Title: How Do You Feel?
Author: Simon R. Green
Series: Nightside Companion
In: Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod)
Rating Out of 5: 3.5 (Liked this)
My Bookshelves: Dark fantasy, Paranormal fantasy
Pace: Fast
Format: Short story
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Year: 2012
5th sentence, 74th page: Won’t that be nice?

An interesting short story about Green’s Dead Boy and how he lives his life.

How Do You Feel? was a completely unexpected short story – it was quite dark, with a twisted and unexpected strain of humour throughout it. The completely unforeseeable love story that rounded it out just polished it off to make me want to read the rest of the Nightside series. The use of a main character whose name is Dead Boy should have given me a hint to what kind of story I was in for though.

There is always a question about what happens after death, after all, most people don’t want to believe that this life is all that there is. And the idea of what happens when a life is cut too short with little or no mercy is a far more tantalising theoretical question. In creating a character that exists almost solely for revenge, Green approaches this question from a unique angle. Not only in addressing what happens after death and the lingering of souls, but how a thirst for revenge and an unyielding anger can destroy a life (and afterlife).

Image source: Succubus