Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim — (2009-2011) Publisher: When he was 19, James Stark was considered to be one of the greatest natural magicians, a reputation that got him demon-snatched and sent downtown — to Hell — where he survived as a gladiator, a sideshow freak entertaining Satan's fallen angels. That was 11 years ago. Now, the hitman who goes only by Stark has escaped and is back in L.A. Armed with a fortune-telling coin, a black bone knife, and an infernal key, Stark is determined to destroy the magic circle — led by the conniving and powerful Mason Faim — that stole his life. Though nearly everything has changed, one constant remains: his friend Vidocq, a 200-year-old Frenchman who has been keeping vigil for the young magician's return. But when Stark's first stop saddles him with an abusive talking head that belongs to thefirst of the circle, a sleazy video store owner named Kasabian, Stark discovers that the road to absolution and revenge is much longer than he counted on, and both Heaven and Hell have their own ideas for his future...

Sandman Slim

Stark has escaped from Hell, where he spent the last 11 years as a gladiator and assassin. He’s out for revenge, to kill the group of magicians who not only got him sent to Hell in the first place but recently murdered his girlfriend too. Stark was already somewhat of an outlaw with magical abilities before going “downtown,” but just like the prison systems on Earth, his fiery incarceration only made him tougher and more knowledgeable. He also smuggled out a couple powerful items: a magical black bone knife and a key which will transport him anywhere, from shadow to shadow, by way of the nexus of the universe, the Room of Thirteen Doors.

I haven’t had much luck finding urban fantasy that I like. So I tend to shy away from it, but when other FanLit reviewers mentioned how tough, gritty, and of full of wise-cracking dialog Sandman Slim is, I knew it was for me. I love revenge stories, and Sandman Slim is that in spades. But what really made me just have to give it a read is when some unknown hint resonated with me that this book is a lot like a cult classic, hard-boiled crime series that’s a favorite of mine. I’m talking about the Parker books by the late Robert Stark, aka Donald Westlake — the inspiration for the Mel Gibson movie Payback and a much older movie with Lee Marvin called Point Blank. It turned out that my hunch was much more than a coincidence. Mr. Kadrey directly gives nods to the Parker series with some of the character names.

Though the violent action, mean street attitude, and the revenge story echo the Parker books, Sandman Slim is not just a knock-off with a supernatural twist. Instead, Richard Kadrey does something better by creating a very original story with characters that are both interesting and darkly comical. However, Kadrey does use elements of crime noir fiction.

Hard-boiled stories take place among the criminal underworld, where everyone lives outside of the law. Well, everyone except for the cops, who act as judge and jury. But in Sandman Slim, the underworld is both a criminal and a demonic one and the cops are agents of a secret division in homeland security.

Stark, aka Sandman Slim — disappointingly, the alias is never fully explained — is a self-proclaimed monster that hunts monsters. He easily makes enemies and makes it difficult for his friends to like him. The other characters include a talking head, a centuries-old French apothecary, monsters, a hard-nosed federal agent, and a sub-culture of evil magicians (wizards).

Another thing that’s prevalent in hard-boiled fiction is the seedy neighborhoods of a city. The city itself serves as another character in the story. Every major city really does have its own personality. In the case of Sandman Slim, Los Angeles is that character. Even though I’ve never been to L.A., after reading Sandman Slim I feel like I know its underbelly like a native. In L.A., outcasts, failed actors, addicts, and, street-level criminals thrive mere blocks from millionaires, celebrities, eccentric socialites, and big-time gangsters. So it makes the perfect place for Kadrey’s angels and demons, monsters and magicians to dwell. Kadrey has such an intimate knowledge of L. A. that he makes it easy to believe that there are supernatural forces at work there.

