Darkside offers an entry-point to a world in which there will probably be many sequels... based on a pair of worlds linked by portals defined by dirt and pain - a sewer outlet or a leap onto a disused tube train platform.
One of these worlds is here and now (-ish) and the other is a kind of frontier Victorian city with lashings of violence and showmanship, plus lycanthropy, vampirism and other classically naughty habits. Jonathan sees a trip to the British Library in the same terms as fighting his way through streets owned by artful dodgers with a taste for blood.
His father - known only by the unexplained first name Alain - occupies a paper-thin world of obsession and inadequate, motherless childcare. An unlikely little woman down the road offers Jonathan a history and a future of salvation. No backstory, but a million leads for the next n books in the series.
If only the style was up to the story. Compared with Philip Pullman, transition between Darkside and Lightside worlds is not well developed. Maybe that's what a thinner, less intellectual package dictates.
The immediacy of filth and danger (in either world) is good, but the way it is glossed over when a secondary character wakes up and displays a strange knowledge of what is going on (right down to the name of a secondary baddie) is not. Secondary characters are introduced and removed with very little care. This boy Ricky has been pursued because he has the same kind of link to the Darkside as our hero Jonathan, but we never find out what it is.
The language is often immediate and cartoonish, but too often vague and wandering. Too many "had beens" and "was beings". "Square acres"! "Geed" - that past tense should never be seen in print.
There are some superbly simple plot twists - Jonathan is taken by a wereman to see a vampire (honestly, stay with me), who offers this dubious protector a contract to seek out the very boy who has invaded from the other side - and some improbably common knowledge. The darksider Raquella (where does he get his names?) seems to know exactly where in the other London Alain's implausible psychiatric hospital is located; the sidekick Ricky shares the vocabulary and judgement of people he's never met. There are at least two "with one bound, Jack was free" moments.
The book does have a style and an urgency, and it does feel like young-boy-think. What about the girls? I never wanted to put it down and it was good fun, but it left me unsatisfied.
