Book 49: "The Unnatural Inquirer" by Simon R. Green
Saturday, October 1st, 2011 08:25![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeMost of the Beings on the Street of the Gods didn’t want to talk to me. In fact, most of them hid inside their churches behind locked and bolted doors and refused to come out until I’d gone. Understandable; they were still rebuilding parts of the Street from the last time I’d been here. But there are always some determined to show those watching that they aren’t afraid of anyone, so a few of the more up-and-coming Beings sauntered casually over to chat with me. A fairly ordinary-looking priest who said he was the newly risen Dagon. Stack! The Magnificient; a more or less humanoid alien who claimed to be slumming it from a higher dimension. And the Elegant Profundity, a guitar-carrying avatar from the Church of Clapton, who was so laid-back he was practically horizontal. The small and shifty God of Lost Things hung around, evasive as always. None of them professed to know anything about a broadcast from the Afterlife, let alone a DVD recording. Most of them were quite intrigued by the thought.
“It can’t be authentic,” said Dagon. “I mean, we’re in the business of faith, not hard evidence. And if there had ever been a broadcast from the Hereafter, we’d have heard about it long before this.”
“And just the idea of recording one is so…tacky,” Stack! said, folding his four green arms across his sunken chest.
“But it could be very good for business,” said the Elegant Profundity, strumming a minor chord on his Rickenbacker.
The Unnatural Inquirer is the Nightside's trashy tabloid newspaper, always the first to print the latest scurrilous gossip. The paper has just paid a fortune for a DVD containing a broadcast from the Afterlife, and when the owner disappears before handing over the DVD the sub-editor turns to John Taylor to track them down, pairing him with one of their reporters, a half-demon called Bettie. Although the DVD is supposed to be the first ever recording of heaven or hell, I'm sure that there was a broadcast from Hell playing on a screen in one of the bars or clubs that Taylor visited in "Hell to Pay" (which I read immediately before this book), and the contradiction grated.
Unfortunately the series is getting more than a little repetitive, and the investigations don;t seem to have much meat to them. Similar discussions about the nature of the Nightside's traffic appear in every book, sometimes more than once, and just how often do we need to be reminded that it is Taylor's reputation that is his most powerful weapon? How many times does he tell some powerful opponent that they need to back down just because he is John Taylor? It's getting old.
Let's hope that book nine is a return to form, as I have already bought a copy.
“It can’t be authentic,” said Dagon. “I mean, we’re in the business of faith, not hard evidence. And if there had ever been a broadcast from the Hereafter, we’d have heard about it long before this.”
“And just the idea of recording one is so…tacky,” Stack! said, folding his four green arms across his sunken chest.
“But it could be very good for business,” said the Elegant Profundity, strumming a minor chord on his Rickenbacker.
The Unnatural Inquirer is the Nightside's trashy tabloid newspaper, always the first to print the latest scurrilous gossip. The paper has just paid a fortune for a DVD containing a broadcast from the Afterlife, and when the owner disappears before handing over the DVD the sub-editor turns to John Taylor to track them down, pairing him with one of their reporters, a half-demon called Bettie. Although the DVD is supposed to be the first ever recording of heaven or hell, I'm sure that there was a broadcast from Hell playing on a screen in one of the bars or clubs that Taylor visited in "Hell to Pay" (which I read immediately before this book), and the contradiction grated.
Unfortunately the series is getting more than a little repetitive, and the investigations don;t seem to have much meat to them. Similar discussions about the nature of the Nightside's traffic appear in every book, sometimes more than once, and just how often do we need to be reminded that it is Taylor's reputation that is his most powerful weapon? How many times does he tell some powerful opponent that they need to back down just because he is John Taylor? It's getting old.
Let's hope that book nine is a return to form, as I have already bought a copy.
