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Sandman Slim: A Novel (Sandman Slim, 1) Paperback – September 2, 2014

4.3 out of 5 stars 4,266

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“An addictively satisfying, deeply amusing, dirty-ass masterpiece.”
—William Gibson

“A sharp-edged urban fantasy, drenched in blood and cynicism, tipping its hat to Sam Peckinpah, Raymond Chandler, and the anti-heroes of Hong Kong cinema….A bravura performance.”
San Francisco Chronicle

“I couldn’t put it down.”
—Charlaine Harris

Sandman Slim has arrived—a wild and weird, edge-of-your-seat supernatural roller-coaster rider that propels author Richard Kadrey to the forefront of the fantasy, thriller, and a host of other literary genres. This spellbinding, utterly remarkable tale of a vengeful magician/hitman’s return from hell is part H.P. Lovecraft, part Christopher Moore, part Jim Butcher, and totally, unabashedly dark, twisted, and hilarious.


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Editorial Reviews

Review

“If Simon R. Green wrote an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter, it would read much like Sandman Slim – violent, vivid, non-stop action of the supernatural kind. I couldn’t put it down.” — Charlaine Harris

“If Simon R. Green wrote an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter, it would read much like Sandman Slim – violent, vivid, non-stop action of the supernatural kind. I couldn’t put it down.” — Charlaine Harris

“Nicotine and octane in equal parts might come close to the high-energy buzz from Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim. Crisp world building, recognizable and fully-realized characters, and a refreshingly unique storytelling style make for an absorbing read.Sandman Slim is my kind of hero.” — Kim Harrison

“The most hard-boiled piece of supernatural fiction I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. … all confident and energetic and fresh and angry. I loved this book and all its screwed-up people.” — Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother

“Paced like greased lightning (watch out for friction burns on your turning finger), blend the movie-ish delights of tough guy noir and such smart-mouthgore-fests as “Reanimator” and “Army of Darkness”, seasoned by soupcons of Gaimanian romanticism and Koontzian sentiment.” — Booklist

“Sarcastic, irreverent and ridiculously enjoyable riff on the Urban Fantasy genre. … a lot like a mosh pit -- rough, exuberant, unpredictable -- and a heck of a lot of fun.” — Miami Herald

“The best B movie I’ve read in at least twenty years. An addictively satisfying, deeply amusing, dirty-ass masterpiece, Sandman Slim swerves hell-bent through our culture’s impacted gridlock of genres…it’s like watching Sergio Leone and Clive Barker co-direct from a script by Jim Thompson and S. Clay Wilson.” — William Gibson

From the Back Cover

Supernatural fantasy has a new antihero

Life sucks and then you die. Or, if you're James Stark, you spend eleven years in Hell as a hitman before finally escaping, only to land back in the hell-on-earth that is Los Angeles.

Now Stark's back, and ready for revenge. And absolution, and maybe even love. But when his first stop saddles him with an abusive talking head, Stark discovers that the road to absolution and revenge is much longer than you'd expect, and both Heaven and Hell have their own ideas for his future.

Resurrection sucks. Saving the world is worse.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Voyager; Reissue edition (September 2, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061714356
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061714351
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.3 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 1.02 x 5.18 x 6.94 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 4,266

About the author

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Richard Kadrey
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Richard Kadrey is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim supernatural noir series. Sandman Slim was included in Amazon’s “100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime,” and is in development as a feature film.

Some of Kadrey’s other books include The Dead Take the A Train (with Cassandra Khaw), The Pale House Devil, and Butcher Bird. His work has been nominated for both the BSFA and Locus awards.

