Thursday, April 26, 2007

What I'm Reading Now - A Walk on the Nightside

I've been reading urban fantasy a bit of late. My reading tastes are cyclical, I suppose, caroming from genre to genre and author to author.

Karen Chance's first novel nudged me onto this current path, though I have a history as far back as Mike Resnick's Stalking the Unicorn. Of late, every couple of books, I pick up something from the contemporary fantasy scene. And I've been recording "Blood Ties" and "The Dresden File" based on some urban fantasy novels, but I guess that's another story.

I like urban fantasy because the flights of imagination are wonderous and intriguing, perhaps moreso because they occur in universes slightly to the left of the real world vs. far flung galaxies.

I discovered Simon R. Green's tales of the Nightside while browsing collections of people with whom I have books in common on Library Thing, and I'm now about halfway through the second novel, set in a shadowy city within London where things are just weird.

Dead singers are on hand in the clubs, demons masquerade as gangsters and larger, more shadowy types are on hand to menace John Taylor, the main character who's essentially a private eye with a psychic gift for finding things. In the first novel, Something from the Nightside, he returns after five years in the real world, rekindling old rivalries and acquaintances.

There's a subplot running through his activities related to the identity of his mother and his potential to bring about a dark future.

It reminds me of "Sandman" as well as a host of current television shows i.e. "Heroes" not to metion the aforementioned cable shows. I think I'll stick with it through the following volumes, then I have to get back to the Weather Warden series.

6 comments:

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

Because I love you, I'll check this out myself. I am also dipping into urban fantasy. I've just started the third in the Anita Blake, vampire hunter series. I've really enjoyed these books.

Sidney said...

Hope you like the "Nightside." They're pretty quick and fun. I need to read some Anita Blake and I have the first L.A. Banks book too. Then there's Kelly Armstrong's series...

Charles Gramlich said...

The only Simon Green I've ever read are some of his Conan pastiches, which I didn't particularly care for. But this sounds interesting.

Sidney said...

I think I have a "Conan" he wrote, though I'd forgotten I had it and forgotten it was the same guy.

RK Sterling said...

Sounds like fun, Sidney. Thanks for the review.

Sphinx Ink said...

I've really gotten into urban fantasy over the last year. I've read the first two in Green's Nightside series and really liked them. I love Caine's Weather Warden series and Butcher's Dresden Files. (Hint: I enjoyed the SciFi channel's Dresden Files series, but the books are much better than the TV show.) I started Kelley Armstrong's first (BITTEN), but never finished it...not sure why; perhaps I should go back and try again. I've also enjoyed MOON CALLED by Elizabeth Briggs--I just purchased the second in her series and am waiting for it to arrive from Amazon. Another series I enjoy is the Kitty series by Carrie Vaughn--KITTY AND THE MIDNIGHT HOUR being the first of those, followed by two others, the third (KITTY TAKES A HOLIDAY) just out. Your mention of Karen Chance piqued my interest; after clicking on your link, I'm making a note of her books and will look for it. It sound like the kind of thing I like.

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