When I read The Everything Box, it never occured to me that it was the first in a series!! HUZZAH AND HURRAY, more Coop!
I love these books. I’m going to get to more Richard Kadrey eventually (see also: I’m working through the “Dark Tower” series AND the “Rivers of London” series concurrently, currently), because I absolutely howl with laughter when I read his books, and I cannot put them down unless absolutely compelled to. He is my new Douglas Adams. I’m on board for all of it.
How can the stakes be so high, but the characters’ perspectives somehow be skewed so cynically? These fools keep getting caught up in really fantastic drama because Coop has a magical (no pun intended) combination of an absolutely death wish plus a willingness to do absolutely anything to stay alive.
This is pure smarty-pants guilty pleasure, and I’m not ashamed of it for even a hot second. The prose alone is so predictably sharp that Kadrey could be writing an interpretation of the phone book, and I’d be all-in. But this story is also a delight, with lots of action and lean-in moments.
If I have one complaint, it’s that there are far more plotlines in The Wrong Dead Guy than I recall there being in The Everything Box. On a few occasions, I did find myself wondering if I was lost or if Kadrey was just waiting to get to the point with a particular thread. But it all does come together in a furiously whimsical symphony, and getting there is more than half the fun.