Book Review: Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

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Something from the Nightside

Nightside #1

by Simon R. Green

genre: dark fantasy

Summary from Goodreads

John Taylor is not a private detective per se, but he has a knack for finding lost things. That’s why he’s been hired to descend into the Nightside, an otherworldly realm in the center of London where fantasy and reality share renting space and the sun never shines.

Book Review: The Good, The Bad, and the Uncanny by Simon R. Green

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The Good, The Bad, and the Uncanny
by Simon R. Green

-Simon is an intelligent, eloquent and well read writer able to casually throw in references to Dante’s Inferno, Macbeth and the Bible without sounding pretentious. I’m almost certain there are other references in there I overlooked.

-The Good, The Bad, and the Uncanny is the tenth book in the Nightside series.  I picked it up without reading any of the previous novels, so keep that in mind when reading this review.

In a tucked away part of London where nightmares run wild and things are rarely what they seem,  John Taylor is a PI with a sordid past.  Bored because life is too perfect, John goes looking for trouble and finds it, mirroring the sentiment that we all feel, “[some days] you just shouldn’t get out of bed.”

*Please note, the rest of this review contains mature material.

Does power really corrupt? Examples from books and movies.

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authority figures, books, corruption, Lord of the Rings, LOTR, media, movies, power, Simon R. Green, The Good The Bad and the Uncanny, Tolkien

Does power really corrupt?  I’m sure there are plenty of examples through history where a ruler has “become” corrupt, but was that the power or was that a flaw in the person’s personality that was exaggerated under the stress of wielding power?

Media certainly portrays power as something that can corrupt anyone.  in the Lord of the Rings movies, both Gandalf and Galadriel refuse to take “the one ring” because they know that despite their desire to use it for good, the ring would do bad through them.  Then again, is it power that corrupts or is it the ring itself as an evil object?

In the October book review of The Good, the Bad and the Uncanny, you will meet John Taylor, a P.I. in the tucked away part of London called the Nightside.  When the dying Walker, the man who keeps over in the Nightside, goes to John to offer his position to John, several other characters have something to say about it.  Razor Eddie the Punk God of the Straight Razor warns John, “[d]on’t be fooled into thinking you could take this power and not be touched by it.”  An internal tug of war rages as John weighs his options.

What do you think? Is power always a corrupting force?