to a place called Precious Memories. This is the place where John found the Walking Man with his gift. And they are utterly appalled by the complete carnage they find. No one survived. And they don’t know why. All John and Suzie know about this place is that they’re supposed to give you memories from another person but in a way where you feel they’re yours.

Turns out, the Walking Man leaves them a recording. It contains him killing every man, woman, security guard and dog (which I am completely against. I don’t believe in bad dogs, just bad owners) in the building until he gets down to the heart of the place. There he finds possibly the most horrifying thing Green has written about because it’s something that could actually exist in this world. Children of mixed sexes and varying ages, kept in cages. I can’t really say what they did but you can guess and you can guess what the people buying the “precious memories” were really buying (ick, ick, ick). John and the others don’t feel very bad about the deaths any more.

They wait until Walker and his people can show up, trying to get the kids to respond but Suzie (with her own horrible background) is the one who connects with them. And she finds that she can touch them like she can’t bear with anyone else, because its a lot like hugging herself (*tear*). John and Chandra leave Suzie with the kids (she insists) and go after the Walking Man, heading to Clubland and the Boys Club.

This is the club for the big movers and shakers in the Nightside. They can do pretty much anything here in the safety of their club. John and Chandra meet up with the Walking Man outside. He wants to show off apparently because he invites them in with him, ignoring their attempts to sway him. He points out all the evil that the big names have done and proceeds to clean house. Chandra joins in. These people are monsters and he’s a monster hunter. John just tries to stay out of the way. In the end, he decides that the Walking Man can’t go on but that they need more information.

He and Chandra head for the Badlands (the really bad part of the Nightside, and that’s saying something). They talk to Tamsin Macready, the new rogue vicar (a post she took over from old blind Pew after the Lilith War). She doesn’t have much to stay that they don’t already know. She only suggests trying to shake his faith. With nothing else to go on, John takes them to St. Jude’s church to speak with the Lord of Thorns. He isn’t helpful either except to suggest the Speaking Gun (which John thought he destroyed but apparently it is very hard to kill).

In order to do that, he needs to go to the Street of the Gods where coincidence has it the Walking Man is. There is much carnage and a showdown with Razor Eddie before the Walking Man does what he does best and walks off in search of a new target. John gets the gun from the Gun Shop, which is on the Street of the Gods due to the fact that some people do in fact worship their weaponry. And there it is, sitting on a shelf in one of the Collector’s boxes. John takes it and gets a call from Walker as soon as he steps out of the shop. The Walking Man is nearing the Authorities, get your ass over here now John (essentially).

Walker transports John and Chandra to the Adventurers Club (the new home of the New Authorities). Many people are there, not just members of the club, to defend the New Authorities (and to see some violence, lets be honest here people). John and Chandra meet with the New Authorities and tell them the big, awful plan: use the Speaking Gun and pray it works. No one is happy, especially when the Walking Man actually shows up.

He marches through all the security protections, magical and scientific, and takes out a few club members before coming face to face with John and the Speaking Gun. John just can’t use it though. It is too awful and it would cost him too much, damn what is left of his soul. Chandra grabs the gun, thinking he can use it but he experiences the same thing. He just can’t. So the Walking Man destroys the gun. Again.

In the end, John puts himself between the Walking Man and the Authorities. He’s unarmed and unwilling to fight back. He doesn’t want to die but he believes in the New Authorities. He won’t make it easy on the Walking Man, who just shrugs in acceptance and tries to shoot John. And tries to shoot him. And tries to shoot him. Despite his guns being fully loaded (they’re revolvers and John can see the bullets), the guns don’t fire.

It turns out that as tarnished as John us, he was ‘innocent’ in the eyes of god as he was unarmed and stood up for what he believed in. Why has no one else caught onto this catch in the impenetrable armor that is the Walking Man. With his power broken, the Walking Man is just a man again. And there was much rejoicing. Yay. Until, of course, John finds out that Walker (both a father figure and an enemy) is dying. And cut! That’s where Green leaves off. What will happen next? We find out in The Good, The Bad, and the Uncanny, which I am off to read.

