A Walk on the Nightside includes the first three books in Green’s Nightside series, featuring the not-quite-human private eye, John Taylor. The Nightside is London’s evil twin, where it’s always three o’clock in the morning, and you can find anything you are looking for, anytime. And I do mean anything, from super-science, to the foulest magic and all the unspeakable things in between.
Here’s my broad take. It’s not for everyone. Those who like it, will like it a lot for its inventiveness, a willingness to shuck genre convention and all the morbid fun it throws in your face. Those who don’t like it will view it on the level of having stepped in something smelly and sticky. The stories are dark. Much darker than the Dresden Files, which might be the closest thing to compare them to. Harry and Taylor are nothing alike in their attitudes and approaches to life, so don’t expect that if you decide to pick this series up. In the Nightside, things suck, and they suck bad. And it tends to only get worse and messier through the course of the plot. Really messy and slick, where you don’t want to know what you just put your hand on, because its furry and smelly and growling at you. Even Taylor’s best “friends” are his worst enemies, and the only reason they help him is because they get a kick out of killing people, or because they know they’ll survive only with Taylor’s help in the future. It’s a dog eat whale world in the Nightside…and then both the dog and the whale get shoved into a meat grinder.
Am I putting this across well enough? Dark, but strangely appealing, which should worry me, but it doesn’t. So let’s move on.
Reading three of the books straight after each other gets me a little more exposure to some of Green’s more common phrases and descriptions of characters, which can get a little repetitive. Also, he tends to stick a lot of character exposition into the dialogue, which makes it rough at times. You get a guy who enters the scene, and Taylor introduces them to another character in this manner:
“Oh, I don’t believe you’ve met so-and-so. Well he’s a hard-knock chap who has been around the block longer than I’ve been alive and has a reputation for being a cold sonofagun because his parents left him abandoned in a satanic monastery which he ended up destroying after being visited by an angel in a dream one night. After that he’s searched all his life for his purpose and generally comes calling to me when I have an interesting case because I’m the only thing that helps his overriding sense of boredom and need for violence. And while we’re at it, let me tell you his religious and political standpoints too, plus the fact he had cold manicotti for breakfast this morning, and yes, he always does look like someone shoved a live rat into his mouth.”
And the whole time the character is supposedly standing there, listening to his life’s story and personality getting rattled off. Not the smoothest of lead-ins, but I got somewhat used to it after a bit.
There is no shortage of tension or danger in the books. I’ll give Green that. The plots are more twisted than spiral staircases to Hell. Plenty of surprise and unique characters (with a very wide definition of unique). The books hold an atmosphere you can’t escape once you’ve gotten far enough into it. Nightside is haunting, and for all its little bumps along the way, I’m looking forward to getting the next couple volumes in the series.
I see that smile.
I’ve had the first of the NIGHTSIDE books sitting on a pile in the hallway. This means squat, as I have chaotic piles all over. But, I may get to it a bit sooner.
Mir
I’m on the fourth one now. Hex and the City. It’s good so far, but falls prey to the same stylistic foibles as the first three. Still a good little romp. They’re fast reads.