Aside from books, Kadrey has written for film and comics, including Heavy Metal, Lucifer, and Hellblazer. Kadrey also makes music with the band, A Demon in Fun City.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
4,266 global ratings
hardboiled detective meets Supernatural and the results are wonderful
4 Stars
hardboiled detective meets Supernatural and the results are wonderful
Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey is urban fantasy with a decidedly noir detective flavor to it. James Stark awakes in the middle of a cemetery out of sorts. Can't blame him. He just returned to our world after spending eleven years in Hell. Not as a deceased person, but as a living, breathing human, sent there by his once friend but now arch-nemesis, Mason Faim. Stark's back, and he's only got one thing on his mind: revenge.So begins the tale of Sandman Slim, who we come to learn escaped from Hell where he most recently was serving as the personal assassin to one of Lucifer's demonic generals. Life in Hell for Stark began as one might expect. But when he not only survives the initial assaults but becomes stronger after each one, Stark begins to wonder what's going on. He takes it in stride, though, it being impossible for him to leave until his employer bequeaths him with a very special key that allows him to travel undetected and instantaneously from one shadow to another and—magically—between worlds. Stark doesn't waste any time. He leaves Hell as soon as he can, returning to our world and setting out to find Mason and his cronies, who were all complicit in sending Stark to Hell.Sandman Slim reminded me in many ways of the television show Supernatural: angels and demons are at each other's throats, battling each other for dominance of the mortal world while all sorts of other nasties wreak their own particular sort of havoc. I don't read enough urban fantasy to know if such premises are anything unusual, but where Sandman Slim really stood out for me was in Kadrey's narration and in his "hero," Stark.Kadrey captures perfectly the flavor of a Raymond Chandler or Mickey Spillane hardboiled detective novel, except that Stark, aka, Sandman Slim, is not a detective per se. He does share many of Marlowe or Hammer's mannerisms, though, in that he is brusque, foul-mouthed, not afraid to take a punch (or give one), and, despite his cynicism, still will make the choice that keeps others from slipping into the hell that his own life has become.Kadrey's writing is fast-paced, gripping, and laugh out loud hilarious at times. When Stark finds himself commiserating with a talking head, what can you do but laugh? The action is a mix of shoot'em up, fisticuffs, and some new weaponry straight from Hell. Oh, and magic. Stark, Mason, and others are all magicians, and have certain magical abilities as a result. Sandman Slim is a great read that I highly recommend.
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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2022
Serving as the perfection transition from a month of horror to a month of noir, Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim is one of those wonderful genre blends that manages to find something more than the sum of its parts in its blending. A glorious mix of urban fantasy, horror, and noir, Sandman Slim is a revenge tale that feels pretty indebted to Donald Westlake's The Hunter (which became the great Point Blank), down to the choice of Stark as surname for its protagonist. Like Parker, James Stark is coming back for revenge on a group of former partners who assumed he was dead; unlike Parker, Stark has spent the last decade in Hell, where he's been battling monsters and assassinating demons, and it's made him even more dangerous than he was before - and that's saying something. Stark is a gloriously hard-boiled, no-nonsense antihero, one who trusts no one, doesn't really care about right and wrong so much as he cares about revenge, and really only wants what's best for himself in any given situation. An so, sure, his revenge plan ends up finding him wrapped up in a conflict that could change the face of the Earth, and he's glad to help rescue his friends and maybe kill a couple of guys along the way. But make no mistake: this isn't a "secret heart of gold" situation; Stark is a bastard and then some, and yet his focus and narration make clear why he is the way he is. Sandman Slim has a lot of lifting to do, and it does it all in a tight, lean book that moves fast and rarely slows down, which makes it all the more impressive how much lore it brings in (even if that slows it down near the end). But it's also a complete blast with a nasty sense of humor, a gleeful sense of horror, and a great protagonist - and knowing there's more books in the series leaves me awfully curious to see how the books go from here.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2016
This was a nice foray into the beginning of a creative series by Richard Kadrey. There are some intricacies in this book that I enjoyed and I really thought it was a fairly new twist on some age-old themes and foundations of the great tales that came before it.

I never give away any spoilers as I do not wish to encounter them myself (the old Golden Rule) but here is what I thought:

The premise of the book was occultist and interesting. There was a long period in the book when I did not know what to expect whereas once in a while it was very predictable. This was not too often and happens to the best novels sometimes. There was a point in which I had no idea how the parts of the story would be tied together but the author managed to do it (tip of the hat for bringing it together).

I almost did not finish this book as it did start a bit slower than what I like but it swiftly picked up the pace subsequently.

I found the character (the humanistic portion and nothing supra-physiological) likable and I found myself cheering him on sometimes in his quest. This novel is not perfect but I think it was the beginning of a series that will only get better. I am looking forward to starting the next in the series soon.