This book gives us a look at a character that Simon R. Green has mention in a few other series. He really likes to interweave his stories, which I love. It’s an okay book but it was really a way to set up the next book. Still, it had some good bits in it and is worth the read. Rating: B-.

The Unnatural Inquirer

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So I think I’ve gone and kick started myself back to reading. I started and finished Simon R. Green’s The Unnatural Inquirer yesterday afternoon. 🙂

So The Unnatural Inquirer starts off with John wrapping up a case at the HP Lovecraft Memorial Library (hee) and running into two very dangerous people outside, Walker and Suzie Shooter. Now John doesn’t mind seeing Suzie since they’re an item and are, in fact, living together. But it is never a good thing when Walker shows up and now is no exception.

Walker has hired Suzie to track down one of the Nightside’s Major Players, Max Maxwell the Voodoo Apostate. “The man so big they named him twice”.  Suzie, being a bounty hunter, is quite good at finding people. But Max has dug a hole and pulled it in after him. So Walker needs John to find him because Max was dumb and unleashed a bunch of loa (voodoo gods/beings) using something called the Aquarius Key (as in the song. It was the 60s).

They start at Max’s office and John uses his gift to show what Max was doing last, then following the ‘ghost’ Max out into the Nightside and all the way to one of the Nightside’s Bad Places. Even in a place like the Nightside, there are Bad Places. The Fun Faire is one of them. Someone had decided that an amusement park was just the thing that the people needed and of course it went horribly, horribly wrong. They’ve tried to exorcise the place fourteen times to no avail but that means that only the stupid or desperate would willingly go there. Like Max.

John and Suzie corner Max only he wasn’t as stupid as they thought. Okay, he was but he had a plan that required him entering the Fun Faire. You see, all the really bad juju that was in the Faire soaked into the Aquarius Key, supercharging it. Max wants to transport himself to the land of the loa, use the key to take over and transform himself into a god. Except the loa are pissed with a capital P and are hunting him down, first in the bodies of some of the Nightside’s best bounty hunters (not Suzie though. They wouldn’t dare) and then by the decaying bits of Fun Faire like the dodge ’em cars and carousel ponies.

And through this, Max still tries to get away from John and Suzie. First Suzie blows his hand off so they can get the Key and shut everything down and then she blows his kneecap off because he threatened her and John. Finally John, with a bit of surprise help from Walker, get the loa back where they belong with the promise of severe punishment for Max. He’s being sent to Shadow Deep, the Nightside’s own and terrible prison (cross Azkaban with no dementors with the Cask of Amantillado).

After that, Suzie goes to collect her bounty and John gets a new job with the Nightside’s very own gossip rag The Unnatural Inquirer. They print everything whether its true or not and the nastier the better. They keep the whole company in a pocket dimension so their many and varied enemies can’t destroy them (because that has been tried). John gets picked up by some time reporter Harry Fabulous (remember him?) and transported right into the lobby, where he’s forced to wait for the assistant editor Scoop Malloy (its not what you think. He used to work with animals).

And what problem could the foremost gossip paper possibly need John Taylor for? Well, they have purchased what might possibly be a recording of the Afterlife, made by a mousy little man named Pen Donovan. Only before they could get their hands on it, Donovan and his recording went missing. So John is to find him. The catch is that he must bring along demon (literally) girl reporter Bettie Divine. Bettie is half-succubus and half Rolling Stone (which one is never specified). John balks at this but they offer him a staggeringly good fee.

They stop by the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grill (and can I just say how cool it would be to go there?) and talk about what Bettie knows about Donovan and who might be behind the disappearance. In the end, its much speculation and little facts so they go to Pen Donovan’s flat which is fairly nondescript. He was one of many timeslip junk dealers and he wasn’t doing well by the looks of things. His television was done up with unusual tech, which makes both John and Bettie think that maybe, just maybe, he did record something after all.

With no signs of Donovan and no real clues, they head to the Street of the Gods to see if anyone there knows what’s going on. No one does though they do start thinking that marketing CDs is a damn fine idea for raising money. John starts a minor god war and they leave posthaste, discussing how real they think this recording is. John decides that he’s going to need a word with Walker and heads them both to the Londinium Club.

