A Hard Day’s Knight by Simon R. Green – review

Have you ever taken a walk on the Nightside?  The place where everyone knows your name–not in a good way like in the TV program Cheers, but in the way that they know all about all of your sins, your dark secrets, what makes you tick, and then they try to use it to their advantage to get control of the strings of your pocketbook and of your soul. Yeah, you know the place, the one Simon R. Green writes about in his Nightside series, “the dark, brooding heart of London, hidden away from the rest of the world, where magic is realer than you can bear, where lives and souls and everything else you can think of are always up for sale, and all your worst dreams go walking openly in borrowed flesh.”

In A Hard Day’s Knight, Green’s most recent novel to feature the private investigator and sleuth of the supernatural, John Taylor, our erstwhile detective is gifted with the sword Excalibur, a weapon men would kill and die for. He receives it not by yanking it out of a stone, like some common man-who-would-be-king, but through a much more dignified manner, via delivery to his heavily guarded house (complete with a land-mined yard) like a package sent through the post office.

But, he ponders, why him, of all people? Sure, he possesses some very useful powers, being Lilith’s Son, and he has killed his share of the many bad-asses that inhabit the Nightside who have tangled with him in the past, including Walker, the last Voice of the Authorities (making him the new Voice); but does that alone make him worthy enough to be the Sword’s caretaker, however briefly? Isn’t the wielder of Excalibur supposed to be chosen by the Lady of the Lake, a man destined to be the King, and a man who is also upstanding and noble? And, since everyone wants the Sword for a multitude of reasons, doesn’t possessing it mean you’ve also painted a very big mark on your own back? Excalibur can make its bearer the most powerful man on Earth, but it also carries with it the burden of heightened responsibility and the curse that everyone around you will think they’re more worthy to possess it than you.

Taylor’s shacking up in comfort and a fair degree of splendor and relative fame with his girlfriend, Suzie Shooter, a bad-ass in her own right. And, from the moment Excalibur is delivered to him, there comes the tough part of owning it: keeping it, and preventing those who are less worthy than even yourself and/or those who have evil intentions from getting their grubby paws on it.

Taylor’s always been the target of his enemies because of his powers, like the Inner Eye–one neat trick he can use it for is removing the bullets from his enemies’ guns. He can also use his powers to locate exactly where lost or hard-to-find items are, a very valuable resource, indeed, for someone in his line of work to have; and to remove the fillings from the teeth of attacking hordes of people, rendering their zeal for letting blood a little less of a priority for them, and placing running away while you still can a bit higher on their list. Then, becoming Nightside’s newest ruler, however reluctantly, also added to the growing number of those who would like to see Taylor dead…and to be the one who kills him.

From the first chapter onwards, A Hard Day’s Knight is another witty gem from Green’s imagination, transferred (and made alive for our reading pleasure) into words on paper.  Green has a very witty writing style, and it fits John Taylor’s sardonic outlook on life very well. One thing I really like about the series, and the other novels by Green that I’ve read, are their humorous titles. This one is no different, playing homage to the Beatles’ song “A Hard Day’s Night,” as well as indicating that the book may deal with Arthurian themes from the spelling knight.

The parallel universe where an alternate version of Camelot, King Arthur, Merlin, and Albion exist is one of the key aspects of the novel that I liked reading about. The universe, or a part of it, is called Sinister Albion, I suppose to let you know that it’s–well–sinister, as opposed to the “unsinister” one described in books like Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. King Arthur’s evil counterpart, Artur, resides in Sinister Albion, as does Merlin Satanspawn. He is perhaps the most evil villain yet in the Nightside series, a grossly overweight, bloated dude who is, or at least declares himself to be, the Antichrist.

Green is great at world-building, as devotees of the Nightside series can attest to. He makes the Nightside seem very twisted and real, and he writes about London Proper and the London Knight’s impressive Castle Inconnu with an equal sense of realism. A Hard Day’s Knight is another adventure-filled, suspenseful and often humorous installment in the Nightside series. It can be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel, but the first three books in the series are also fantastic, and well worth reading.

One a related note, the esteemed Mr. Green has a book up for voting in round 2 of the Westeros Bracket of BSC’s March Madness-style book tournament, From Hell With Love, which I nominated as being one of the best novels I’ve read this past year. Vote early, vote often–take this novel all the way to the Final Four and then to the Winner’s Circle!