The Barnes & Noble Review
Agents of Light and Darkness, Simon R. Green’s macabre sequel to Something from the Nightside, pits John Taylor -- a private investigator with supernatural powers who can find anything -- against armies of irate angels and street gangs of sadistic demons.
John’s latest job is to find the Unholy Grail (the cup that Judas drank from at the Last Supper), an incredibly evil artifact that has been rumored to be somewhere in Nightside -- a subterranean otherworld beneath London where it is always three o’clock in the morning. The place permeates danger and is home to ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and nightmarish monstrosities of all shapes and sizes. When John is approached by a man named Jude (who says he’s from the Vatican) and is offered a boatload of money to locate the Unholy Grail, he has to agree, especially when he is told that Nightside -- and every creature in it -- could be destroyed were the chalice to fall into the wrong hands.
Green's many fans will undoubtedly devour the Nightside series, which is characterized by the same larger-than-life characters and breakneck pacing as the Owen Deathstalker sequence but is decidedly darker and owes more to hard-boiled mystery than to science fiction space opera. With a cast of characters that include antisocial bounty hunter Shotgun Suzie and Razor Eddie, a maniacal punk god with an odor problem, how can you go wrong? Concisely put, Green’s Nightside novels are as outrageous as they are entertaining. Paul Goat Allen
