Sandman Slim

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

???Trust me on this ??? Hell is a tough room.???

James Stark is back and it's time for heads to roll (literally). His ???friends??? managed to get him pulled into Hell and he's spent the last 11 years entertaining Lucifer and Beelzebub in the gladiatorial arena, learning plenty of new skills (including how to speak High Hellion, which sounds a lot like barking), and acquiring a couple of useful magical objects. Now he's crawled out of the abyss and he's ready for revenge on those who killed his girlfriend and sent him Downtown. Fortunately he's got a little help from a 200 year old French alchemist who's looking for a cure for his immortality and an L.A. Goth girl who runs a video store.

Sandman Slim is a well-written and entertaining novel. What I liked best was Richard Kadrey's use of colorful metaphors and similes:

* “Aelita isn't what I imagined an angel would look like. She's about as ethereal as a zip gun. She walks like she's about to call in an air strike or buy Europe. Donald Trump in drag with her enemies' balls in a candy dish on her desk, right next to the stapler.”
* “Wells motions me over, squinting at me like a constipated Clint Eastwood.”
* “With a superhuman effort I try to push myself to my feet, but only get myself as far as propping myself on my elbows like a white-trash Sphinx.”
* Stark manages to ruin every piece of clothing he puts on: “I'm the Joseph Stalin of laundry.”

Sandman Slim is written in a present-tense first person voice and I enjoyed hearing James Stark's thoughts and, especially, his occasional Rules of Thumb:

“One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn't know when it's winning. And crazy doesn't know when to stop. If you can't pull off crazy, if, for instance, you're handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy.”

Sandman Slim was also informative. I've learned plenty of things that may be useful some day, like how to saw off a shotgun and how to use duct tape and cinder blocks to make a dead body sink. Also, in case I ever need to threaten to torture someone, I've got plenty of ideas ??? some of which involve the transposition of small round body parts.

There were some minor issues with the writing ??? a couple of mistakes (Kasabian drops the bat but then he's still holding the bat, Stark tells Candy to meet him somewhere and wonders why she doesn't show up in a different place, etc.). I read an advanced review copy, so I hope the editor catches these things (and the typos) before the final version comes out.

I really enjoyed Richard Kadrey's style, but I have to say that I didn't really enjoy the story of Sandman Slim. That's not really Mr. Kadrey's issue ??? it's me. Mostly the problem is that I'm not much of a fan of the urban bad-ass hero who's waging his own personal vendetta. I tried this novel, hoping it might change my mind, but it didn't ??? I just found it to be ugly, coarse, and lacking in beauty (except for those wonderful metaphors). Secondly, I'm a Christian and while I don't mind reading about people crawling out of Hell, I do have some sensitivities. For example, I feel uncomfortable with the premise that “God f'd up” which was sort of the theme of Sandman Slim.

I have no doubt that there will be many readers who will enjoy Sandman Slim a lot more than I did. I also have no doubt that I'd like to read other works by Richard Kadrey ??? something without the personal vendetta and God-f'd-up themes.
Richard Kadrey at Fantasy Literature.

I'm not gonna lie: I loved the hell out of this book. (Pun intended.) I wish I could have given it 6 stars, or go back and adjust my other previous 5 star reviews down to 4's because this one set a new bar for me. It was a ton of fun to read. It grabbed me immediately and did a great job of balancing character history with running plot.