S.K.S. PerryBesprekingen

Imaginative and extremely funny.
An excerpt of my old review of the book: "Humour Fantasy or SF is not easily done, but Perry tackles the funniness in a surprisingly simple but very effective way: simplicity of speech and situations, establishing strong complicity between the humorous intent and the readers need of story and, the piéce de resistance, a very good use of wisecracks. These are easy for a lot of people to be good at it in conversation, but writing is another realm and it is a surprisingly difficult thing to achieve; most authors get away with putting one, maybe 2 or 3 in a novel. Perry does it a lot, with perfect timing and finésse. Puns that are ordinary or that you regularly hear show up in the text effortlessly, and you can't help smiling and laughing.
It is a story about a dead guy. He tends to get into trouble. There are Vampires, trolls, ogres, a quest, gadgets, satanic rock, innocents, eternals, ...only God doesn't show up in the story. Maybe in a sequel if we're lucky. But I bet you will laugh from beginning to end.
I encourage you to read it."

Darkside isn't that dark, really. In fact, the novel, if not exactly light, is quite witty, fast-paced, and seriously genre-bending. The story is about a guy named James Decker who dies in the process of saving a young woman from being attacked. But he finds that he really isn't dead...well, sort of.

From the blurb:
Haunted by the ghosts of his father and grandfather, [James Decker] learns that the woman he rescued is in fact an Innocent, the physical embodiment of hope. As it turns out, seeing dead people is the least of James' worries. It's the trolls, goblins, vampires, and other assorted creepy-crawlies that make being dead a living nightmare.

Turns out Darkside is what all these dark creatures living in the Otherworld call our reality. And that's just one of the rules of the afterlife James has to learn as he finds a new lease on life protecting the Innocent from further harm. With wry humor and snide first person remarks, Perry transports you from one realm to the other and back again in a quest you'll not likely forget - if you don't die laughing first. A bit slow in the middle, but overall, a solid debut novel.