Say Hello to Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim

It’s been seven years and eight books since Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim roared onto the scene like a bat out of hell, each installment full to bursting with violent, nasty, and hilarious characters. James Stark, the titular Sandman Slim, is an impressive protagonist, and every moment spent in his mind is a sick joy. His latest adventure, The Perdition Score, was just released; if you aren’t already abord the Kadrey bandwagon it’s time for you to climb on and hold tight. After all, “Highway To Hell” isn’t just a song in the Sandman Slim universe.
The series takes place in LA and Hell (so, basically the same place twice) and involves the trials and tribulations of the hard-smoking, hard-drinking, perpetually down on his luck Jim Stark, an anti-hero from an old Western given a pistol, a trench coat and thrust into the craziest parts of the underworld. He shoots first and asks questions sometimes, usually with a sardonic quip chaser. He’s got enough issues to give National Geographic a run for its money, and loses even when he wins.

His journey began in 2009’s Sandman Slim, recounting a tale of betrayal that saw him thrown into the bowels of Hell as a teenager. He fought for 11 years in the ultra-violent Hellion gladiator fights, eventually becoming a hitman for hire, scrambling to stay alive. He makes his way back to LA to seek revenge against the people who sent him “Downtown.” It’s a gloriously violent, pulpy book, told with all the flair of urban fantasy viewed through a noir filter.
Using whatever means he can, Stark does get back at those who have wronged him. It involves a mystical key sewn into his chest that gives him the power to walk through shadows and into a place called the Room of 13 Doors. From there, he can be anywhere as long as there’s a shadow nearby. With weapons taken from Hell’s armory, he’s able to steal cars with abandon and visit incredible damage onto his enemies. He faces harsh truths as he treks along the road to revenge, and and hard secrets about his own origins.

While he satisfies his bloodlust, Stark’s war is just beginning. Volume two, Kill the Dead, ups the stakes by bringing in the prince of darkness himself. Lucifer asks Stark to be his bodyguard as he supervises of a biopic about his life. Between Lucifer and a few bounty hunting gigs, Stark has his hands full. Unable to drink at his favorite tiki bar in peace, he must put down a sudden zombie uprising (with the help of a zombie hunter who moonlights as a porn star. It doesn’t exactly go well, and the ending—which changes the very nature of our protagonist—signals Kadrey’s willingness to shake things up, a habit that will persist throughout the series.
Stark scrambles to live another day and deal with the aftermath of his phyrric victory over the zombies in Aloha From Hell. He’s back on familiar ground, wandering Hell in search of a serial killer (and revenge, natch). He has the chance to finally settle old scores, and he seizes it with gusto. This volume ties up loose ends and completes the series first arc, meaning new readers can safely jump onboard with…

Devil Said Bang, the fifth volume, which kicks off by showing us a whole new side of Stark. After Lucifer abandons Hell, it’s up to Sandman Slim to try and run the place (hopefully not into the ground). Being the new Lucifer is a difficult and thankless job. Stark tries to oversee the rebuilding of Hell with varying degrees of success. Annoyed and overwhelmed, he returns to LA to be with his friends and try and find a way out of his new obligations, juggling disasters and personal tragedies while trying to maintain the small shreds of his sanity he has left. Killer ghosts and demons dog his every step.

Everything comes to a head in the sixth book, The Getaway God, as another arc comes to a close. Stark is pitted against some very old enemies: the old gods, finally making their bid for control of the universe. LA begins to descend into chaos as they fight to take control. To make matters worse, Stark’s long-time girlfriend Candy falls ill, and he seems unable to help her. Throw in a crazy government agency slowly starting to unwind, and Stark’s up to his eyeballs in unwinnable battles. It’s an incredibly tense volume, raising the stakes raised to fantastic heights. Action aside, Stark’s character growth is impressive, too: he never had something to live for before (well, besides revenge). With Candy’s life on the line, he’ll do anything in his power to save her. Saving LA is just a bonus.
Sandman Slim’s next outing might be his craziest. Killing Pretty saddles Stark with a bewildered Death. Someone has trapped the Grim Reaper in a corporeal form and murdered him. Now he’s Stark’s problem. With Death out of commission, no one is dying, and the world begins to falter again. All Stark wants is to run his video store and try to find some peace. Instead, he has to put on his best Sam Spade impression and start asking questions. He combs through vampires, necromancers. and demons before finding the people foolhardy enough to want to control Death. After ages spent fighting demons and gods, he’s thrown off kilter by just how terrible plain old humans can be.

Across seven books, with dark humor and a Malediction cigarette in hand, Stark has saved the world more than a few times over. He’s put down evil ghosts, murderous vampires, packs of zombies, and even a few gods. Without pausing to take a breath, the latest Sandman Slim novel comes out swinging. The Perdition Score is his most ambitious adventure yet. Stark’s has been stripped of many of the tools that made his job easy. He can’t go back to Hell or jump between shadows. He even does the unthinkable and buys his own car. Unable to acclimate to a normal life, he spends time at a local fight club while trying to keep it under wraps from his friends. A chance visit from a dying angel gives him a new mystery to solve, one with dire consequences. The angels in Heaven are engaged in a civil war and newly addicted to a substance called Black Milk. Excited about a change of pace, Stark throws himself into figuring out this new puzzle. Things seem to be actually working out for once…until it all comes crashing down at the end.
Richard Kadrey has chiseled away at Sandman Slim over the years, sculpting it into a series that deserves to be on every urban fantasy bookshelf. Each volume adds to Stark’s mythos without committing the sin of making too powerful. He suffers devastating setbacks, and sometimes refuses to get out of his own way. Kadrey peppers the books with sharp-edged humor, gritty violence, and obscure pop culture references. The amount of research and care he’s put into the expansive plotlines is staggering. It’s hard not to love the entire cast of characters—and I’m counting LA itself in that tally. You can plainly see how much Kadrey loves the place, considering the care that he puts into mercilessly destroying it.
If you somehow missed this series, it’s time you met Sandman Slim. What are you waiting for, the end of the world?