Many may find the ideas in Sandman Slim to be uncomfortably sacrilegious. I had a strong Baptist upbringing, so I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me squirm a little. That said, charge me a heretic and burn me at the stake, because I found Kadrey’s take on Heaven, Hell and the things between just too intriguing to deny. —Greg Hersom

Sandman Slim

I’m not sure what’s wrong with me lately. I keep finding myself reading some gloriously blasphemous works of fantasy literature. I reviewed Jesse Bullington’s The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and accepted that it could very well show up as a stain on my soul’s credit report. Now, having just finished Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim, I might as well file eternal bankruptcy.

James Stark was betrayed and sent to hell for 11 years. While in Hell he learned a few things like killing, drinking heavily, and swearing like it was an Olympic sport. James Stark’s only goals are payback for his banishment, and revenge for the murder of his one true love... Anything else that happens along the way is just a bonus.

Stark’s one-track mind makes him seem a little self-centered. Combine that with his colorful vocabulary, and Stark is nearly unapproachable. On the other hand, he’s also funny, tremendously powerful, and becoming a better person despite his best efforts to the contrary. Stark grew on me, and by the end of the story I ranked him among my favorite characters in fantasy literature.

Kadrey’s writing is solid and surprisingly eloquent in its own way. You literary nerds who just spit your drink on your monitors, please clean off your screen and hear me out. Richard Kadrey has a way with words; his descriptions and images are vivid and creative and his metaphors are simultaneously both funny and accurate. For example, when Stark walks in on a dark magic ceremony, he comments:

Don't devil worshipers have any imagination? It's like a Hot Topic Halloween party.

Or when he tries on some Kevlar:

I’ll wear the liner under the over-coat and hope it’s not so bulky I look like a robot in a bathrobe.

In just a couple of concise sentences, Kadrey lets me know exactly what the scene looks like — and he makes me laugh. The verbiage is also very modern. It’s rife with pop-culture references and slang, so in 20 years it will feel a little dated, but who chooses a fantasy book purely based on its potential future relevance? I also didn’t mind the vulgarity, and found it quite refreshing compared to the politically-correct word choices in a lot of today’s books.

Sandman Slim hit the bull's-eye for me. It contained humor, a gritty style, and a fast pace — everything I love about urban fantasy. —Justin Blazier

Sandman Slim

James Stark is the only man who has ever gone to Hell while still alive, and escaped to tell the tale. He’s back on Earth to hunt down those who sent him to Hell and kill them. Because he’s picked up a few immunities to injury during his time Down Below, where he was essentially a gladiator, he thinks that might not be too difficult a job. In fact, he takes five bullets straight to the chest in his first few hours back here, and they don’t do anything but pose a threat of eventual lead poisoning if he doesn’t get them removed.

Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim is urban fantasy with a kick to the head. Stark is the kind of anti-hero who becomes more of a hero the longer you read about him – he makes an effort not to kill anyone who doesn’t deserve it, and is even sorry that he decapitated one of his enemies and kept the guy’s head alive to be captured by another one of his enemies. Stark tells his story in a first-person narrative that never slows down, not even when he sleeps. From sending the bad guys scampering from a bar they were blackmailing to taking an angel’s sword straight to the gut, Stark is a tough guy Dashiell Hammett would recognize, if Hammett wrote about the supernatural.

Kadrey builds his alternate Los Angeles with great care. There are marvelous throwaway lines that tell you exactly what kind of world you’re in. For instance: “Yes, there are vampires. Try to keep up.” He describes his supernatural weapons with care: “My favorite weapon, a na’at, was on the ground. A na’at is sort of like a spear, but it morphs and changes into a lot more than a spear if you know how to use it right. Like everything else down there, the name is a Hellion joke. They call a na’at a ‘thorn’ because its full name, na’atzutz, is the kind of bush they used to make Christ’s crown of thorns.” (Hellions, naturally, are denizens of Hell.) His hierarchy of good guys and bad guys is a bit different from what we’ve been taught in Sunday school; angels don’t seem to be especially good, and God is apparently absent after having screwed up a few bits of creation. Humans, in fact, are nothing but accidents that God got fleetingly interested in before being distracted by something else.

