Nightingale’s Lament by Simon R. Green

The Blurb On The Back:

The name's John Taylor. I work the garish streets of the Nightside - the hidden heart of London where it's always three a.m., where inhuman creatures and otherworldly gods walk side by side in the endless darkness of the soul.

I have a talent for finding things. People ... property ... no problem. But now I'm after something different.

A local diva called the Nightingale has cut herself off from her family and friends, and I've been hired to find out the reason. I'm also wondering why her suicide-prone fans think she has a voice to die for. Literally.

To get to the truth, I'll have to lend an ear to the most enticingly beautiful and deadly voice in all of the Nightside - and survive.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not particularly deep. I dislike the cut-and-paste repetition of description which Green brings to the book and even for a book of only 200+ pages, the story is slight. But as always, it's entertaining and an okay way of passing a couple of hours.

Hex and the City by Simon R. Green

The Blurb On The Back:

John Taylor is the name. I work the Nightside. Only in that dark heart of London where it's always three a.m., where human and inhuman can feed their darkest desires, do I feel at home. Probably because I was born here.

What I do find is things - people, objects - and in this case, the truth about the origins of the Nightside.

That's what Lady Luck has hired me to investigate. But the more I dig, the more I discover, not about the Nightside but about the great question in my life: exactly who - and what - was my long-vanished mother?

Paying jobs are one thing. Personal quests are another. And I've been warned that uncovering the facts about dear old mum could be a very bad thing, not just for the Nightside but for all of existence.

Still I can't stop ... I'm John Taylor. Finding things is who I am. It's what I do. Whatever the consequences ...

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

For what's basically a book setting out the backstory for the Nightside and Taylor's mother, this is an interesting read and keeps things moving. There are some wonderful set pieces, some truly horrifying and there's an interesting character relationship between Taylor's allies, Pretty Poison and Sinner. I still dislike the way Green cuts and pastes description of characters and places from earlier books as it feels like lazy repetition for the sake of it, but the story doesn't suffer excessively for it.

Paths Not Taken by Simon R. Green

The Blurb On The Back:

I'm John Taylor. I was born in the Nightside, that square mile in the hidden center of London where it is always the hour of the wolf, where gods and monsters walk side by side and where every dark question ever asked can be answered - for a price.

I left for a while, but I did come back, to make my living doing what I do beter than anyone else: finding things - lost or stolen, real or imaginary.

Revently, I found the most dangerous thing of all: the true identity of my long-gone mother. Turns out she's a bein who's been around since before the dawn of history. Then, she created the Nightside - and now, for her own warped reasons, she intends to destroy it.

To stop her before she even gets started, I've got to do some hard travelling - back in Time, through endless eons, into the very distant - and probably deadly - past ...

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

It feels rather like filler - the prelude to the eventual face-off between Taylor and his mother. As such, whilst it fills in some interesting details about the backstory, in the main it's rather forgettable. I'm not a fan of the relationship between Suzie and Taylor as I think it lacks a certain credibility and I wish that Lillith was a more fleshed out adversary, rather than an all-powerful uber-bitch. Basically, it's okay but ultimately forgettable.