REVIEW: Simon R Green - The Dark Side of The Road.

Genre: Urban Fantasy / Mystery / Paranormal

Publisher: Severn House Publishers

Publication Date: 1^st May 2015

Pages: 224

MY REVIEW:

I received an advance copy of The Dark Side of the Road from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is published by Severn House Publishers.

Simon R Green. Another new one on me. Picked this up after seeing a few friends had enjoyed it and thought I would too. I’m still undecided as to whether I did or not.

Ishmael Jones works for the “Organisation”. His boss/handler is simply known as “The Colonel”. Ishmael takes his jobs from The Colonel. Jobs that involve hunting people down. Jobs that sometimes involve killing these people. He is sort of like the James Bond of the dark world.

The Colonel unexpectedly invites Ishmael to his family home, Belcourt Manor, for Christmas. Ishmael has no idea why. All he knows is the Colonel is scared of some dark horror that has come to Belcourt Manor. He wants Ishmael to seek it out and destroy it.

By the time he arrives The Colonel is missing and Ishmael is surrounded by strangers with secrets. One of them is a killer. Ishmael needs to closely guard his own secrets while trying to figure out who the killer is, and try and stop them before they strike again.

REVIEW: Domino Finn - Shade City: The Dead Side Blues

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Blood & Treasure

Publication Date: 1^st July 2014

Pages: 316

MY REVIEW:

This is another sent into Ginger Nuts of Horror in exchange for an honest review of the book. The main character name had provoked a discussion before I even picked it up.

Dante Butcher lives in LA. He owns a pocket watch he bought in an antique shop. The watch is the conduit that Violet uses to communicate with Dante from the “dead side”. She died when she was 12 years old. Dante has always had a knack for detecting shadows – or shades – spirits that are possessing the living that have come from the dead side. Getting help from Violet, he trawls the clubs at night seeking out shades to banish back home. Things start to take a turn for the worse when he comes across a more powerful shade in a friend. In trying to find out more about it, Dante uncovers a long and disturbing trail of corruption among the dead. Along with Violet he must get to the bottom of the story. He can trust no one. Least of all Violet.

I have been thinking about writing this review since about 40% into the book. It was right about this time that the indecision about whether I should give up or keep going started.

In terms of a story this book has something. It’s an interesting idea. It just wasn’t very well executed. Dante Butcher as a main character wasn’t that exciting. The lifestyle he leads, practically living in nightclubs and the fact he is chasing spirits from the dead side should be exciting, exhilarating and packed with adventure and fast paced narrative. It isn’t. His interactions with the spirit of a dead girl who talk to him in his mind using the watch as a conduit, were, boring. It didn’t seem realistic.