The last Doorman died in the the Lilith War but they have a new one, decked out in full Victorian chic. John tries getting around him the easy way but its no go and so he has to stare the poor man down. Finally they get a word with Walker and John asks where he can find the Collector. Surely the Collector will either have the the recording or know where it is. Walker tells them that the last he knew, the Collector was in the Museum of Unnatural History. In the Tyrannosaur exhibit. The living Tyrannosaur exhibit. 😀

Well, the Collector turns out to be a bust though John and Bettie to get to outfox a Tyrannosaur. The next stop is the Cardinal, a defrocked priest who is like the Collector for religious/historic items. He doesn’t have it and he’s not sure if he wants it. Being a former priest, he doesn’t want to know for certain if heaven exists. John mentions that the thought he had of the Removal Man being out for it and the Cardinal freaks.

The Removal Man is a Nightside boogie man of sorts. No one’s ever seen him but the story is, if someone offends his sense of morality (which isn’t hard in the Nightside), he disappears them. They cease to exist. John and Bettie find themselves unceremoniously kicked out of the Cardinal’s place…and the man is immediately attacked. They break back in but he is gone and there is no sign of anyone else there.

In the middle of all this (like my segue?), there are three people who are vying for the spot of the recently deceased Authorities: General Condor (from a future timeline), Uptown Taffy Lewis (major real estate man, very obese and so far from nice he can’t even spell it), and Queen Helena (another future timeline person who claimed to be Queen of the earth after the sun starts dying). They all want John to back them, which he doesn’t do and doesn’t want to do. Eventually, he starts a major street fight between the lot and lets Walker sort it out.

At a dead end, John is warning Bettie this could be quite a long case when old friend Alex Morrisey calls up in a state. Well…when is Alex not in a state? Anyway, it seems like Mr. Pen Donovan has showed up in Strangefellows and driven off the usual clients. John uses his membership card to transport them right there (because Alex is really cranky).  Donovan looks quite the worse for wear and is being a bit paranoid (which is healthy in the Nightside really), for good reason. Kid Cthulu sends a bunch of thugs in the bar after him. John, Alex and the bouncer sisters the Coltranes kick the crap out of them and then John calms Donovan down and takes the DVD of the Afterlife Recording from him.

Alex hesitantly agrees to let John view the recording and leads him upstairs to his flat above the bar. And John is stunned at the state of it. It’s clean! Alex’s pornographic porcelain figurines are gone. He has matching furniture! Turns out, Alex is dating someone. Well, living with someone really. And who is that? To John’s enormous shock, its his secretary (and daughter in every way that matters), Cathy Barrett. He disapproves at first (Cathy is nineteen and Alex is about John’s age) but then admits that Cathy is an adult and can take care of herself.

Determined to talk about that later with Alex, John and Bettie finally get down to watching the Afterlife Recording when John notices something. Every face on the recording is that of Pen Donovan. Every tortured soul, every demon, is Donovan. So clearly this is not the real deal but a case of psychic imprinting (discussed earlier in the book). But why would a mild little man like Pen Donovan believe himself to be hellbound?

John heads back downstairs and asks Donovan just that. Turns out that he put down his dog for a woman, who left him eventually anyway. The dog was perfectly healthy and his only real friend. He feels guilty about that, terribly guilty. Wondering why all this was coming up now since it apparently happened some time ago, John discovers that Pen Donovan is inhabited by some sort of parasite that feeds off his guilt and fear. And he’s pretty much dead. So John finds the one thing that will ease Donovan’s guilt and pain. His dog, Prince. He opens a door to the afterlife (or makes it appear he does) and the dog comes back, assures Donovan that he doesn’t hold him responsible (yes, a talking dog. Live with it) and takes him back to heaven with him. John then squishes the ever living fuck out of the parasite because there are some things he just does not put up with.

