Given the intricacy and violence of the other two books in the series I’ve read, I was a little surprised at how tame Lucifer actually was in Kill the Dead. I was all ready for some kind of intricate, elaborate super-scheme when the devil hires Stark at the end of Sandman Slim for bodyguard duty. The only thing for most of the novel that Lucifer seemed to be up to was actually supervising his biopic and using that as an excuse to stay away from […]
A Half Angel Rules Hell and Lucifer gets to Heaven
I annoyed myself when I realized that I’d skipped a novel. This is in fact the third, not the second. In itself, this isn’t a bad thing, except I now know major spoilers from that installment. Then I realized, that had I read some of those spoilers in their story, I might have had to quit the series since a character apparently dies of whom I was quite fond in the first novel. That would have been a bit of a shame (the giving up) […]
Devil in Details and Missed Chances
I liked Sandman Slim most of the time. It’s got an interesting premise of a not-fully dead human resident of Hell getting back to Earth, and trying to get revenge on the people who got him sent there. There’s also some interesting side-characters like Vidocq, Candy, and Dr. Kinski (in a very different version than the Coop stories). The various denizens of Hell who show up occasionally are pretty interesting, as is the gradually revealed backstory behind Stark’s trip to Hell in the first place. […]
Your smile will tell you what warms your heart, or How to go from zen bliss to a massacre in three easy steps
James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, is officially dead, but in his universe, there is all kinds of dead. While he tries to figure out where he is and why he’s there, he’s trying not to get deader. At the end of The Perdition Score, Death, formerly known as Samael, formerly known as Lucifer, has left him on a mountain at the edge of Hell looking at a sandstorm. The sandstorm is the Havoc, a Mad Max style caravan with a portable gallows led by a […]
I’ve been fighting Heaven’s battles for so long.
James Stark, Sandman Slim, the monster who kills monsters, is a testosterone fueled, angry, white, cis, het male anti-hero that a feminist can feel good about loving. Stark is a nephilim, half human, half angel, hated by almost everybody. He has been a punk kid magician, a gladiator in Hell, an assassin, Lucifer, and a PI. He hates bullies and the entitled rich. He is fighting an endless battle against human and angelic forces that use up and abuse human lives and souls. But he’s […]
Grow Wings Little Angel.
Killing Pretty by Richard Kadrey
Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday tooo meeeee. I got me some Richard Kadrey! As I demonstrated back in March and April, I love Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series. Killing Pretty was released a few weeks ago, but at a higher price point than my budget will tolerate, so I decided to save it for my birthday. And yes, I woke up this morning at 6:30, bought it and began listening to the audio narration. Now I’ve written an off the […]