As I mentioned, the reading list for these past three months got a little long so here's part 2, and the last 6 books of Simon R. Green's Nightside series.
Hell to Pay by Simon R. Green
"'Find my grand-daughter,' said the Griffin, his voice cold and relentless. 'And in return I will pay you the sum of ten million pounds. Find out what happened, and why, and who is responsible. And either return her to me safely, or bring me her body, and the name of the man responsible.'"
"The Salvation Army Sisterhood was on the prowl again, and if you didn't cough up fast enough and generously enough, out would come the specially blessed silver knuckle-dusters. The SAS are hardcore Christian terrorists. Save them all, and let God sort them out. No compromise in defence of Mother Church. They burn down Satanist churches, perform exorcisms on politicians, and they once crucified a street mime. Upside down. And then they set fire to him. A lot of people applauded."
In the Nightside, many people and things that aren't people claim to be immortal. Jeremiah Griffin and his family though, are the real deal. The rumors are that Griffin made a deal with The Devil, immortality for his soul. Being immortal doesn't make you free from threats, which is why The Griffin hires John Taylor and his gift to find his granddaughter and those that kidnapped her. Unfortunately, there's something powerful interfering with Taylor's gift, forcing him to seek out the answers on his own, and three generations of immortals have a lot of secrets to dig through.
With Lilith banished and The Authorities (the Nightside's business overseers) dead, the second half of the Nightside series focuses on the power struggle for control the Nightside. Taylor will deal with various powers and entities rising up to gain control of the Nightside. The Griffin is one of those interests (supposedly already owning almost half of the land the Nightside sits upon), as well as all the enemies he's made.
The Unnatural Inquirer by Simon R. Green
"Max laughed suddenly, a flat breathy sound. 'Protect me, Suzie, Taylor. If you want your bounty money.'
I looked at Suzie. 'Do we really need the money that badly?'
'Always,' said Suzie. 'It isn't the principle of the thing, it's the money. No-one takes a bounty away from me.'
'Maybe we could split him down the middle,' I said.
'Tempting, but messy. And I don't share.'"
"'You killed thirteen men to make a point?' Bettie was staring at me as though she'd never seen me before, and perhaps she hadn't. Not this me.
'They would have killed you,' I said.
'Yes. They would have. But you're supposed to be better than that.'
'I am,' I said. 'Sometimes.'"
John Taylor is hired by The Unnatural Inquirer, the Nightside's tabloid, to find a missing man who claims to have intercepted a broadcast from the afterlife. Could it be Heaven? or Hell? No one knows but everyone suspects it could be the truth about what happens on the otherside. Taylor will also need to contend with others that want the recording, either for riches, or fame, or power.
To be honest, not one of my favorite or more memorable books in the series. As I'm re-reading these books, I tend to remember mostly what the books are about and even who the mysterious badguys end up being, but I really couldn't remember much about this particular book. Of the interesting things, it delved deeper into the relationship between Taylor and Suzie Shooter, mostly through Taylor's partner in this case, a half-human, half-succubus reporter that can be, and wants to be, everything Taylor desires.
Just Another Judgement Day by Simon R. Green
"Sometimes you can't save everyone. Sometimes all you can do ... is kill a whole bunch of people.
Business as usual, in the Nightside."
"'... God's will in the world, God's warrior, the wrath of God in the world of men, sent forth to punish the guilty and stamp out evil wherever he finds it. Called the Walking Man because he will walk in straight lines to get where he has to go, and do what he has to do, and no-one will be able to stop him or turn him aside.'"
The Walking Man has come to the Nightside to lay judgement on everyone in it, which, given the nature of the Nightside, will turn out badly for everyone there. A man given divine power by God, the Walking Man walks in a straight line to wherever he wants to go to smite those he considers evil. The new Authorities have hired John Taylor to find a way to stop him from killing and destroying everyone and everything in the Nightside.
This was actually the first book I bought of the Nightside series when I thought the series could be read as stand-alone novels (not completely my fault since there aren't any numbers on the books). One of my favorite books in the series as it's a contradiction to the norm since the man given the power of God is the antagonist (which is probably why I like the superhero Spawn so much). The Walking Man is shown as a force for good, exposing one of the more heinous businesses at work in the Nightside, as well as murdering everyone in the building. He's built up further by defying Walker's commands (powered by the same Voice that can raise the dead if Walker needs a question answered) and when he tears down the Street of the Gods.
The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny by Simon R. Green
"At least the trains are always on time in the Nightside. Supposedly because if a train does arrive late, the System Controller takes it out the back and shoots it, to put all the other trains in a properly motivated frame of mind."
