Slim Shaddier?
A Review of Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
Never judge a book by it's cover. That's an easy one. Tried and true. But, it's a hell of a lot harder to refrain from judging a book by the last one you read.
Fresh off the gothic, high of Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo's sequel to Ninth House - a dark and delightful read itself, my appetite for a gritty urban fantasy was wanting more. Enter Richard Kadrey...
Spiraling down a YouTube rabbit hole, Kadrey came across my screen. And Sandman Slim caught my attention. Like Pulp Fiction meets Supernatural. Sandman Slim is the first book in a thirteen part series. A series chronicling the spell-fueled, blood-stained, chain-smoking escapades of magician James Stark. A kind of magical prodigy, he is gifted, but underachieving. He is more than what he seems, but aspires to be less than he is.
Double-crossed by his circle of fellow magicians, Stark is cast into the pits of Hell. He spends the next eleven-years as a gladiator and as an assassin for one of Lucifer's generals. He acquires new magical skills. New forms of combat. He learns new things. The most intriguing of which is that, despite all Hell's best efforts, he's really hard to kill.
He manages to escape. He climbs out of the Downtown lake of fire and finds his way back to earth, back to this world. Now, the only thing he wants more than a cigarette and a new pair of boots is a chance to get even, a chance to settle the score. But, nothing is ever that simple is it? He finds himself embroiled in a battle between angels, demons, and magician's. But soon discovers he's up against something more unsettling.
It sounds perfect doesn't it? Almost too good to be true? That's because it is...in a way. For all its bravado. All it's severed talking heads. All it's bar fights. It's otherworlds, and wizardry. It's a little disappointing. At least it was to me. At least at first. But, its my fault. Let me explain.
Bardugo's eerie lyricism was still fresh in my head. Her dark poetry still thrumming in my ears. Her love-letter to all the things that go bump in the dark. Her tale of a life taped together after falling apart. It was still echoing in the center of this ginger boy's nonexistent soul. Kadrey's prose was a jarring transition.
No smoothness or elegance, Kadrey is all business. A dry staccato with no shits given. It's switch blade sentences. What E.M. Cioran might call "dagger words". It's slashes and stabs. It's bare knuckles, brute force, and body blows. An angry manifesto written in praise of vengeance.
The pacing is awkward. It waxes and wanes between convulsions and mundanity. It's like be assaulted by someone with a short attention span. Bursts of violence punctuated by shopping for t-shirts and jeans. The writing comes off as juvenile and amateurish, at times almost sophomoric. And yet, while this is all true, at the heart of the disappointment is an unfair comparison. An inability, on my part, to read Sandman Slim on it's own terms. When you play it where it lies, when you meet it where it stands, it starts to change.
The brashness becomes it's own allure. The cutting snark starts to taste delicious. The punches and punchlines start to land exactly where they're supposed to. In fact, it's the gallows humor of the book that become it's own reward.
Despite it's flaws, at the end what you have is a story of redemption, recovery, and revenge. A story about being burned and betrayed. About going through hell. About coming out of it. Coming back from it. A story about what you are afterwards, and what it means to start again.
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Sandman Slim caught my attention. Like Pulp Fiction meets Supernatural.
I’m kind of seeing a mix of Zombieland and Constantine…Actually - Constantine and John Wick!
No smoothness or elegance, Kadrey is all business. A dry staccato with no shits given. It's switch blade sentences. What E.M. Cioran might call "dagger words". It's slashes and stabs. It's bare knuckles, brute force, and body blows. An angry manifesto written in praise of vengeance.
This is superbly written. It is an assault, surprising at first - heavy hitting and takes you all at once, a knee to the balls… but as you say, you recover, you decide it’s not all bad; that “The brashness becomes it's own allure. The cutting snark starts to taste delicious. The punches and punchlines start to land exactly where they're supposed to. In fact, it's the gallows humor of the book that become it's own reward.”