I saw Something From the Nightside in the bookstore and kept thinking about trying it, but never got around to it. My friend Doni did decide to try it and has read a couple of them and seemed to be enjoying them, so I finally decided to give it a go. I got this one out of the library, but I went to the bookstore and bought my own copy AND the next one before I even finished reading it.
John Taylor has a special gift for finding things, something he was born with as a child of the Nightside. He left the Nightside 5 years ago and swore never to go back, and is struggling to make his way in the real world as a detective. When the rich and beautiful Joanna Barrett walks in and asks for his help to find her runaway daughter, he agrees… and then finds out that this case will lead him back to the place he’s been avoiding. The Nightside is a hidden inner city of London, where it’s always 3 AM, and creatures and humans come from all planes of existence to mingle, seek out perverse pleasures they can’t find anywhere else, and anything is possible. It’s terrifying and dangerous… and for John Taylor, it’s home.
This book was weird and crazy and SO MUCH fun. I liked the pulp fiction, P.I. feel of it, combined with fantasy/paranormal/sci-fi/horror. There are some truly scary monsters in the Nightside, including The Harrowing – faceless bodies in suits who feel no pain and always leave a gory trail behind them. And I like that there are SO many kinds of beings in the Nightside - humans, demons, aliens, gods, ghosts, damned souls, etc. John Taylor is a good main character – he’s noble and always tries to help someone in need, but he also knows how to get stuff done and not waste time looking back. And his “gift” is crazy powerful – but it also comes with questions, because he has no idea why he’s so powerful, or why people have been trying to kill him since he was a kid. This book set up a lot of back story to be explored about him later in the series, without it completely overpowering the plot. I’m looking forward to finding out more about him.
There were also two other really fun characters – Razor Eddie, who’s a bit heart-breakingly sad but awesome, and…
“… Suzie Shooter. Also known as Shotgun Suzie, also known as Oh God, it’s her, run! The only woman ever thrown out of the SAS for unacceptable brutality. Works as a bounty hunter, in and around the Nightside.”
I love Shotgun Suzie 
Overall, this was fun to read. I read about half of it while I was at the gym, and I would end up walking on the treadmill longer than I meant to because I didn’t want to stop reading. The ending, the mystery of where the girl had gone, was NUTS. I’ve never read anything quite like it.
Normally, this review would have been a lot shorter and I would have said that it’s more fun to discover all this on your own, and you should just read it. But these things made the book so unique that hopefully it hooked your interest, and I’m fairly certain that if you give it a try you’ll end up enjoying it and wanting to read the rest. I’m going to start the second book (Agents of Light and Darkness) this weekend, but I don’t know if I’m going to review any more of the series except this first one. There are 11 more, and that’s a lot of reviews to write without trying to give away major spoilers. Maybe after I read them all I’ll do a mega-review of the whole series.
So anyways, READ IT! Something From the Nightside might end up on my “Favorites of 2012″ list.
Sarah Says: 4.5 stars
P.S. – For you Dr. Who fans, he makes a reference to the Tardis. So yay for that.
