Well, well. Or rather – not well at all. As much as I enjoyed – in a guilty pleasure kind of way – the first of Simon R. Green’s Nightside novels (as you can read here), I can’t really find anything to like in this one, the first in a new series. I’d say he temporarily lost his writing mojo when he concocted this trashy, pulpy tale of five ghost hunters and their big adventure. Prologue and chapter 1 were promising enough but from there it went downhill rapidly. The characters are flat and clichéd, the story is pure humbug and the descriptions do a ton of telling instead of showing. There is something evil in the London underground system. It’s the most powerful and most unknown evil ever. What is it? Powerful, old and evil. Did I mention evil? And powerful? Ha! Now that’s descriptive. I can really see this old powerful evil thingy . . . In the end it gets a face but by that time it’s too late. The book has already been sacrificed on the altar of bad descriptions and abysmal storytelling. (I hate it when writers invent one coincidence after the other to save the plot and this happens on every page here.)
I had a look at the amazon reviews and there were many by die-hard Simon R. Green fans and with the exception of one or two everyone hated this novel big time.
Green is a prolific writer. He has a unique imagination, macabre, silly and naughty too. He displays this in this book as well, but other than that it was really bad.
It’s unfortunate that this sorry effort is my second contribution to Carl’s RIP VIII. I was debating whether or not I should write about it but I decided people deserved to be warned.
My verdict: there isn’t a ghost of a chance that anyone will like this.
I’m sure that the RIP review site will provide reviews of much more interesting books. Should you want to join the challenge here’s where you can sign up.