One thing everyone in Kadrey’s universe seems able to agree on is that Kissi, a third kind of being after angels and humans, are bad stuff that we don’t want. But human magicians seem to be unable to stay away from them, especially Stark’s enemies, who think they see a way to use them without themselves being used. They’re wrong.

Sandman Slim throws a new idea at the reader with almost every page in an orgy of weirdness. I like that in a novel, even if it is almost exhausting to read. It would have taken fewer pages to serve the plot, and the book might have benefited by judicious editing, but that couldn’t happen without losing an idea or two or a dozen; it must have been quite a dilemma for those who worked with Kadrey to bring this book to fruition. One thing that must have gotten lost in editing, though, is how and why Stark is called Sandman Slim. That seems to just start happening at one point, and the book doesn’t explain where the nickname came from or what it means. But that’s such a minor point when the novel is moving forward at 90 miles per hour that one hopes only to find out in the next novel set in this universe. —Terry Weyna

Sandman Slim

Would James Stark, the hero of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim, and Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden get along? Here’s what I think. They could drink together, but sooner or later they’d get into a fight and end up torching the neighborhood. They’re a little too different, yet too much alike.

Dresden is a rebel and an outcast. So is Stark, but he is something more — a true punk, in the 1980s Sid Vicious sense of that word. He’s something more than that, too, but I don’t want to spoil it for everyone.

Stark’s punk sensibility marinated for eleven years in Hell, where a rival magician sent Stark (still alive) when he was nineteen years old. Stark survived by becoming an arena fighter in Hell, and later a shadow assassin for one of Lucifer’s generals. Now he’s escaped. He has three magical artifacts and one simple mission: to kill the people who betrayed him and shopped him to Lucifer.

Stark’s L.A. is strange and wholly familiar at the same time. The high-gloss glamour of Rodeo Drive and the movie moguls exists one parking space away from the donut shops and taquerias, the derelict crack houses, the mostly-empty strip malls. Punks and drug addicts live in the city like coyotes. Murderous, self-righteous angels direct clandestine Homeland Security operations, and the Sub Rosa, the community of magical beings, function just slightly below the radar. It’s a town where you can buy anything and almost nothing has any value. As Stark says, “LA is just one traffic jam away from Hiroshima. God, I love this town.” He refers to Hell as “Downtown,” a nice bit of wordplay in a city that doesn’t exactly have one itself.

Stark is a product of rootless, centerless LA. He doesn’t articulate a fancy code of honor, or philosophize about magic. He’ll bulldoze Heaven to kill the folks who betrayed him, and march into Hell to save his friends. Or maybe it’s the reverse. Actually, he might do both. He is foul-mouthed, hard-boiled and funny, and he’d fit comfortably into a James Ellroy novel.

Sandman Slim drives at a hundred miles an hour from Page One — another LA characteristic. Kadrey peoples the book with fascinating, funny, frightening characters. Let’s just say that Lucifer is not the scariest thing out there.

Kadrey drops occasional details in his rush to thrust Stark into his next crisis. For instance, Allegra has a shaven head when we first meet her, but during a fight scene, a villain grabs her by the hair, just four days later. But the sheer energy and authenticity of Stark’s voice make these lapses forgivable. Of all the wonderful things here — the interesting backstory and worldview, the characters, the adrenaline-rush plot — I think Stark, the punk-gladiator and fringe-dweller-magician, is quite the best. —Marion Deeds

Sandman Slim

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 fucked up" which was sort of the theme of Sandman Slim.

