The Collector

The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny

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Such a good book. Simon R. Green starts us right off with John Taylor wandering about the Nightside in a bit of a mood. Things are going well for him. Too well (bum-bum-buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum. You can really hear the ‘you just jinxed yourself music). He and Suzie can actually be physical with each other since her experience with the Walking Man. He’s got enough money (likely from the Griffin case) that he can only take cases he finds interesting and nothing major has happened to the Nightside recently.

So of course he runs into a flux fog. This interesting little idea is a play on how shadowy and uncertain fog can be. Have you ever driven in really thick fog and been hyper alert because you just don’t know what’s going to happen? If you’re going to hit something? Well, multiply that by a lot and you get a flux fog. Only instead of just people wandering about their business, people and things can come out from other dimensions. As Green says, a flux fog is when the edges of the world just don’t meet right. Anything can happen.

John, feeling at loose ends and looking for a change, calmly steps into the fog. Of course, nothing happens to him which is just his luck. Thankfully, his secretary Cathy has a job for him, one that he has to take because wouldn’t you know it? An elf is involved. Now elves are not cute, playful little things like they are in a lot of modern fairy tales. Elves are impossibly gorgeous, yes, but they are vicious, bloodthirsty, technologically advanced and absolutely hate humans. The only reason they don’t fight humans anymore is because humans out breed them. There is only one rule with elves: Don’t trust them. They always lie except for when the truth can hurt you more.

This elf wants John to escort him across the Nightside to a place called the Osterman Gate. It is a dimension door that leads directly to Shadows Fall, where the court of Oberon and Titania is located. This elf, called Lord Screech (and yes, when I first read the book, I pictured Dustin Diamond from Saved by the Bell), is a messenger between Oberon and Titania’s court and the court of Queen Mab. They’re at war but Screech is transporting a peace treaty. And not everyone wants that treaty signed.

John basically says what the hell, calls up Ms. Fate (the Nightside’s own transvestite super heroine) and takes the job. He calls Ms Fate because he needs wheels and Dead Boy is not available. John should really think about investing in a car. At any rate, the threesome fight off attacks left, right and center (some of them quite imaginative on Green’s part but that isn’t very unusual) and the juuuuust fail to make the Osterman Gate.

At that point, Lord Screech reveals himself to be not the Lord Screech (surely you jest!) but the very Loki-like (both the Norse god and the bad guy from the Avengers, sort of a mix) Puck. He was just a diversion, a way to keep everyone’s attention on him. The real messenger is already in Shadows Fall. Ha ha, joke’s on you silly humans! But just before Puck leaves, he gives John his payment for the help received. It seems something very old and very powerful is coming to the Nightside, but it isn’t what everyone thinks it is. What could this possibly be? Why, Excalibur of course! This comes of a few more times during the book but Excalibur itself doesn’t really make an appearance until the following book.

After that, John heads to Strangefellows because you’d need a big drink with a really big chaser too. Trying to relax, John gets interrupted by Larry Oblivion, the dead detective. Larry is insistent that John help him find his brother Tommy, who was lost (quite literally) during the Lilith War. No one, not even John (who has looked many times) has been able to find him or the body. Larry  wants him found and wants him found now.

John wants to know why Larry is so very keen all of a sudden and it seems that Larry’s (much) older brother, Hadleigh Oblivion, is now interested. At which point the bar goes quiet and John curses. Everyone is scared of Hadleigh, who has kind of become something like a boogie man. He went into the Deep School where they tell you horrible secrets and show you the real nature of the world. And he came through it. Those who survive the Deep School come out unimaginably powerful. And freakin’ scary.

We also find out that Larry has an elf wand (something that was hinted at in Hell to Pay) and how he came to get it. Turns out he was duped by an elf (what’s the first rule of dealing with elves? Yup, you got it) and accidentally let Queen Mab free from Hell. That Hell. So Larry feels he has to majorly make up for that before he actually gets one of the Nightside’s many denizens to release him from his zombism (zombieism?), John finally agrees to assist hiim but just as he does, Walker shows up.

