![Sandman Slim: A Novel by [Richard Kadrey]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51MPBAXCbQL._SY346_.jpg)
This is a hard series for me to review. The author is good at writing, but he decided to make his protagonist completely unlikable. I like urban fantasy and anti-heroes, but I'm pretty sure Slim goes out of his way to be the biggest jerk possible. There's a difference between not being a goody-two shoes/being a mercenary and trying to pretty much actively kick every puppy you can on your way down the street. I know that Slim has had a screwed up life, but he spends most of the book being angsty and ridiculously self-destructive.
Also, his powers are pretty much completely broken and the only thing keeping him in check is the fact that Kadrey never puts any sort of reasonable power system into the whole series of books. Things just "magically" work or don't depending on where the plot is supposed to go and this is probably my biggest gripe with the series. It's not much fun to have a power system that's this broken, guns/knives/fire/power of old Gods all boils down to about the same level of danger for characters and are relatively interchangeable. Pretty much no one can actually die until the author suddenly lets them and then you have no idea why this one type of magic/attack worked where it has failed in past encounters.
And the world, don't even get me started on it. They live in this weird universe where there is technically a planet called Earth but apparently is populated by LA and nothing else. No one ever leaves LA nothing takes place outside LA. If they somehow manage to leave LA for some reason, they only go to an alternate plane that is alternate-LA and is almost exactly the same. It's pretty hard to care around a world this simplistic, especially when the author is nihilistic and seems to actively hate LA and makes every effort to make it sound like a pretty miserable place.
Finally, this book is a bit weird from a religious angle. The first book is pretty decent, but we soon find out that angels and demons are pretty wimpy all things concerned and neither are particularly good or evil. God is not holy, the devil is not evil and they aren't very powerful either. Everything is kind of mashed together in a nihilistic, bland stew. Some surprises or reversals are interesting, but Kadrey somehow managed to make supernatural beings boring and mundane.
Despite all this, I still generally enjoyed the books. Not sure how, but they might be worth a read if you can put up with the cons.
Background: I typically buy my Kindle books as part of the Kindle Daily Deals and plan them for airplane reading or times when I am away from home and cannot do more exciting or responsible tasks. This means that my standards are not too high and I am looking for books in the beach read category under the fantasy/sci-fi genres. I try to rate fairly on the star scale and personally consider anything 3 stars and up to be fine.
- File Size: 3273 KB
- Print Length: 404 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; Reissue edition (January 8, 2010)
- Publication Date: January 26, 2010
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00338QF1E
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#6,888 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #9 in Horror Comedy
- #9 in Humor & Satire
- #27 in Action & Adventure (Kindle Store)
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