I have no doubt that many readers 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-fucked-up themes. —Kat Hooper

Kill the Dead

Lucifer has come to Hollywood as an advisor for a movie about his life that’s in production. With all the power struggles going on between the old Sub Rosa families, he hires Stark, a.k.a Sandman Slim, to be his bodyguard. Stark has recently been contracting for the Golden Vigil, a special department of homeland security that’s overseen by the angel Aelita and defends against God’s enemies on Earth. But between Stark’s bad attitude and Aelita’s “holier than though” one, that job isn’t working out so well. So Stark needs the money. However, as one can imagine, when working for the Devil there’s always going to be a catch. In a desperate bid to take over, somebody has set zombies loose in L.A., and Sandman Slim is the only person who can stop them.

Mr. Kadrey’s take on the Devil makes me think of the old mafia don depicted in gangster movies: a businessman who has aged very well, and who hides cleverness and fearsome power beneath a charming veneer. Lucifer is currently trying to hold on to his throne, but still wants to one day get back at God for the damnation that happened long before mankind became a player in the universal struggle between Heaven and Hell, which in Kadrey’s Sandman Slim books, isn’t necessarily the same thing as good vs. evil.

In Kill the Dead, it’s ironic that the harder Stark tries to self-improve — by not simply killing everything that presents a problem — the deeper into trouble he gets. He’s reminds me a little bit of the guy who represents mayhem in the recent Allstate insurance commercials. No matter what Stark does, calamity follows him. I think the time he spent as an assassin and gladiator in Hell, though, has conditioned him to unconsciously thrive in chaos. Plus, Stark’s ultimate goal is to kill Mason, the Sub Rosa magician who murdered Stark’s girlfriend. With vengeance as his motivation for existence, it’s a given that Stark’s life is going to be screwed up.

Richard Kadrey won me over as a fan with the first book, Sandman Slim, and I enjoyed Kill the Dead even more, which says a lot because I never had much interest in urban fantasy before. Kadrey has opened this reader’s eyes to how much fun this kind of fantasy can be.

The Sandman Slim novels are a unique combination of a supernatural thriller and a hard-boiled crime novel. There’s a lot of hard drinkin’, cigarette smokin’, sarcastic street-smart wit, and two-fisted action. Mr. Kadrey’s belief that evil is really just the ignorance or carelessness of one’s actions, rather than a universal force that opposes good, makes the perfect underlying theme for the SANDMAN SLIM novels. The hostilities between the angels and demons continues, just as it always has, with humanity stuck somewhere in the middle. I anxiously wait to read about the next battle in the third installment of Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series. —Greg Hersom

Kill the Dead

PLOT SUMMARY: James Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim, crawled out of Hell, took bloody revenge for his girlfriend's murder, and saved the world along the way. After that, what do you do for an encore? You take a lousy job tracking down monsters for money. It's a depressing gig, but it pays for your beer and cigarettes. But in L.A., things can always get worse.

Like when Lucifer comes to town to supervise his movie biography and drafts Stark as his bodyguard. Sandman Slim has to swim with the human and inhuman sharks of L.A.'s underground power elite. That's before the murders start. And before he runs into the Czech porn star who isn't quite what she seems. Even before all those murdered people start coming back from the dead and join a zombie army that will change our world — and Stark's — forever...

FORMAT/INFO: Kill the Dead is 434 pages long without any chapter or part breaks. Narration is in the first-person present tense, exclusively via the protagonist, James Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim. Kill the Dead can be read as a standalone story, but is the second Sandman Slim novel, while the open ending provides plenty of material for future sequels. October 5, 2010 marks the North American Hardcover publication of Kill the Dead via EOS.

ANALYSIS: There was a time when I used to like reading urban fantasy novels, but thanks to publishers flooding the market with second/third-rate carbon copies and authors recycling the same ideas over and over, I’ve grown weary of the whole subgenre. Even so, every once in a while an urban fantasy title comes along that really catches my eye, like last year’s Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey...

