Reviews 42 - Simon R. Green's Secret Histories and the Nightside Series Conclude

Reviews 42

Simon R. Green's Secret Histories

&

The Nightside Series 

Conclude 

The Reviews series have not yet been indexed.  These reviews often discuss topics we've explored in other sequences.

On many occasions, I've mentioned the well styled and absorbing Series by Simon R. Green.  They are Fantasy Action novels where enemy action is the driving force of the plot.

https://www.amazon.com/Night-Secret-Histories-Simon-Green-ebook/dp/B075HY5PWM/

The Paranormal Romance at the core of the Secret Histories (and originating in the Nightside series) is between a Drood Family Field Agent and a Witch widely acknowledged as the most powerful Witch in existence.

This final novel bringing the two locations together shows how this Romance confronts its final test.  The previous Secret Histories novels show how the Relationship between Drood and Witch develops from "mortal enemies" to "lovers" to "partners" to "married."

The long, complex novels give the writer space to set the tempo of change in both Characters to something that seems realistic. Each of them must change, mature, grow, come to understand their world differently, then they must become a Couple.  All of this maturation and change is handled stepwise in a psychologically plausible way.

The action and fantasy writing, plus the deep and solid characterization are what have made these two series extremely popular, hitting The New York Times Bestselling status time and again.  They're well constructed, tightly woven, with elements of Mystery and Suspense that you get addicted.

When you spot the Simon R. Green byline, you look forward to a visit with an old friend, his allies and enemies, and his personal evolution as a person as well as a member of a difficult family (filled with difficult but lovable people).  And none of the books disappoint that expectation.

As I've long understood, both series as well as Green's ghost-hunter series, belong in the same "universe" -- a well crafted, complex, universe with magic and supernatural creatures as well as inter-dimensional intrusions into our world.  The "rules" Green teaches you persist with logical consequences you can anticipate (dread) and remember.

The imagery is vivid, the banter up to the style of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, and the Characters (even the bit players) memorable.

The tongue-in-cheek take-off on well known Series (like James Bond) is always good for a startled laugh, and provides a feeling of camaraderie with the Author who tossed in a bit from the reader's everyday life.

In this concluding novel, Green brings together the Characters and Locations of the two (otherwise separate) series, Secret Histories and Nightside.

The Nightside is a magically created segment of adjacent reality, nestled in and accessible via the city of London in England.

The Secret Histories begin in London, and are about a Family (the Droods) fighting to protect our world from anything that might threaten us.  The Droods wear "golden armor" provided from another dimension by a (presumably) friendly visitor befriending the Family.

The Nightside is the location of a "Free Port" such as Pirates might create, a place where "Law" is sparse and just barely enforced.  It has many Magic features and caters to every warped taste in entertainment.

Green finishes off both series by showing what happens when The Nightside boundaries expand (inexplicably) and the Droods invade to put things right (the Drop idea of right, you see).  The Nightside inhabitants object to being invaded, while the gods who inhabit a particularly famous tourist street, desert the Nightside (inexplicably), so much of the "power" has gone.

Read to find some of the answers and explanations.

There is an afterword that wraps up some of the loose ends -- there could have been more novels in the joined-universe, perhaps, but here is where the Romance becomes the "Happily Ever After" which makes Night Fall the correct place to end the Series.

Therefore, this is another long running, successful Paranormal Romance Series to study carefully. The "world" you build around the Characters is a big part of what makes a novel or series appeal to a broad readership.  Most people who buy books read more than one genre - at least over a lifetime of reading.  Often people read the same genre for years, even decades, before branching out.  Give your readers a reason to branch out, and they will memorize your byline.

Here are some previous posts on this blog exploring some techniques in how to create the sort of addictive reading experience Green has managed.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/11/targeting-readership-part-13-motivating.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/11/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/08/settings-part-5-setting-makes-genre.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/07/theme-character-integration-part-13.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Reviews 34 - The Implausible Made Real by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Reviews 34

The Implausible Made Real

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

As the AI singularity approaches, social values are experiencing whiplash as strong and turbulent as this year's hurricane season.

In fact, global warming may be accompanied by a kind of values warming.

People rely more now on modern society, what their friends (often strangers known only on Facebook, or met by chance at a street rally) believe, than on Ancient Mystical texts.

Countercurrent to this is a revival of Spiritual Pathwork, a neopaganism, pursued by those who sense a non-material aspect to our reality, or wish they did.

And most astonishing of all, there are megachurches forming all over.  This year I've heard of new giant churches being built in Texas and Arizona, right in the heart of their respective radical socialist populations.

The philosophical life of your target readership is swirling as energetically as the hurricanes scouring buildings flat.