The biggest knock I had about it is how it felt like it sometimes toed the line between YA and Adult but in the end, it was a good read and listen.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2024
It’s a fun, dark, and edgy romp. It’s a product of its time in a good way and it’s hard to even remember the time that produced art like this. A guilty pleasure and a nostalgia trip in one. A must read!
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2010
I'll have to say it up front: I've been spoiled. While I haven't read the Dresden books that people seem to reference quite a bit in other reviews, I *have* read the Joe Pitt books by Charlie Huston ("Already Dead" et al.). Everything it seemed to me that "Sandman Slim" was trying to do -- urban horror-fantasy, neo-noir first person present tense narration, witty banter, distinctive and unique characters, dangerous situations always going from bad to worse, and brutal violence -- Huston did better and with more flair.

It's not that this is a bad book. It's entertaining and filled with quite a few quotable passages (though these passages did often feel like they were more there to BE quotable than to serve the narrative). But, like I said, I cut my urban fantasy teeth on the good stuff and this comes up a bit weaksauce by comparison. It also has a somewhat wearying habit of repeating information that we'd already gone over, particularly regarding the mythology and backstory -- it's one thing if the next book in the series were to have a quick refresher to remind the reader of any salient points from the previous story, but when the *same* book feels compelled to tread the same ground again and again, it becomes a bit tiresome, no matter what new turn of phrase the narrator employs in the retelling.

Despite being a story about a man supposedly returned from Hell to get revenge on those who sent him there...he doesn't actually do much of that. There's a lot of meeting with people, a lot of shoot-outs and shouted threats, but in the end he actually does very little in the way of taking revenge into his own hands. He races into dangerous situations and then turns and runs just as quickly out of them once he's caused them to spiral out of control, and when the dust settles he's conveniently come out on top. While in the various flashbacks to Hell he usually takes the initiative in whatever he's doing (up to and including his escape), in his time on Earth he spends more time having things happen TO him than anything else. When he finally does get to the point, the ends are tied up all in a rush. Oh, and the "Sandman Slim" of the title? It's a nickname for the lead character, suddenly introduced 2/3 of the way in, and why THAT name (other than seemingly to ride Neil Gaiman's wave) is anyone's guess.

The book has neither highs nor lows. At no point did I find myself thrilled by Stark's apparent successes or dreading his potential defeats. At no point did I feel any sense of real danger or concern for any of the characters, none of whom have a very distinctive voice. They all talk kind of the same. If you dig it (which I did well enough), then it's a pleasant read for the most part. If you don't, then you're not going to be able to get through it.

One thing that stood out to me was a nagging inconsistency in how much Stark knows or understands about a world he's been separated from for eleven years. While the existence of BlackBerry smartphones and this thing called "the Internet" baffle him, he somehow knows enough about pop culture to take a dig at Harry Potter -- despite the fact that he would have been sent to Hell before or just after the first book's U.S. publication. These (to be fair, few) occasions of the author editorializing rather than letting it grow out of the character would take me out of the narrative.

As I said, it's definitely not Huston or Gaiman, and sometimes I found it frustrating to think of what they might have done with the same material. Nonetheless, if you enjoy irreverent romps through Abrahamic mythologies (as I do), you could certainly do worse than this one. Grab the Kindle sample and see if it appeals to you -- the book neither improves nor declines from there. I found it a quick read with some promising ideas and I'll probably get around to the second installment eventually to see if it gels a bit more, though I'm not overwhelmed with any desire to do so immediately.

And seriously folks, I'm not affiliated with the author or publisher in any way, but: if you liked Sandman Slim, do yourself a favor and pick up 
Already Dead . You won't regret it.
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Top reviews from other countries

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valdemar
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente estado del libro
Reviewed in Mexico on June 25, 2023
Libro interesante
David Ross
5.0 out of 5 stars yes!
Reviewed in Canada on June 5, 2022
Every once in a while you come across a book that’s really really good. This is one of them.
Original as all hell. Compelling characterization and chock full of action.
Refreshing break from the drearily derivative.
john dunning
5.0 out of 5 stars Good story
Reviewed in Germany on September 22, 2023
Reminds me of Dresden Files except more hardcore.
Client d'Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Anti-hero to fall for
Reviewed in France on February 7, 2019
Excellent reading. Might keep you up at night.
A.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in Italy on December 9, 2016
I bought this book out of curiosity (and full of hope) when I felt I needed some wiseass/badass character to enjoy after I had finished my last Jim Butcher's novel (namely, Skin Game). Very interesting, very well written, raw and fast-paced. I wasn't disappointed with my choice. Strong and smooth as a good whisky. Recommended.