Combining the humor and accessibility of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels with the detective noir influences of the Nightside series by Simon R. Green, and the hard-boiled grittiness of Hellblazer, Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt Casebooks and Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels, Sandman Slim was a fun and exciting introduction to James Stark — a nephilim (part human, part angel) who escaped after eleven years trapped in Hell to take revenge against Mason Faim, the person responsible for betraying Stark and murdering his girlfriend. Along the way, the book also introduces Stark’s impressive collection of weapons (the shape-shifting na’at, Azazel’s knife, Mason’s lighter, Hellion magic, the Room of Thirteen Doors) and an interesting supporting cast that includes a talking head in former magician, Kasabian; Stark’s friend, the 200-year-old immortal alchemist, Vidocq; Allegra, an ex-video clerk who becomes Vidocq’s apprentice; Candy, a vampire-like Jade and possible romantic interest of Stark’s; Doc Kinski, a fallen angel who provides healing for the supernatural; Mr. Muninn, a “merchant to the stars and connoisseurs of esoterica”; and Carlos, the bartender of the Bamboo House of Dolls which caters to L.A.’s supernatural underworld; not to mention Lucifer, Aelita, and Marshal Wells of the Golden Vigil. In addition to all of this, readers were also treated to a revenge-driven tale full of graphic violence, over-the-top action, creative magic, and surprising twists.

In the second Sandman Slim novel, Kill the Dead, readers can expect more of the same. More of the cocky, foul-mouthed Stark with his accompanying addictions for nicotine, booze, Aqua Regia, car theft, and smart-ass comments. More of Stark at his favorite hangouts (Max Overload, Donut Universe, the Bamboo House of Dolls, Vidocq’s apartment which was formerly where Stark and his girlfriend lived) with the same supporting cast — and a couple of new faces in Marshal Julie and Brigitte, a “Czech Gypsy porn-star zombie killer.” More of Stark wielding his favorite weapons with violent and bloody results, while acquiring some new pieces for his arsenal including the Druj Ammun, access to the Daimonion Codex (Lucifer’s “mystical database”), and the manifestation of angelic powers. And more of Stark kicking ass, cracking jokes, and getting into trouble.

The story however, is a different matter altogether. Where Sandman Slim was all about revenge and started out with a bang that really never let up until the end of the book, Kill the Dead is a much slower and more tedious affair — at least for the first two-thirds of the novel. During that time frame, readers are subjected to Stark talking a lot — to friends, strangers and readers alike – and such mundane matters as Sub Rosa politics and Stark combating money issues by working freelance for both the Golden Vigil and Lucifer, taking on menial jobs like hunting monsters, examining supernatural crime scenes, and working as Lucifer’s bodyguard. Granted, there are moments of exciting, blood-spewing violence, impassioned sex, and entertaining verbal sparring sprinkled throughout these pages, but for the most part, I had to drag myself through this portion of the novel, all the while wondering if things were ever going to get better. Fortunately, the book does improve, significantly. Around the time the zombie plot to destroy Los Angeles is in full effect, the Sandman Slim I knew and loved from the first book was back in all his cynical, ass-kicking glory. Add to that revelations about Stark’s father, one of his friends getting killed, another friend getting bitten by a zombie for which there is no cure, Stark’s angelic personality taking over his human side, some fascinating loose ends to be explored in future sequels, and plots to dethrone both God and Lucifer, and it was enough to make me forget about the novel’s laborious first two-thirds.

Writing-wise, Richard Kadrey puts together another solid performance in Kill the Dead, highlighted by energetic pacing; stylish action sequences; cool slang words — Downtown (Hell), shroud eaters (vampires), Shut Eyes (psychics), High Plains Drifters (zombies); a creative twist on zombies that includes different types of zombies (Drifters, Lacunas, Savants) and the brutal method (ripping out their spines) by which to destroy them; and accessible, pop culture-soaked figures of speech:

Know your enemy. His tactics, strengths, and weaknesses. When you do, ninety-nine percent of the time you’re going to make him squeak like a church mouse and run away like the Road Runner. Of course, if you get it wrong, you’re going to be a ten-foot banana and the guy you’re fighting will be King Kong with the munchies.

