Paths Not Taken by Simon R. Green
Jul. 17th, 2007 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe 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 ...
I've said pretty much all there is to say about these books in my review of Agent’s of Light and Darkness and Nightingale’s Lament.
I wasn't struck on this book because it felt like a fake-out. In theory, Taylor's trying to stop Lillith from eventually wrecking havoc on the Nightside and the world, but really it feels like a precursor to the eventual confrontation between them. This time, Taylor's brought Shotgun Suzie and Tommy Oblivion, a fellow PI with him. I find it difficult to buy into the romance between Suzie and Taylor, mainly because I don't think that Suzie's backstory works in the way Green intends it to - Suzie's vulnerability regarding her abuse makes her feel like a cliche, rather than a strong character in her own right and the whole inability to bear being touched is all rather convenient in terms of when she's affected by it.
There are interesting parts of the text that help explain some of what has already happened, e.g. what happens to Herne the Hunter, how the Lamentation came into existence, what happened to Merlin's heart which tie back in with what you're told in the earlier books. But really, there wasn't anything here that really grabbed me and there needed to be.
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.
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 ...
I've said pretty much all there is to say about these books in my review of Agent’s of Light and Darkness and Nightingale’s Lament.
I wasn't struck on this book because it felt like a fake-out. In theory, Taylor's trying to stop Lillith from eventually wrecking havoc on the Nightside and the world, but really it feels like a precursor to the eventual confrontation between them. This time, Taylor's brought Shotgun Suzie and Tommy Oblivion, a fellow PI with him. I find it difficult to buy into the romance between Suzie and Taylor, mainly because I don't think that Suzie's backstory works in the way Green intends it to - Suzie's vulnerability regarding her abuse makes her feel like a cliche, rather than a strong character in her own right and the whole inability to bear being touched is all rather convenient in terms of when she's affected by it.
There are interesting parts of the text that help explain some of what has already happened, e.g. what happens to Herne the Hunter, how the Lamentation came into existence, what happened to Merlin's heart which tie back in with what you're told in the earlier books. But really, there wasn't anything here that really grabbed me and there needed to be.
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.