Thinking that he’s all set and can finally get the damn DVD to the Unnnatural Inquirer, John finds himself sidetracked by Kid Cthulu. He and Bettie end up in Uptown with Kid Cthulu, surprise-surprise, tries to kill them. John gets there first only to find himself face to face with the Removal Man. Sometimes it just does not pay to get out of bed. After dealing with him and the man behind his power (the editor of the Unnatural Inquirer), John finally gets around to returning the Aquarius Key to Walker outside the Londinium Club (it has new decorations, the heads of Helena, Condor and Uptown Taffy Lewis). He turns the DVD over to Bettie and the Unnatural Inquirer and all is good. For now.

This book was great because it was a fairly lighthearted book for the Nightside arc. It was more comedic than the last few and gave us a good break from the doom and gloom of the Lilith war. I highly recommend this book. 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.

Angels of Light and Darkness

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I can’t really remember if I’ve posted about this before but since my current aim is to re-read all the Nightside books by Simon R. Green, I figured I’d review them all in order as well. So after Something from the Nightside we move on to Angels of Light and Darkness. This one is one of my favorite Nightside novels. Not sure why but I really love reading it.

We start out with John Taylor on a very tough, possibly deadly job. His job was to find out what  major player Jessica Sorrow the Unbeliever is looking for. The problem with that is in the adjective for Jessica Sorrow, the Unbeliever. She can ‘unbelieve’ you right out of existence. So John is sitting in the one really Christian church in the Nightside, an old and cold stone edifice called St. Jude’s (fitting name for a Nightside church). He has a shoe box with him, with what he hopes will stop Jessica Sorrow from storming about the Nightside. Turns out that in the box is a teddy bear. Jessica’s own teddy bear and it is, in fact what she is looking for.

Taylor is beyond relieved that he survived his tete-a-tete with the Unbeliever but before he can leave St. Jude’s, someone else come’s running in, clearly distressed. Being who he is, John hides himself in the abundant shadows of the church, keen not to get involved in something dangerous so soon after his last harrowing job. A man in black (not that kind) with his eyes stitched shut runs right for the altar, begging for sanctuary. Something comes flowing in after him, a blackness darker than any shadow, moving across the floor.

The blackness demands that the man turn over the Grail to them. The man, clearly traumatized, agrees and hands over the package he was clutching to his chest. Turns out that the package did not contain the Grail. Irate, the blackness turns the now screaming man into what looks like a white statue, frozen in fear before it departs. John decides very firmly that he wants no part of this (which comes back to bite him shortly) and he heads off to Strangefellows.

Once in the bar, John finds out that it isn’t the Holy Grail that has come to the Nightside but the Unholy Grail. This is, at least in this story, the cup that Judas Iscariot drank from at the Last Supper. The cup is a curse object so powerful that it brings out the absolute worst in people. Previous owners are said to include Torquemada and Hitler. Needless to say, it never seems to bring good luck to the owners.

At this point, John hired by an emissary of the Vatican itself, an undercover priest by the name of Jude. Insert obligatory “Hey Jude” joke here. The price is 50,000 pounds up front plus an additional quarter million upon delivery of the  “somber chalice”. John agrees and that’s when a target really gets painted on his back. Because of John’s gift of being to find pretty much anything, it means a lot of people want him to find the Unholy Grail, either for pay or under threat. John Calmly deals with all comers who accost him at the bar and sets off to do two things: find a private place to use his gift to find this thing quickly and to collect Suzie Shooter for protection.

He really should have found Suzie first. John ducks into a dark doorway and settles down to use his gift when angels rip his mind right out of his body and transport him up to what Green calls the Shimmering Realms. Turns out the angels on both sides want this thing to win their war against the other side. So naturally, they need John Taylor to find it for them because neither side is actually capable of doing that. John declines and when the angels don’t look like letting them go, he pits one side against the other and sneaks away in the confusion.

With the use of his gift right out, John collects Suzie and starts shaking down people for clues. He goes to an S&M club called the Pit and intimidates the owning cabal, the Demon Lordz. Despite the silly spelling, the Demon Lordz are actual demons. They’re low guys on the totem pole who escaped from the actual Pit for hot showers and coffee (no, really). They finally cop to the fact that they heard that the Fourth Reich has it.