People get caught up in the fury of the moment, usually in details of matters they can do nothing about, except donate some money or pray.

Meanwhile, fiction on TV and movies -- and books -- portrays the fraying and broken families, severing links of love and understanding between generations -- grandparents are not revered simply for having survived.

So what seems plausible to the modern reader is very different than it was just twenty years ago.

In fact, today, a good swath of the Romance Reader target audience is convinced that the past was never good, and all the great historic figures were dirty rats in angel's clothing.  Tear their statues down quick before someone gets the idea that we respect their accomplishments (even the accomplishments that weren't racist, few as those may be.)

We are rewriting history (again).  Remember, history is written by the victors, and the vanquished rarely get a fair shake.

So if you set out to write an "off-beat" Romance, one that challenges current notions of right, wrong, good, bad, and the decisions made by those who lived in a different epoch conforming to different values, then you have to give some thought to plausibility.

The Implausible can be made Real to a readership by explaining it from a specific and well established point of view - a Main Character's point of view where you can follow the decision making process step by step.

Way back when, the Romance field frowned on sequels and never did reprints.  I know established best selling Romance writers who were appalled when an older title of theirs was reprinted.  Romance genre was regarded as read-and-toss fiction.

Today, that trend has reversed and we now see Mystery Romance series about the same characters, and Paranormal Fantasy series, and so on - with an ongoing and evolving Relationship.

One of these, which I've recommended many times, is by Simon R. Green -- two distinct series with different characters, set in two separate worlds, but both belonging to the same built world and followed for many novels.

Green is now converging these two series in a very natural way.

One is about "the Nightside" -- a literally dark world where all manner of perversions and creatures abound --- and The Secret Histories (of the Drood family.)

We follow a Witch and a Secret Agent from being mortal enemies to being lovers, and now a very committed couple.  They are obvious soul mates, but their lives in this wild fantasy/magic world interefere with their settling down to raise children.

In fact, the total lack of children running around the Drood family castle/home just rings false to me as the characters keep referring to growing up there.

The two novels in question today are actually one novel published in two books.  It looks to me as if Green just wrote this very long story, and the publisher decided it had to be severed in half because it was too big.

The first of the two is titled DR. DOA,


and the second is MOONBREAKER. 

DR. DOA starts with the realization that the main character, Eddie Drood, has been poisoned with something that can not be identified (possibly unearthly origin), and is relentlessly dying.  And it ends with a solution, hinted at obliquely by an oracle they consult along the way, that depicts poetic justice at its very best.

The plots of all these novels move from odd location to more and more bizarre and implausible locations, with combat against ever stranger and more twisted opposition.  Victory is not always assured, and never without cost.

The Witch and the Drood rescue each other, fight side by side and back to back, and drill relentlessly forward toward their shared goal.  In these two novels, the goal is to cure the poison eating at Eddie Drood.  The poison is implausible, the cure is implausible, and the ending makes the implausible real.

The banter among the characters -- including a flying, time and dimension traversing, talking dragon (yes, fire breathing) -- is bound to tickle any BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER fan.

The writing is relentlessly smooth, seemingly effortless, as Green is a virtuoso of wordsmithing.

So these are easy to read novels, and easy to remember so it is easy to pick up the next book a year or more later.

This is writing worth studying just for the techniques, but the underlying story is a pithy commentary on the modern world around us, as it has been, as it should be, as it will survive to become.

The Witch and the Drood are partners, and Soul Mates, equals in power, intelligence, imagination, determination and moral strength.

They do, however, not share exactly the same moral code at the beginning of their relationship -- and very gradually, over many books, corrupt each other.

The Witch loves punching adversaries with her magic -- and is a former Magic wielding Terrorist.  Eddie Drood loves solving problems with psychological judo these days, but has been a proponent of clean devastation as a solution that lasts.

They have each, separately, been to the Nightside, the location of the other branch of this series.

Now they have been summoned to deal with a new problem together, the violation of a treaty that keeps the Nightside separate from the day.  The Nightside is expanding -- and must be stopped.

Do you see the Gulliver's Travels style social commentary on today's politics in that?  Treaties broken, advancing armies taking Territory, and an underlying tussle of a debate about whether to stop them with brute force or somehow negotiate without killing (very many) opponents.

The battles cross dimensions, time, and space, and reveal a panoply of creatures (some quite horrible), most of whom might eat you but not consider you an enemy.

These two Characters, the Witch and the Drood Secret Agent, combine the very traits that made them arch enemies into a Force the enemies of Earth and us muggles truly fear.

This is the Implausible made Real by the Characters -- because you can't help but wish we had heroes like this.

On the other hand, maybe we do.

Study how these novels, set in two world of the same Universe, show us ourselves through a Romance tinged lens.

 Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com