Visiting the Nightside

While I've read this series before, Simon R. Green's Nightside series started out as one of those books I picked up because I liked the cover...

I know, I know, never judge a book by its cover... but I often feel like I've read so many books and am familiar with so many works of cover art that I can do just that... sometimes... for example, anything with Michael Whelan's cover art will tell you about the book inside. He reads the book and picks out either a significant scene from the story, or creates a collage of images within images that elegantly embodies the tale. Often I will find myself checking out the cover art to confirm something was included (think Summer Queen and Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge for great examples of the collage-type covers), and it always is. Books with cover art by Michael Whelan are definately ones where you can get a good feel for the book just by perusing the cover...

Now, the Nightside books are thin books with vaguely disturbing cover art. The figures on the front have a tendency toward shadowed faces with barely more than a hint of features, the colors are pratically monochromatic, and the titles are a a splash of color in a kind of creepy I-wrote-this-in-blood-in-a-hurry sort of font. How intriguing! The font is actually what made me pick up the book... and after devouring it, I went on to the next one, and the next one... the cover art gamble worked well for me this time!

Short version of the series: John Taylor is a private detective.

Too short? Okay, John Taylor is a private detective in a more-or-less current-day London, in which exists a chunk of space/time called the Nightside. The Nightside is the far less sane and far more dark version of the city where cars are not always cars, houses are not always houses, and people are not always what they seem... or are far more... Everything can be found in the Nightside, and often is. Nothing can be taken at face value and no-one is to be trusted. John Taylor uses his gift of finding anything (from cars to "what she wants" to a way out of an impossible situation) in the Nightside while fighting known and unknown enemies, and working with and for a wide variety of interesting characters.

While there isn't a whole bunch of interconnected spiraling plot lines (and really, who needs that hanging over their head in every book?), there is action, smart-alec commentary, and a main character that keeps me wanting to read (I really like smartmouthed main characters...). There is rather a bit of vagueness regarding the main character's history, but that fits rather well with the whole world anyway. The series actually can be read out of order due to that undefined history thing going on, but the I found it more satisfying to read the first four books first.

Recommendations: if you like Neil Gaimon's Neverland, the Borderland books edited by Terri Windling, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, or PN Elrod's Vampire Files, or the Rachel Morgan series by Kim Harrison, I would recommend this a something to check out. If you have issues with random wierdness, things that don't always make sense, or a bit of blasphemy, you may have issues with this series.

Read on!