The Fourth Reich are, as you may have guessed, next gen Nazis. No one in the Nightside cares for that lot apparently but they still get money from somewhere. So John and Suzie are quite looking forward to kicking ass and taking names but someone has clearly beat them to it. Every single member of the Fourth Reich is dead so no one can answer any questions. They do, however, find a clue. And that is another white human statue, a man made of salt (see what he did there). They’re fairly certain that this man has a connection to the one that John saw in St. Jude’s but he’s not wearing anything that would identify who or what he’s with. But in his pockets is another clue! And a weapon.

The weapon is the Speaking Gun. The principle is this: everything has a hidden name from the time that god created the universe. The Speaking Gun is designed to find/know this hidden name and to speak it backwards, thereby unmaking/unraveling the thing it is pointed at. Its a hideous thing made out of someone’s living flesh and bone and it hates everything and everyone. If you try to use it, it will try (and most likely succeed) in taking over your will.

The clue is a card from another player in the Nightside, the infamous Collector, who we met in the last book. The Collector does just what his name implies, he collects anything and everything that the is unique and/or historically significant. He doesn’t care who owns it. He doesn’t care who wants it. He is a horder. He wants what he wants and he will not give it up. So either he has the Unholy Grail or he is actively looking for it.

To figure out which it is, they go after a group that is known to work for the Collector, the Bedlam Boys. The Bedlam Boys used to be a 90s boy band. When they’re popularity in the real world tanked, they joined the Nightside and fell in with the Collector. In exchange for their (meager) talent, he grants them an awful psychic gift. They bring out people’s fears and use it to terrorize people into giving them what they want. The Bedlam Boys are in the midst of shaking down a chili joint (Hot n Spicy, 3 toilets, no waiting) when John and Suzie confront them.

John felt that they could stand up to the Bedlam Boys if they just lock down their minds enough. Turns out, that wasn’t the case. John is confronted with his worst, mommy related fears. And that makes him angry. And you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry (yes, I went there). John breaks free of their spell and breaks Suzie free from her fears. Now fair warning for this bit, it is graphic and disturbing. Possibly the most graphic and disturbing thing that Simon R Green has ever written. I won’t go into detail other than to say it involves incest. You read this bit at your own discretion.

At this point, they see their first angel in person. Angels, for some reason are bland, grey men in bland, grey suits. You can’t quite look at them but you know they are there. And they are far scarier than the Bedlam Boys ever were. The Bedlam Boys are turned into salt statues as the angel goes through them toward John and Suzie. John pulls out the disturbing Speaking Gun and frightens the angel off with it. But it takes all of John’s willpower to pry the gun from his hands. Its frankly traumatizing to hold it. This time Suzie carries it under the logic that she’s very good with guns (she really is).

They rifle the Bedlam Boys for clues and find a business card for a performer, Nasty Jack Starlight. They go to an old and shut down theatre called The Styx where Starlight is said to be playing. The Styx was shut down long ago because someone tried to open a Hellmouth during a performance of the Caledonian Tragedy (aka The Scottish Play, the one whose true name you can’t say for fear of bringing bad luck during a performance). Starlight is performing at the Styx for a group of undead with his partner, a life sized rag doll that may have at one point been a human woman).

Starlight claims not to know anything and tries to scarper when another angel arrives on the scene. Nasty Jack Starlight goes up in flames, which makes me fairly certain that this was an angel of the light and Nasty Jack was just too nasty to let live. Suzie this time brings out the Speaking Gun and runs the angel off and she too has a traumatizing experience with the gun. Once she and John pull themselves as together as they can be, they’re out of ideas on where to look.

Luckily, a bit of deus ex machina is on our side and Razor Eddie calls John up. He knows precisely where the Unholy Grail is but he won’t say over the phone. John and Suzie agrees to meet up with Eddie in person, at the warehouse of an arms dealer (not unusual in the Nightside at all). Eddie tells them that he himself had retrieved the Unholy Grail from a bunch of Warriors of the Cross (very hard core Christian crusaders – in all senses of the word – determined to bring down the Nightside) and delivered it to the Collector. However, once he did that, he started feeling like that was a very bad thing to do. So he tells John that the Collector is currently hiding his possessions on the moon, under the Sea of Tranquility (because awesome).

