Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey

From the writer's website: 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 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.

Darkly twisted, irreverent, and completely hilarious, Sandman Slim is the breakthrough novel by an acclaimed author.

Richard Kadrey is a new writer for me, though he has other novels out. Sandman Slim is urban fantasy, but one involving demons and hell and heaven and angels instead of the near obligatory vampire and werewolves. Not that demons and angels don’t show up with some regularity in urban fantasy. ;)

Sandman Slim is a quick, enjoyable read. The main character’s voice is strong and consistent. He is an assassin, but a remarkably sympathetic one. He starts off wanting revenge because his old coven sacrificed him and sent him to hell. In the end, he saves the world. He does get his revenge along the way.

Despite all that, there are a few things I didn’t like about Sandman Slim. In the beginning (and a few other places), I found the dialog to be less than convincing. It wasn’t the high level of curse words, though some of that as well because sometimes I got the feeling the curses were there just to show how tough the characters were. But something was just off in a lot of the dialog. Not all of them, but a few here and there.

The other thing I didn’t like all that much was that towards the end the scenes felt disjointed. Like one scene ended, the other began and it felt like they were not connected even though I knew they were. If that makes sense.

The thing that stands out the most for me is the imagery he uses. A lot of the way he describes things is just hilarious.

Grade: C+