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| Sandman Slim |
I think this book is what Jim Butcher’s books are trying to be: urban fantasy noir. At least in my mind. I couldn’t get through the first Harry Dresden book no matter what I tried. It’s got more in common with Mike Carey’s novels than anyone else I’ve seen it compared to so far. This book is dark in the ways that the best Raymond Chandler stories are, but with the added bonus of magic and angels and demons and other fantastical weirdness. And the dames are anything but helpless. Plus, it’s set in Los Angeles. Sandman Slim, by Richard Kadrey, is about revenge. Our anti-hero escapes from Hell (yup, that Hell), and goes after the people who put him there.
Stark, our anti-hero, is the first human to survive Hell. Anytime anyone tries to kill him, Stark just gets harder to kill. Before he leaves Hell, Stark becomes Sandman Slim, “the monster the other monsters are afraid of.” Back on Earth, Stark starts his quest for revenge by finding the weakest member of his old magic Circle and uses the guy’s head as a source of information on the other members of the Circle and, for the readers, unintentional comic relief. But as Stark starts trying to pick off the members of the Circle, they start dying before he can get his hands on them. Before he realizes it, Stark is caught up in a war between the angels and a previously unknown (to Stark) race of supernatural beings who are addicted to chaos.
This twist in the plot is, as far as I know, original in fiction. It takes some of its inspiration from the idea of divine sparks (nitzotzot, if I’m being pedantic) and the Breaking of the Vessels out of Jewish mysticism, but goes somewhere I’ve never seen before. I love it when a plot does something that I can’t work out in advance. Stark, like the anti-hero he is, pursues his revenge and his plans to rescue his few friends in spite of a conspiracy that could mean not only the end of the world as we know it, but also Heaven and Hell. Along the way, Kadrey introduces us to all sorts of fascinating characters: an immortal French alchemist, a vampire-like creature who’s trying to stop eating humans, a branch of Homeland Security that’s helping Heaven fight its seventy thousand year war against chaos. I am so looking forward to what Kadrey comes up with in his next endeavors.
Sandman Slim was a hell of a lot of fun to read. It kept surprising me and entertaining me, all at the same time. I had such a good time that I just kept reading it this morning until I finished it. I didn’t even bother getting out of my PJs until I was done, it was that good. The only reason I stopped reading last night was because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The last two hundred pages just grabbed my attention and didn’t let go until I was finished.