That doesn’t help them get up there, but they know someone that might. They’re headed out when they’re waylaid by Walker. Walker had previously said that he’d been ordered to move his people out of the Nightside and let the angels fight it out. Things have changed since the angels (which side we don’t know) contacted the Authorities and demanded they find the Unholy Grail. So Walker is determined to use John (in all ways possible) to find the Unholy Grail and he doesn’t care who he turns it over to. It isn’t his job to question the Authorities, just do what they ask.

He threatens Suzie and Eddie and when John quite rightly points out that the pair can handle themselves, Walker’s trump card shows up. A mercenary woman called La Belle Dame Sans Merci (Belle for short) who likes to make trophies  out of her conquests. A werewolf pelt is grafted to her back (regeneration), dragon’s hide as a breast plate (impenetrable) and boots made from the leg skin of a minor Greek deity (speed) among other things. She guts Suzie and throws Razor Eddie out a three story window.

John takes her down in a suitably hard fashion and uses Belle’s own werewolf pelt to regenerate Suzie. Walker, of course, disappears in the confusion which is just as well as another angel shows up. Razor Eddie takes the Speaking Gun and distracts it long enough for John and Suzie to make a run for it. They don’t get far. Angels from both sides have zeroed in on them.  With no other choice, John uses a special card made for him by Alex Morrisey and transports them both directly into Strangefellows.

John’s plan is not a very nice one. John needs Merlin. The Merlin, who just happens to be buried under Strangefellows. Of course, that can only happen if he manifests through his descendant, Alex Morrisey, and it isn’t very pleasant for Alex. Regardless, John forces the transformation using his gift to find the trigger in Alex. Merlin is powerful enough, even dead over a thousand years, that both sets of angels instantly stop their approach.

John has Merlin pull the Collector into the bar, where he confronts the squirrely little man about the Unholy Grail and eventually browbeats him into giving it up. Merlin then transports John, Suzie and the Collector to the Collector’s base on the moon. The Collector doesn’t give up easily though, and attempts to have his guardian robots kill John and Suzie. They, however, just start blowing apart his collection as well as the robots until the Collector finally gives in.

Once back down in Strangefellows, Walker once more tries to push John into giving up the Unholy Grail. Only it doesn’t work because John is a bit more powerful than people give him credit for. For once, Walker backs down and leaves. And in comes John’s client Jude. Jude turns out to be Judas Iscariot. The Unholy Grail was once his cup. To render it useless, he pours wine into it and blesses it because he really is a priest now.  Finally, the angels leave because the Unholy Grail is now just a cup.

The book ends a little abruptly but I think that’s because he knew that more were coming. Again, I just love this book. I think it lends a bit of humanity to John and Suzie, despite how hard their characters are. So I highly recommend it. Rating: A.

Something from the Nightside

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So I’m trying to kickstart myself into reading again which is a weird thing for me but as I mentioned, I just haven’t felt like reading much recently (again weird). So I opened my omnibus A Walk on the Nightside to do this because Simon R Green is one of my favorite authors ever. I just finished rereading Something from the Nightside, which was the very first of the Nightside novels and one that I haven’t read for a while.

We start out in real London where our leading man, John Taylor, is lounging in his run down private detective office when rich business woman Joanna Barrett walks in. Joanna’s daughter, Cathie, is missing after running away. She wants her daughter found and John Taylor is her last chance. He often is. She mentions that her previous private detectives told her that Cathie went into somewhere called the Nightside and then refused to go any further (with good reason as we see later). So for an exorbitant amount of money, John Taylor takes Joanna to the hidden heart of London.

