The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny
Simon R. Green
275 pages
published in 2010
Simon R. Green is, in the best possible meaning of the word, a cheerful hack writer. He’s been writing professionally since the mid seventies and specialises in long series of easily digestable, fun adventure science fiction and fantasy, in commercially interesting subgenres. The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny is a good example of this, the tenth novel in the Nightside series of urban fantasy. Which I didn’t know when I got it from the library, or I probably would’ve left it on the shelves. In the event it turned out not to matter fortunately; you needn’t have read the previous novels to understand this one, even if there are a lot of references to earlier adventures. It reminded me of when I first started to read Marvel comics way back in the eighties, trying to figure out a complex backstory that’s only hinted at.
The Nightside is the hidden part of London, where it’s always three a.m., magic is real, but so is super technology, demons and angels and nightmares cloaked in flesh roam the streets, time travel of one sort or another and all other sorts of crazy shit is commonplace. This is the world John Taylor works in, a private investigator in a pristine white suit, not quite a knight in shining armour but the closest equivalent. He’s cursed with awesome, having a magical gift that can get him out of trouble but which costs him to use it, not to mention can be a beacon to his enemies. He has powerful friends, but equally powerful enemies and the difference between the two is not always clear. The job he gets at the beginning of The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny is simple but dangerous: escort a envoy from one side in the Elven civil war through the Nightside on his way to the court of the other side. There’s only one small problem, which is that Walker, the most powerful man in the Nightside, the one appointed by the Authorities to keep some sort of order, doesn’t want this envoy to reach his destination, as the civil war suits The Authorities fine…
But this is just the appetiser before the main action, like the teaser scene before the titles in a James Bond movie. The real story is about Walker and how he’s dying. He wants John Taylor as his successor, which John himself is wary about. Meanwhile one of his PI colleagues/rivals, Larry Oblivion, the Dead Detective (having been murdered by his former partner, then brought back as a zombie) wants John to help him find his dead brother Tommy, who bought it in a previous novel. Of course the two plot threads hang together as you’d suspect, with the fun being in how they hang together…
The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny is high octane adventure from the very beginning, with Green making sure every scene is as badass as possible and the plot largely functions as an excuse to fit set pieces together. The end effect is a bit like watching a greatest fight scenes ever compilation video, but not unpleasant. Coming into the Nightside world in media res is a bit confusing, but much less than it could’ve been. The story is told in first person singular, with John Taylor doing most of the narration and Green is careful in letting him explain where yet another old friend/enemy first appeared. All in all this was a fun book, if not necessarily a good book. I don’t think anybody inclined to try this will mind very much though if this isn’t the literary sensation of the century.
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