Unfortunately, Richard Kadrey’s performance is not all good. Characterization, for example, is practically non-existent, especially toward the supporting characters, which is apparent by my complete lack of care and concern when one of the characters is killed off and the lives of others are threatened. Then there’s Stark’s little identity crisis when his angel personality takes over, but his narrative voice remains largely the same. Also, Kadrey has a tendency to introduce interesting ideas like the Jackal’s Backbone or the Winter Garden without really explaining their purpose or origins. On a personal note, meanwhile, I grew tired of Stark’s incessant jokes and commentary, partly because it just doesn’t fit my view of how a cynical badass would act, making Stark seem more like an obnoxious teenager rather than a hardened killer, and partly because of the author’s overreliance on pop culture references and similes/metaphors that just aren’t very creative. Additionally, I felt Richard Kadrey dropped the ball a few times towards the end of the novel, taking the easy way out with convenient, Hollywood-esque resolutions instead of embracing the unconventional route.

CONCLUSION: Overall, Richard Kadrey’s Kill the Dead takes its sweet time getting to the good stuff, but when it does, the action is fast, furious and compelling, and will definitely satisfy fans of the first Sandman Slim novel while leaving readers already anticipating the next volume in the series. That said, if you like your urban fantasy dark and gritty, then there are much better options available than Sandman Slim, starting with Mike Carey’s superb Felix Castor novels and the awesome Joe Pitt series by Charlie Huston... —Robert Thompson

Kill the Dead (audio)

Richard Kadrey’s Kill the Dead is the sequel to Sandman Slim, and James Stark has been keeping himself busy working for various entities in order to pay the rent. The Devil is one of the entities that makes use of Stark’s services, and he wants Stark to serve as his bodyguard while he’s in town on business. Stark is forced to juggle the obligations of both Heaven and Hell, and manages to place himself in the middle of a conflict that started at the dawn of time.

Richard Kadrey’s writing style is awesome. Seriously, I want this guy to write my epitaph after I die. I imagine it would go something like this:

“Here lies Justin Blazier. If you owe him money, you’re a lucky son of a bitch.”

Kadrey continues the gritty shit-kicking approach to writing that made the first novel so great. However, I do use the word “gritty” with some reservations. If I were to create a “Justin’s Scale O’Grittiness” and use it to grade the Sandman Slim novels — it would look something like this:

Normal Gritty = Rugged cowboy squints at the sun and then says something manly.

Using that as a base of grittiness and then applying it to a Sandman Slim novel:

Sandman Slim Gritty = Rugged cowboy squeals in terror whilst getting gang raped by coyotes and left to die on a cactus in the middle of the desert.

Now that I’ve established some perspective you might understand why “gritty” fails as an adequate descriptor.

If you thought Sandman Slim was sparse on the secondary characters’ development, book 2 doesn’t even try. Stark’s friends Vidocq, Allegra, Kinsky and Candy are all relegated to just a few pages. I found their lack of face time to be rather disappointing, since all the characters I just mentioned were worth spending more time with. Stark’s character comes off as sort of whiny, which is a contrast from the previous book. Stark was always prone to complaining, but in Kill the Dead it’s all he does. Stark redeems himself by the end of the story, and in hindsight the change in Stark is more than likely intentional, but it’s just a tad overdone.

The plot of Kill the Dead is fun and exciting. Kadrey uses a few Urban Fantasy staples, but does so in creative ways. Kadrey’s Zombies, for example, come in several varieties, ranging from the shuffling groaning kind to the chess-playing savant kind. Kill the Dead also contains angels, demons, homeland security, warrior gypsies and even a porn star. Kadrey brings all these elements together to create a truly unique universe.