The Nightside is a place where literally anything goes. You can buy, sell or trade your soul, or someone else’s, to get what you want or need. John Taylor grew up here and ran five years ago in order to survive. John Taylor is something of a wanted man but he doesn’t really know why. His mother, long missing, was not human. Finding this out caused his father to drink himself to death, leaving  John as an orphan. Something about what his mother is causes people to try and kill him, for things he might possibly do in the future. Of course, John Taylor is a smart ass, so people try to kill him for his winning personality as well. This info is pretty important in the Nightside arc.

So John and Joanna are in the Nightside where Joanna is trying to sort things out. Being a regular schmo from London, she’d never really dreamed about a place like this, where it’s always three o’clock in the morning and anything goes. With a few run ins with the usual characters in the Nightside, none of them good, John eventually takes them to Strangefellows, the oldest bar in the world. I love Strangefellows and I love its bartender Alex Morrissey. I don’t know what it is, but I do.

John gets a tip to check out a place called the Fortress. The Fortress is for those who have been abducted by aliens (for realsies) and just don’t want to put up with that shit any more. They’re paranoid and armed to the teeth. Pretty usual for the Nightside. They also take any anyone who needs protection and for the most part, no one tries to screw with them. John thinks it makes perfect sense that a teenage runaway with a tough family life would find her way there so off they set after a quick talk with one of John’s old ‘friends’, Razor Eddie (another personal fav of mine).

Before they can get too far, the enemies that John had been running from when he left the Nightside five years ago corner them outside the bar. I always thought the Harrowing were creepy. Faceless, emotionless hommunculi with only one mission: Kill John. A little Weeping Angels, yes? John is terrified to the point where he actually gives up for the most part. He tries fighting a bit but he realizes that he just cannot compete with these creatures. And then Razor Eddie rides to the rescue, so to speak, and carves up the Harrowing into bitty pieces. He tipped off those of John’s enemies who control the Harrowing in order to send them a message by destroying their creatures. Nothing is ever simple in the Nightside.

So, imminent death and destruction avoided, John and Joanna take an honest to god horse and carriage to the Fortress where they meet up with another of John’s old friends, Suzie Shooter. Also known as Shotgun Suzie and Oh-Christ-Its-Her-Run. 🙂 She’s a bounty hunter with no heart of gold. She’s a monster (in a way, I never really felt that but that’s what Green is trying to get across), made that way by the circumstances of her life. She is a damn good bounty hunter and exceedingly loyal to John in her way (at this point, she’ll still bring him in if she’s got good paper on him).

Suzie is at The Fortress to pick up a bounty, which has resulted in a fire-fight with the locals. John diffuses the situation for the most part and manages to talk Suzie into helping with his missing teenager case (for a price, of course). Someone in the Fortress (unnamed alien abductee) explains to John that Cathie had been there but had left a few days ago. Someone or more likely something was calling her to Blaiston Street. Blaiston Street is pretty much rock bottom for Nightsiders. So what would a teenager be doing there? And happy about it to boot?

Only one way to find out! So off they trot once more only to get stuck in a timeslip. A timeslip are eddies in time that can throw you forward or backward, either for a little bit or for a lot. People are always falling into and out of timeslips in the Nightside, sometimes on purpose.  In this timeslip, John and Joanna get thrown into the future, an apocalyptic one. Everything but the bugs (and I’m talking like Starship Troopers big damn bugs here) and Razor Eddie is dead. Even the m0on is gone.

Razor Eddie, being immortal, is the last living person on earth and that is not a good thing. I won’t go into details about what Eddie goes through (because gross) but he explains to John that this particular future is all John’s fault. He doesn’t give too much information because Eddie is pretty well insane by now but he reveals that this future is a mere 82 years from the time that John stepped back into the Nightside and that this happened in some way because of John searching for his mother.

After figuring a way out (a very painful one) of this timeslip future, John takes Joanna to the Hawks Wind Bar & Grill. The Hawks Wind is a ghost establishment. It is forever stuck in the 60s. Everything in the menu, everything in the jukebox is all real 60s stuff. But any time you spend there, stays there. You will leave the Hawks Wind at the moment you initially entered it, so its a great place to recuperate if you’re on a time crunch.

