KILL CITY BLUES By Richard Kadrey – Reviewed

This is the fifth book in the Sandman Slim series, and a bloody good series it is. James Stark is Sandman Slim, a man sent to hell by a former friend and forced to fight demons in an arena. He eventually fights his way out of hell and ends up in LA where his chronicled adventures begin with the first book in the series.

With book five we have more of the same, and this is a great jumping on point if you really can’t manage to get the first four books. The background is explained and all that’s gone before is briefly detailed here, giving those who have forgone the previous books (don’t so it, you’re missing out on the most remarkable series of books, start at the bloody beginning!) enough of the backstory that everything falls nicely into place.

In this book Stark is searching for the mysterious 8 Ball, a god-killing weapon that has fallen into the hands of the god-murdering angel and Stark’s personal nemesis Aelita. With his rag-tag bunch of friends, including an ex-communicated priest, a Jade (vampire-like creature), an immortal Frenchman and a robot, he heads deep into Kill City, a former shopping centre and now hellhole. Throw in God with a personality disorder, Satan being an angel again, crazy old world gods intent on eating the world, a messed up hell in the midst of a make-over, and a whole mess of other stuff and you have the fifth Sandman Slim novel.

Kadrey’s in-you-face-style and never-let up pace make for exciting and non-stop reading. This is a freight train of a book and you just won’t want to get off. The misadventures of our anti-hero are riveting, with Kadrey unafraid to put him and his crew in various dangers.

The new paperback format has a filmic slant, which is echoed in the film references made throughout the books, and the film-like quality of the series: think Quintin Tarantino doing a Dennis Wheatley adaptation on acid, or an early John Woo (The Killer) and early Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) collaborating on the most epic B-movie of all time, and you’ll get the idea.

The Sandman Slim books really have to be read to be believed, no matter how much hyperbole I use to describe them it won’t do the books justice. They are awesome in a world of mundaneity.  You have not lived if you haven’t read a Kadrey novel.

SANDMAN SLIM By Richard Kadrey – Reviewed

I saw Devil Said Bang in Forbidden Planet before Christmas and knew I had to read it. OCD sufferer that I am, I can’t start a series with book number four, so this one (Sandman Slim) went on my Christmas list. Fortunately Santa listened and I unwrapped this along with another twenty-odd books (Santa’s good!). I thought I’d start with this one because it’s fairly short, and I wanted to start working my way towards that fourth book in the series, the one I really wanted to read.

Fortunately the first in the series is a rock-hard, ultra-violent, action-fest!

Jimmy Stark was sent down to hell eleven years ago by his magic circle. Since then he’s been trying to survive as the play-toy of demons, and has managed to become a monster fighter and assassin. But when his ex-girlfriend is brutally murdered by the very same man who put him in hell, Stark escapes, killing one of Lucifer’s generals in the process. Now he’s in LA, looking for revenge on the magic circle that sentenced him to hell and their leader who killed the only woman he ever loved.

What follows is a cross between David Gunn’s Death’s Head (the attitude, the action, the raw brutality, and the protagonist from hell [this time literally]), and Tim Waggoner’s Nekopolis (a city [this time LA] riven with hellish creatures and magic), although it’s all under the surface here.

Stark is the perfect host (first person narrator), a revenge-driven psychopath, willing to kill himself and whoever gets in his way. The first person he encounters he cuts of their head. He doesn’t get any friendlier as the novel goes on, and it’s great! Hard-bitten, filled with venom and pithy comments, Stark is a true urban anti-hero with a bad attitude.

Kadrey has produced a real character in Stark, a unique individual you can’t help but remember, and may be not for all the right reasons. He’s fantastically caustic, and all the better for it in the urban sprawl of LA. An LA filled with angels, demons and Kissee, along with magicians, G-men from Homeland Security, murderers, skinheads and all manner of human-pus.

Sandman Slim is a unique and terribly entertaining mix, an urban fantasy that is vile and brutal and brilliant because of that. Stark is a hero that demands your attention, he has mine, and I’ll be back for the second in the series, and the third and fourth. I can’t wait!