Book 48: "Hell to Pay" by Simon R. Green
Saturday, October 1st, 2011 08:18![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeI looked at him for a long moment. “Are you saying,” I managed finally, “that not only did Melissa’s kidnappers remove her from this Hall without anyone noticing, but that they walked off with all her belongings as well? And no-one saw anything? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a major slap with your name on it in my pocket, Hobbes.”
“I feel I should also point out that no magics will function in Griffin Hall unless authorised by a member of the Griffin family, sir. So Miss Melissa could not have been magicked out of her room…”
“Not without her cooperation or that of someone in her family.”
“Which is of course quite impossible, sir.”
“No, Hobbes, nailing a live octopus to a wall is impossible, everything else is merely difficult.”
“I bow to your superior knowledge, sir.”
I was still thinking Inside job, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
Although the Authorities who ran the Nightside were killed in the recent war, their representative Walker is still running things on a day to day basis, but there are plenty of other big players jockeying for position with a view to taking over from him. One of the most powerful of these is Jeremiah Griffin, an immortal man who has had business interests throughout the Nightside for hundreds of years. Rumours are rife about the Griffin and the terms on which he and his family gained immortality, and when he hires private detective John Taylor to track down his kidnapped granddaughter who has been somehow been spirited away from Griffin Hall despite its magical protections, it seems that her disappearance may be linked to one of these stories.
I preferred the first three book in the series with their stand-alone plots, to the story arc that took up the next three books, so I was hoping to really enjoy this story but now that the mysteries of the identity of John's mother has been solved and the Harrowing are no longer on John Taylor's trail, the plot of this book seemed a little thin.
The Nightside is still recovering from the war, in which a lot of buildings were destroyed and a lot of big players killed, and everyone seems to blame John Taylor, and this book fell a little flat, as if the series, too, needed time to recover from the war. I was irritated by what seemed a big plot-hole in this book, as a supposedly immortal character is killed, and none of the other characters seem surprised that this person is dead or even comments on it. At the end of the book it says that the Griffins are "getting used to being only mortal now that SPOILER is gone" So how could the a Griffin have died before that?
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a major slap with your name on it in my pocket, Hobbes.”
“I feel I should also point out that no magics will function in Griffin Hall unless authorised by a member of the Griffin family, sir. So Miss Melissa could not have been magicked out of her room…”
“Not without her cooperation or that of someone in her family.”
“Which is of course quite impossible, sir.”
“No, Hobbes, nailing a live octopus to a wall is impossible, everything else is merely difficult.”
“I bow to your superior knowledge, sir.”
I was still thinking Inside job, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
Although the Authorities who ran the Nightside were killed in the recent war, their representative Walker is still running things on a day to day basis, but there are plenty of other big players jockeying for position with a view to taking over from him. One of the most powerful of these is Jeremiah Griffin, an immortal man who has had business interests throughout the Nightside for hundreds of years. Rumours are rife about the Griffin and the terms on which he and his family gained immortality, and when he hires private detective John Taylor to track down his kidnapped granddaughter who has been somehow been spirited away from Griffin Hall despite its magical protections, it seems that her disappearance may be linked to one of these stories.
I preferred the first three book in the series with their stand-alone plots, to the story arc that took up the next three books, so I was hoping to really enjoy this story but now that the mysteries of the identity of John's mother has been solved and the Harrowing are no longer on John Taylor's trail, the plot of this book seemed a little thin.
The Nightside is still recovering from the war, in which a lot of buildings were destroyed and a lot of big players killed, and everyone seems to blame John Taylor, and this book fell a little flat, as if the series, too, needed time to recover from the war. I was irritated by what seemed a big plot-hole in this book, as a supposedly immortal character is killed, and none of the other characters seem surprised that this person is dead or even comments on it. At the end of the book it says that the Griffins are "getting used to being only mortal now that SPOILER is gone" So how could the a Griffin have died before that?
