Sandman Slim, Richard Kadrey (2009)

There are all sorts of boogie monsters - ones for children, ones for adults. But what about a boogie man for the monsters themselves? Enter James Stark, aka Sandman Slim. After spending eleven years in Hell, he's back topside, walking the streets of Los Angeles in order to enact revenge on the man who both sent him to Hell and orchestrated the death of the only woman he ever loved. In a sea of wise-cracking, magic-wielding male anti-heroes, Stark attempts to stand out by using a brash attitude and blatant violence that usually borders on sucidially idiotic.

Richard Kadrey's book is like most first person point of view stories around a central 'badass' character - more than likely a self insert of the author themselves. Stark here reminded me of a less charming John Constantine, a less funny Harry Dresden. There are so many other types of these heroes that Kadrey doesn't do much to set his character apart. Sure, Stark was involved in a group of magic-wielding, power-hungry people, and of course, within that group he was technically the best. But his own youth and idiocy is what allowed the leader of the group to eventually trap him in hell. The one thing that Stark has going for him (in terms of survival within the story) is his absolute brutality, along with the ability to take a lot of punishment. This man is a killer - during his time in hell, he was sent to something similar to a gladiatorial ring, in order to amuse the deviants of Lucifer's kingdom. Stark was eventually sold into the service of one of Lucifer's higher generals, and used as something of a hit man in order to kill the general's enemies. Once topside, Stark uses these questionable talents in order to enact revenge on the people who sent him to Hell in the first place.

Sandman Slim starts off right when Stark gets back from Hell, stepping back onto the mortal coil through a graveyard. When I first opened the book, I have to admit that I thought I had missed a book in the series - it truly felt like the reader was missing pertinent information that the author was referring to, as though there had been another volume. But the details are slowly colored in, somewhat sparsely, throughout the telling of the story. One thing that miffed me was that we get to see so little of the cult that Stark was originally involved in. The two main baddies remain out of the picture for the majority of the book as Stark chases after them (with the exception of one scene where Stark ends up barreling into a busy street in the middle of the day, causing a huge number of accidents and explosions that have to be written off as movie stunts gone wrong), but the moment the other characters are introduced, you see them for a handful of pages before they're written off entirely.

For example, the women in this book make token appearances, and with the exception of Candy, they are all the stereotypical damsel in distress, frigid bitch, or prize at the bottom of the box tropes. If you think about it, the book is all one big allegory for Los Angeles, what with its attempted veneer of class that hides a world of intense violence, both physical and mental; a place that judges people by their looks (especially women) rather than their skills. Stark tracks down one of the women from the cult, essentially a witch who uses her powers to maintain a jailbait look; she's in her sanctuary at the time, but later arranges to meet Stark at a local taco joint. She never shows, and from there it's assumed that she's dead. The other woman from the cult, the frigid bitch trope, is seen for all of five seconds when Stark finds her accidentally while doing another mission, and then is never heard from again.

In the vein of loose ends, it's never explicitly explained what Sandman Slim even means. Stark simply learns, one day, that the denizens of Hell started calling him that, when he was elevated to assassin while working for the general. It sounds like something cool the author came up with and slapped on at the last minute - for some reason needing an alternate name for his character when James Stark wasn't cutting it.

There is one new, novel idea - Stark has a key that allows him entrance into the Room of 13 Doors. Each door can get him into various places in the world, including Heaven and Hell. It's through this key and room that Stark is able to reach his victims, and how he was able to gain such a reputation in Hell: and it eventually brings him to the book's antagonist, who is hiding in an alternate dimension entirely.

All in all, Sandman Slim is a quick, somewhat amusing read, but does little to do anything new with the genre it's entered into. With giants like John Constantine and Harry Dresden, it's definitely hard to do something that is new and helps your character keep up with bigger names. Of course, the one thing about these sorts of characters is the fact that they will grow throughout the series - in the beginning, few characters are outrightly likeable because they haven't had time to develop, to change, to really find their footing. Maybe this will happen for Sandman Slim: perhaps given time, he'll become a more robust character that finds his niche, rather than just looking like a gorilla-esque copycat.