Telling Larry that he’ll meet him at Cheyne Walk near the Tube station, John listens to Walker. He’s dying (we know) and he wants John to take over his position. John refuses point blank and Walker goes off to wherever he is when he isn’t harassing people. John knows this isn’t the end of this thing with Walker but he has a job to do.

John and Larry meet up again at Cheyne Walk and discuss what they both know about Tommy’s disappearance. Of course, Walker shows up again but this time with a bargain. John needs to walk with him, see what it is he does with his time, and he’ll tell John where to find Tommy. John reluctantly agrees and he walks the Nightside with Walker, not at all certain that he likes or approves of what he sees. It certainly doesn’t convince him to take up the job.

Eventually, Walker gives in for now and tells John that the Collector has started collecting people, not just objects. John locates the man at the far end of the Tube system, where no one ever goes any more. It isn’t even on the map of the system, a hellish place called Lud’s Gate. And certainly the Collector’s gone round the twist but no, he hasn’t gone snatching people. He doesn’t particularly even like people, why would he want to collect him.

Turns out, it was just a ruse to get Walker to find the Collector. See the Collector warded himself against Walker, but he didn’t think to ward John as well. Walker told John and Larry what they wanted to hear (Tommy’s location, only not really) and simply followed them. So he could kill the Collector, much to John and Larry’s dismay. The two of them hurry back to the Nightside, appalled and a bit dispirited because they’re no close to finding Tommy.

When they reach Cheyne Walk again, Walker calls John and simply tells him where to find Hadleigh Oblivion, who is out causing a bit of trouble at St. Jude’s. Not trusting Walker in the slightest any more, John confirms with Cathy and he and Larry head off. Once they arrive, they find the Lord of Thorns in high dudgeon. It turns out his powers hadn’t been broken really, they’d been suppressed by Walker and the denizens of the Street of the Gods. And Thorns is pissed.

At this point we get our first introduction to Hadleigh Oblivion. Tall with a total monochromatic motif going on, Hadleigh is intimidating and off putting. He doesn’t really do the who exposition-y explanation either. Just that he knows where Tommy is but they can’t quite do anything yet. They need to wait for something. And that something is Walker, who shows up yet again.

John turns him down flat when Walker asks John if he wants the job again. Disappointed, Walker whisks them out of St. Jude’s and to the former site of Griffin Hall. The garden has been transmogrified into a full blown jungle and is nasty with it. Walker has a plan, you see, to use a piece of tech that the Collector found. It can transfer Walker’s mind into John’s. He’s going to use John’s body to continue his (Walker’s) work and kill anyone who might have known that he wasn’t the real John (That is to say, Cathy, Suzie and Alex to start).

Well John just does not take that shit. He fights Walker and fights a bit dirty to be honest. Eventually Walker loses and while John is feeling bad about this (Walker was the closest thing he had to a father after all), Hadleigh shows up. It is now time to find Tommy. Hadleigh takes him back to Cheyne Walk where Larry is waiting for them.

The tech that Walker was going to use is the key. You see Tommy the Existential Detective uncertained himself out existence. He’s become a soft ghost and there are specific things needed to bring him (and the other soft ghosts) back to the world: John’s gift, the mind tech, Larry’s unique nature and Hadleigh’s knowledge to facilitate it all. Happy endings all around until John realizes that he can’t call Walker to deal with the soft ghosts no longer. Determined not to fall into Walker’s job by accident, John calls the New Authorities and finally gets home.

This book made me a little sad, even though it introduced a character that I like a lot (Hadleigh Oblivion). Sad because Walker is dead and he was the kind of character that you loved to hate. And you even felt a little sorry for the man at times. I will actually miss Walker. He’s a good foil for John. So Rest in Peace Walker, you will be missed. And stay tuned for the next thrilling adventure! Rating: B. I kind of felt that the bit where Larry was explaining about how he freed Mab could have been cut out entirely or at least shortened.

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+.

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.