Here we are introduced to the mysterious Walker (I always pictured him as Anthony Head from Buffy and Merlin), who ostensibly runs things in the Nightside on behalf of the shadowy Authorities. He basically taps John to deal with whatever is happening on Blaiston Street because some very important people have gone missing there, not just the riff-raff and runaways.

With nothing else for it, even if he hates doing Walker any sort of favors, John and Joanna head to Blaiston Street. John uses his gift of finding things (a sort of third eye deal, courtesy of his not-at-all-human mother) to see that Cathie has been here recently and has entered a house…that doesn’t exist. Which is apparently strange even for the Nightside. Suzie shows up moments later and with that, the three of them enter the house.

It is a quintessential creepy haunted house type house. The three of them get herded upstairs and find Cathie. Cathie is quite literally half the person she was. The house that isn’t there is a predator and is eating her alive, body and soul. And convincing her that she’s happy about it. Well, John doesn’t want to put up with that and he pretty well challenges the house to give up Cathie.

That doesn’t go over well and the house cuts off all means of escape. Deciding the newcomers are far to dangerous to be getting on with, the house decides to make a quick meal of the threesome. Its in the confusion of fighting the house and trying to find a way out that its revealed that Joanna Barrett really isn’t Joanna Barrett. She was made a la the Harrowing to be the perfect lure for getting John back into the Nightside, though she really didn’t know it. She kills herself by allowing the house to eat her and John, pissed off and upset on so many levels that he’ll never speak of, uses his gift to find the heart of the weird creature and kill it.

After that, it’s a matter of blasting holes in the carcass and getting himself, Cathie and Suzie out before it collapses on them. John never did get paid for finding her, but Cathie adopts him anyway. Rating: B. Its a good read for sure but it is a little expositiony. Its clearly setting up things to come and giving you a taste of the people who are going to be major players in the Nightside arc. You don’t need to read this to understand the rest of the series but its so much more fun if you do because Green really likes to interconnect all of his stories. You’ll get his in-jokes if you read everything. Read it. READ IT! 😉

Angels of Light and Darkness

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So I went on vacation this last week and I managed to not read the entire time. Weird, I know but I had wine to taste instead. 🙂 But before I went on vacation, I re-read the second book in Simon R. Green’s Nightside arc, Angels of Light and Darkness. In this book, John Taylor is hired by Father Jude who represents the Vatican. The Pope wants to hire Taylor to find a very powerful, very dangerous object. If it gets out into the world and the wrong hands, it could lead to the end of the world. Quite literally.

And the object? The Unholy Grail. This is (supposedly mind you, since I have absolutely no idea if such an object exists/existed) the cup that Judas drank out of at the last supper. Yes, that Judas. Yes, that last supper. An object like that would be very powerful an anyone’s hands. There really isn’t a ‘right hands’ or a ‘wrong hands’ in the Nightside. The whole place is very…in between.

But the Vatican isn’t the only interested party. When Taylor first tries to use his special gift to find the Unholy Grail right off the bat, his mind gets hijacked by Above and Below (yes, I feel that the capitals are necessary). Each side wants it for their own use, each wanted to bring about the end of days on their own terms. Each side believes that this cup will guarantee them victory over the other side. Taylor tricks his way out of the situation by pitting Above against Below and escaping in the melee.

With using his gift out, Taylor has to pound the pavement doing the usual PI bit of finding clues and rattling cages. He picks up Suzie Shooter (also known as Oh Christ, it’s her! Run!) and off the go, bashing heads, demanding answers and being general nuisances. Meanwhile, angels from both sides are in the Nightside, grabbing random people in search of the same thing. Unfortunately for the grabees, they don’t usually come back alive.

Taylor and Suzie follow leads, get the crap kicked out of them and run from the angels until they find out who exactly has the Grail. Of course they find it! It wouldn’t be nearly so interesting if they didn’t. 😉 But to find out who done it, you need to read the book! Please do. I’m rather fond of Simon R. Green and the more people read his books, the more he’ll write.

Rating: B. Solid book but not one of my absolute favorite Nightsides. Great intro into the series though, even if it is the second book and not the first.