The Sandman Slim series of books by Richard Kadrey are great fun. Full of sardonic sarcasm, terrifying demons, bloody battles for both flesh and spirit, and a few tender feels sprinkled here and there. It’s a great series of books (there are 7 so far, plus a shorter story) to start off your summer with a bang.
The first book is Sandman Slim, in which we meet James Stark on the day he busts out of Hell. He has spent the last 11 years as a kind of gladiator for the amusement of the hellions that populate “Downtown.” While he was down there killing monsters in the coliseum (and getting the grim reaper nickname of “Sandman Slim”), he also picked up a bit of magic and spell casting that he plans to use on anybody and everybody who gets in his way as he attempts to find the black magic practitioner Mason Faim, the man who sent him to hell. Faim’s also the man who killed the love of his life, Alice.
One of the first things he does is decapitate Kasabian, the man who runs the Max Overdrive video store. Stark keeps the reanimated head around as his roommate/computer whiz/mascot while he sets up a home base of sorts in the room above the store. Kasabian does not take too kindly to being sans torso, and lets Stark know it at every opportunity, but he begrudgingly helps Stark out in his quest since he has promised to get him a new body (a promise Stark doesn’t really feel like keeping).
The Los Angeles setting of the story is authentic and gritty, and it’s filled with all manner of zombies, magicians, supernatural healers, demons, and angels. And not many of them are happy that Stark is back.
Occasionally the action feels repetitive, as Stark rips his way through one group of nefarious acolytes or another, over and over again, with the help of the black blade he took from Downtown, and the key in his chest that allows him to walk through shadows. It’s hard to feel sympathy or tension when your protagonist is a fast healer, and every scar on his body magically makes him even stronger and less vulnerable to injury than he was before.
But this series does give us plenty of things to keep us turning the pages: a new girlfriend (also a monstrous killer), an immortal alchemist, a stint as Lucifer, accidentally starting a zombie apocalypse, and many many ruined pieces of clothing.
He is really rough on his wardrobe.
If you’re looking for a lightweight, breezy fun series of books with a lot of carnage, blasphemy, sarcasm, charming devils, pissed-off angels, magic and mayhem, then the Sandman Slim series is for you.
Uncle Mike sez: check ’em out.
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