Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25107 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

Nightside noir
Imagine Harry Dresden loose in a Neil Gaiman-style world, and you'll have some idea of what's going on in "Something From the Nightside."

Simon R. Green starts a little shakily in this fantasy-noir series, set in a grimy extranatural zone full of demons, monsters, freaks and warped reality. The first book takes about half its length to get started, but once it does, it's a wild ride -- with hints of darker twists to come.

John Taylor fled the Nightside years ago, and set up shop as a PI in London, using his special talent (finding things) to eke out a living. But when wealthy Joanna Barrett hires him to find her teenage daughter, Taylor finds himself leading her into the Nightside, and acquainting her with the terrifying, often gruesome chaos that dwells inside it.

Then they accidentally step into a timeslip, and John finds himself facing a ruined, dead world. Worse, it turns out HE was the one who did it, many years in the past. Tormented by this possible future, John must find the girl who was lured into the Nightside -- and hope that the area doesn't get blown up first.

"Something From the Nightside" is a skinny little book, barely more than a novella. But Simon R. Green definitely packs a lot of material into it, and in a few sentences he spins up a fascinating "other world" in London full of monsters, creatures, and outright weirdos.

Examples: a citadel filled with armed UFO paranoiacs, the Brittle Sisters of the Hive, brawling yuppie druids, faceless assassins, and a bar with Merlin buried in the wine cellar. Those are only a few of the strange, colourful things Green conjures, like a playful Gaiman nightmare.

And Green has succeeded in capturing a certain noir snap, with plenty of solid dialogue ("Suzie doesn't know the meaning of the word 'fear.' Other concepts she has trouble grasping are 'restraint,' 'mercy,' and 'self-preservation'"). But he can imbue some more subtle horror into some scenes, like the battle with the Harrowing, and the devastated world of the future.

The big problem is that he spends the first half of the book basically showing us how very freaky the Nightside is. Not very mysterious. Fortunately things perk up after the halfway mark, and leave doors open for future books.

The generically-named John Taylor is a good noir hero too -- he's got a tortured, mysterious past and a lot of people out for his blood. Some of the other characters are not quite what they seem, but Taylor bumps into some endearingly bloodthirsty characters like Razor Eddie and Shotgun Suzie. Guess what they do for fun.

"Something From the Nightside" starts off slow and merely amusing, but the second half blooms into a dark, thorny little rose. Definitely worth reading -- and it only promises to get better.

More than a private eye
An excellent introduction to the Nightside series; we are introduced to the main character - John Taylor - as a private eye (with a twist) operating in 'that square mile hidden in the center of London where it is always the hour of the wolf, where gods and monsters walk side-by-side and where every dark question ever asked can be answered - for a price.'

Forget Rebus and Poirot, and don't even think about Dick Tracy, this book (indeed, this series) is an excellent supplement for the sci-fi and fantasy fanatic. More than a detective story with a dash of the supernatural; told in the first person, from the perspective of the ever-increasingly cynical John Taylor, this is a humorous and gripping aside to the usual genre specific titles.

I would recommend this book for anyone who loves sci-fi, fantasy and detective stories, appreciates sarcastic/cynical humour, and isn't too upset by 'borrowed' ideas (with a twist and a tweak, and a lot of Simon Green thrown into the mix).

good but could have been better
First off I love Simon R Green! I just finished reading his "fear and loathing in Haven" which is powerful stuff and then I read this. It felt like lots of recycled ideas and a rather predictible ending but it is a good introduction to the Nightside series. Maybe I should read some lesser authors and come back to it.