Walker, the man who spent his years maintaining the status quo in the Nightside, able to call down troops from the military or the Church in a moment, wielding a voice that cannot be denied and rumored to be powered by the same voice that once said "Let there be light," is dying. Before he goes, he asks John Taylor (sometimes a friend, sometimes an enemy) to take over his role at running the Nightside for the new Authorities. At the same time, Taylor is feeling comfortable with his current situation, a feeling he's not used to as he's been chased by enemies his entire life. And that's when the plots start occurring, all of them involving the theft of identity in some way.
This book felt like Green was trying to use up a bunch of smaller plots that were too short to become their own storylines and couldn't be fit into the other books. The story starts with a couple chapters involving Taylor and Ms. Fate (the Nightside's very own superhero) Ubering an elf through the Nightside. More chapters are devoted to Larry Oblivion's back story and where he acquired his magic wand. Then finally is the search for the missing Tommy Oblivion who disappeared during the Lilith War except his body was never found.
A Hard Day's Knight by Simon R. Green
"I swung the sword with speed and skill that weren't mine, killing elves. Excalibur was in its element, come home again, to do what it was made to do."
"Courage is all very well, but sometimes all it can get you is a glorious death. I know overwhelming odds when I see them. I've faced them before. And I know from experience that you don't beat them by meeting them head-on. You win by thinking outside the box, and by blatant cheating."
John Taylor arrives home to find Excalibur wrapped neatly in brown paper sitting on his kitchen table. He'd been warned Excalibur was coming to the Nightside, just not that he would be the one to receive it. To get answers on what Excalibur really is, he'll need to travel back to London to speak with the last remnants of the Round Table, the London Knights. He'll also need to prevent the Merlin Satanspawn of Sinister Albion (a reality where Merlin is the Antichrist and corrupts Arthur's Camelot) from invading the Nightside.
With Merlin having played such a big role in the earlier books it really was only a matter of time before we got to Excalibur and King Arthur. Traveling to London for a chapter and seeing Taylor take on the thugs in the real world was a lot of fun with all the nasty tricks he's learned from living in the Nightside. I know it was only a quick tour, but seeing how powerful Merlin Satanspawn would have been if he still had his heart and accepted his role as the Antichrist as he did in Sinister Albion was terrifying to see.
The Bride Wore Black Leather by Simon R. Green
"'Never mind that,' I said. 'Answer me this. What are all these naked people doing here?'
I indicated the dozen or so entirely naked men and women cordoning off the great hole in the ground and discouraging anyone else from getting too close, apparently simply by looking at them....
'...The point is, no-one is going to intrude on the crime scene while the Troops are around.'
'What do they do?' I said, honestly curious. 'Threaten to bukkake people to death if they get too close.'"
"'...But then one day, right at the height of the Summer of Love, Harry Webb went to the park and took what Timothy Leary would call an heroic dose of LSD. His mind expanded and exploded, and in that transcendental state ... he made mental contact with Entities from Beyond.'
'... and when he finally came down again, he wasn't Harry Webb any more. He wasn't human any more. He was transformed, he was transmogrified, he was the Sun King. The living god of LSD, the true Acid Sorcerer, the Miracle Man. Psychedelic rock and roll played around him wherever he went, manifesting out of nowhere - a glorious music that we could never remember or reproduce afterwards."
John Taylor officially takes over as the new Nightside Authorities' problem-solver with his first case - stop the Sun King from bringing the sunshine into the eternal night of the Nightside and destroying it. Not only is the Sun King able to perform the wonders he claims but he's also turned all of the Nightside against Taylor, including the city's best bounty hunter and Taylor's bride-to-be, Shotgun Suzie. Taylor will need to outrun and outwit all of his old friends in order to stop the Sun King from destroying his home, and especially ruining his wedding day.
The last of the Nightside books (at least I'm pretty sure Green isn't writing anymore of them). I've heard that John Taylor and the Nightside may make cameos in some of his other books but I've never read them. The biggest appeal of this book is seeing Taylor go up against former allies like Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor; The Oblivion Brothers: Larry Oblivion, the Dead Detective, and Tommy Oblivion, the existential detective; and Dead Boy. In regards to pay off though, especially as this is the last book in the Nightside series, I did feel a little let down by the ending. It kind of felt like Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, the stories before all involved one thing (religion) but then in the last one something completely different is introduced (aliens). All of the previous books dealt with religion and monsters and the supernatural but the last book deals with The Outsiders (kind of like aliens except they're beings that live outside our reality).
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