I listened to Kill the Dead on audio CD by Brilliance Audio. The audiobook is voiced by MacLeod Andrews. Mr. Andrews sounds abrasive with a sarcastic edge, the perfect voice to portray Stark. However, his portrayal of Vidocq’s French accent makes him sound more mentally challenged than anything else. The other characters are fine, but none possess the personality he imbues into Stark. The audio version is worth listening to simply to hear Macleod give life to James Stark.

Kadrey has an awesome writing formula and has solidified Sandman Slim as one of my favorite fantasy characters. Fans of urban or dark fantasy should be required by law to read at least the first novel, which is the better one. Richard Kadrey is a man with a lot of talent and strange interests, and I for one am glad he has chosen to express some of them in the form of Sandman Slim. —Justin Blazier

Kill the Dead

Kill the Dead, Richard Kadrey’s second Sandman Slim adventure, didn’t impress me as much as the first one did. I think I’ve hit my zombie threshold. I didn’t know I had a zombie threshold until I was about halfway through this book, but apparently I do and this book reached it.

All the things I liked about Sandman Slim are still around in Kill the Dead. James Stark, Kadrey’s punk wizard, is still punk: powerful, angry, pragmatic. When the book opens, he is killing vampires for money, paid by the Golden Vigil, a truly frightening partnership between angelic warriors and Homeland Security. Yes, that’s right, an operation that can smite you with God’s wrath, suspend habeas corpus and strangle you in bureaucratic red tape all at the same time. They are not the scariest thing walking LA’s mean streets, either. Stark is still worried about his old adversary Mason, and he is baffled by the cryptic last words of the teen cheerleader vampire he just ended.

Stark is distracted from the vampire girl’s riddle — or the strange stories of people going missing — by a visit from his old boss, Lucifer. Stark used to be an arena fighter in Hell. A human could not have survived eleven years in Hell, but Stark is only half human. His father was an angel... if, perhaps, a fallen one.

Lucifer says he has come to LA to get a movie made. It’s a biopic, his side of the story. Stark is wisely skeptical of this cover story but agrees to provide bodyguard services. Soon he is rubbing elbows with the magical aristocracy, movie moguls and ambitious actresses, and protecting Lucifer from various attempted hits.

Stark discovers that someone has a plan to release an army of zombies that has been imprisoned underneath the city for centuries, and it seems that he is the only one who can stop it. He also needs to figure out who is after Lucifer. Lucifer may be the CEO of Hell, but he is the target of a hostile takeover, and Mason, who was exiled to Hell, has allied himself with the rebels.

One of the interesting thing about Stark is that he is a hardened, angry angel-punk, and he’s also strangely vulnerable and, at times, well... almost sweet. He tricked out his closet and built a skateboard conveyance for Kasabian, his bizarre disembodied-head sidekick (who also informs on him to Lucifer). He still pines for his dead love, Alice. When the zombie attack starts, he goes out of his way to warn a counter girl at his favorite doughnut shop to go home and lock her doors. These are not inconsistencies in his character; these are the flashes of humanity that keep me reading. At times in this book, Stark’s innocence and vulnerability veer dangerously close to whininess, especially when he is talking to his friend Kinski, but then there’s a cute scene in the back of a limo when he chats — yes, chats — with Lucifer about the magical books he’s been reading lately.

The zombie plot goes on too long without that much of a payoff. During an early zombie attack, Stark is infected. If he were human, he would turn into a zombie. Because he is half-angel, his human self “dies,” but we see no change in his behavior or attitude. He seems to be irritated with humans, but Stark is always irritated with someone, so this does not make a dramatic enough difference. Along the way, while he is deciding how to combat the zombies, there seems to be a lot of talking. I was still engaged but it was hard not to skim. I was much more interested in the Lucifer plot, and the scheme of the murderous angels who are involved with the Golden Vigil.

Despite some disappointments here, Kadrey keeps delivering a quirky brand of weirdness, and Stark manages to make me care about him, so I keep reading. I will read Aloha from Hell, the third book, just to find out what happens next. —Marion Deeds