if you loved suzie, like I .... oh shit it's her! run!

[reverancepavane]

Simon Green is probably my favourite purveyer of high quality mythic fantasy and space opera. And by mythic, I mean it's full of Powers and Potentiates. It goes back to the old days when there wasn't an explicit horror genre, and all the horror authors wrote fantasy. With typical English sensibilities of what constitutes horror. All of his books are delights to read, from the classic sword and sorcery of the Hawk & Fisher series, the humorous fantasy of Blue Moon Rising, the full on space opera of the Deathstalker series (and prequels), as well as the urban mythic fantasy of Shadows Fall and The Nightside. "I was looking forward to some serious time, with a nice hot bath and my rubber ducky. Rubber ducky is my friend." The Unnatural Inquirer is one of the Novels of the Nightside, a modern urban fantasy environment where it is always 2am in the morning, and anything and anyone is for sale, if you have enough money. It is the place where a mobile phone needs a built in exorcism function, and where the traffic is innately dangerous. If it doesn't straddle the fence between fantasy and horror, it is at least looking over it. They tell the story of John Taylor, a private detective with the uncanny ability of being able to find anything, provided he is willing to accept the consequences of doing so. This, and the previous book Hell To Pay, are set after the [redacted by Time Police] [censored by The League of Moral Decency], where the [shredded by Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal] was [removed by the Association For The Prevention Of Cruelty to Zombies]. Thus, while most of the series can be read as independent vignettes set in the milieu of the Nightside, this is especially true of this one. However for a true appreciation of the series, read them in order. You might also want to refer to Shadows Fall and Drinking Midnight Wine as well, which while they are not technically set in the Nightside, do have extremely strong connections to it. Anyway John Taylor is hired to help Nightside's very own tabloid newspaper: The Unnatural Inquirer. And no, not to find its misplaced decency and good taste – it never had any to begin with. "I want a drink. I want one of thos especial drinkies you can only get here. Do you have a Maiden's Bloody Ruin? Dragons' Breath? Angel's Tears?" "The first two aren't cocktails, and that last one is actually called Angel's Urine. Which was selling quite well until word got around it wasn't so much a trade name as an accurate description."