Release Date: January 3, 2012
Series: Nightside #12
Buying Links: Amazon The Book Depository
Book Blurb (from goodreads):
John Taylor is marrying the love of his life, Suzie Shooter, the Nightside’s most fearsome bounty hunter. But before he can walk down the aisle he has one more case to solve as a private eye — a case that has him on the run from friends and enemies both, with his bride-to-be looking to collect the bounty on his head...
Reviewed By: Liz
My Thoughts:
Simon R. Green is best known for the Deathstalker series, but he also writes a lovely detective noir series call Nightside. I admit that I prefer this since he lets loose his sense of humor and the absurd within a rational story frame. It’s the Dresden Files with a healthy dose of Disc World thrown in to keep it from being too dry. “Do you need me to remind you that the last butler who annoyed me got dragged down to Hell?”
Green manages to write a character that stays true to type without giving off the recycled feeling you can get from such a well explored genre. There are some obvious witticisms and jokes, but you don’t often get the opportunity to use lines like “Someone did try to explain it to me once, but I fell asleep the moment they used the word quantum, in self-defense.”
This time the Nightside is under attack from a temporally displaced leader of the Hippie movement who’s got more in his bag of tricks than a little peyote. The Sun King is back from communing with Entities and not happy that the Summer of Love faded into memory while he was gone, and the Dream of the ‘60’s went unrealized. He’s back and he has the power to change the world, unfortunately for him there are a lot of beings that like it the way it is. This includes PI Jon Taylor, the new Walker, and groom to be.
This book has it all gods, ghouls, existential beings that can talk you into questioning yourself out of existence, and sentient objects. It even has irreverent Londoners with shot guns and liquor. Alternate dimensions and micro universes give the story a lot more flexibility than one would expect in such a short novel, and all of it easy to follow. After all why NOT have a sub dimension just for your graveyard? There is even a wedding. “…it does fall to me as your oldest friend and foe and occasional legal advisor to guide you through the horrors to come as you embark on the stormy seas of matrimony.”
There are a lot of really well written chase and fight scenes, a Who-Dun-It, delicious detective work, gods, Powers, undead, murderous friends, extra dimensional beings, and one particularly annoying sentient elevator between Jon and his wedding. I also give him extra points for using defenestration. This was a ridiculously fun book to read, and, like all of his Nightside novels, with just a few hundred pages it shouldn’t be intimidating to those with limited time for reading. It is part of a series, but please don’t be afraid to pick it up independently.
I received a hardcover from the publisher for review.
