I will put down a Dresden Files book to read a Sandman Slim book,yup I said that...

When the main character of the book constantly talks about being bored, it's a big tell that the book is boring.

Interesting twist to the series with this one: Stark is now a private eye. Believe it or not, it works.

I am not sure what to say. I mean this is like the 7th book. Much of it is the same. I mean, I KNOW the characters. No surprises there. We KNOW strange, bizarre things will happen. And they do. But I just love them. The characters, the bizarre happenings. And I just am not saying anything about the story, I mean it is the 7th book. Read the first one and then we can talk.

Sometimes it sucks to be Jimmy Stark. You save the world from utter destruction and complete annihilation over and over, and what do you get in return? ✘ Idiot angels winged-pricks spray-painting graffiti on the front of your store.✘ No purpose in life.✘ Bad times for video rental businesses.✘ Not a dime from the assholes you saved the universe for. ✘ Your shadow walking privileges revoked.✘ No more field trips Downtown (aka Hell).✘ The disgusting ability to think things through before doing the...

A decent yarn and a responsible re-set of Stark's power. However, it's not one of those books you finish and think, "Yeah, that was $13 well spent." It read more like a bridge novella than a destination, an actual installment of Sandman Slim's saga. The ending was anticlimactic, and my first thought was, "Wait. That's it?" I didn't even realize I was near the end.I also don't really understand why Vincent, a character I liked a lot, was killed, just to make Samael the new Death. And I really did...

I love this series, but not this book. Sandman Slim is just not the same with his wings clipped. This was wordy and out of character for kadrey. Hoping the next one is back up to his usual standard. And for the record, I hate Candy. Hate her. Hate hate hate her. I've hated her from the very beginning and only hate her more in each additional novel. She's childish and obnoxious and selfish and irritating and a terrible match. Kill her off already!

This is the 7th novel in the Sandman Slim series and it may be my favorite after Kill the Dead. I think the previous trilogy suffered too much from the "end of heaven and hell" plot lines. There is still plenty at stake here - Death is out of a job and stuck in a human body while people around the world have stopped dying. It's up to Stark and Candy, now working for Julie's private investigation company, to figure out what happened. There is a lot of humor as usual and plenty of pop culture refe...

4 StarsKilling Pretty is a good summer read. Sure it is lesser Sandman Slim but I still love James and enjoy every moment spent with him. The series needed to start somewhere as pretty much every story line was concluded in the last book. The Getaway God could have concluded the series but thankfully for us Richard Kadrey is not finished with James and neither are we. Long live Sandman Slim.Killing Pretty would not work at all if you had not read the previous novels. Not for any complex reasons

Sandman Slim is my favorite urban fantasy series, by far. However, I thought this was the weakest book in the series yet. Most of the story felt rushed. In the previous books, I enjoyed both the originality of the mythology created by the author and the accuracy of real-world occult references, such as the references to Gnosticism and the history of religions. I was impressed that the author knew his shit so well. There are some cool things in this one, but nothing as spectacularly awesome as th...

I got a copy of this book through Edelweiss to review. This is the 7th book in the Sandman Slim series. I enjoyed this continuation of the Sandman Slim series but didn't like this book quite as much as the previous book in the series. Stark is back at his video store trying to make his life work. He’s adjusting to not being able to shadow travel anymore and trying to deal with the fact that Candy (now called Chihiro) looks completely different and is pretending to be a completely different perso...

So, get your black hoodoo knives out, folks, and step right up for another night of Stab Death Dead, you Nazi freaks, where you, too, can stay alive forever on a technicality because Death isn't around any longer to pick up your soul from your broken body.Kinda sounds like a rehash of an old Piers Anthony book, doesn't it? But never you mind. Death is still kinda Death. Stark doesn't get roped into the job. Indeed, I really liked the actual poor Death stuck in a rotting corpse without his heart,...

Three, and I'm being generous. I am among the minority who think this series has jumped the shark. The whole book felt tired, as if Kadrey's losing interest himself. For a while, Stark can't jump through shadows. Then he finds a solution. It felt as if Kadrey created a problem then realized it was tying his hands and needed a workaround. Kasabian and Vidocq have become uninteresting. Julie's a sensible addition, and I like the idea that they are trying to make Stark a bit less of a loose canno...

The Sandman Slim series is one of the few urban fantasy series that I continue to follow. Kadrey's hip, hardboiled, noir narrative is constantly amusing. I picked this up shortly after finishing The Getaway God (Sandman Slim, #6) (my review). That was after a long hiatus, where I found it hard to come back to the story. This book was an easier read having re-familiarized myself with the characters and long-term plot lines. This story harks back to early books in terms of its greater LA edu-tain...

Killing Pretty is the seventh book in the Sandman Slim series by Richard Kadrey and while it is not the best or darkest in the series, it is a terrific addition to the unfolding and confusing life/death/rebirth of the half human, half angel James Stark. Also known as Sandman Slim.So you are a dark magician, and then you were sent to hell where you had to fight demons and other damned in the devil's own extreme fighting tournaments. Then you were sent back to Earth to exact revenge on those who s...

Mini-Review:Solid! This is what I want in every Sandman Slim book! Ha! The last few books have been disheartening for me. It's not that I didn't like them. I did. But I was also either frustrated, annoyed or mix of the two by what happened in the past few books. Killing Pretty had a great balance between the characters adjustments, taking care of business, Stark was settled within himself, nuances of information about the world was added and setup for the next part was cleanly implemented. Great...

Sandman Slim (a/k/a James Stark) is back at his video store, having sacrificed his ability to shadow travel to save the world in Book #6, and trying to cope with his Jade girlfriend Candy (Chihiro) nows looks Asian to evade her arrest. Death shows up in a dead body and is stashed in Stark's store with Kasabian. Unlike the prior novels, when Stark battles cosmic forces bent on destroying Heaven, Hell, and Earth, in this novel, he needs to figure out who tried to kill Death and how to get Death hi...

Oh, I hate to do this, but..... This one was OK. Not great. Not good. OK.It's a transition book, and it rather channeled Jim Butcher way too much for me. Now, I don't have anything against Jim Butcher, but he doesn't write Sandman Slim books. This was a neutered, watered-down, James Stark. He's gonna be a supernatural dectective. Sorry, but, ***YAWN*** There are way too many of those out there and based on this book, well, let's just say he's somewhere in the middle of the pack. Nothing really s...

“You learn a lot about someone when you show them a gun." I had a lot of expectations with this seventh book of Sandman Slim. I have been a great fan of Richard Kadrey. I always thought that each novel will be a notch higher on the scale of craziness. Unpredictably, James Stark goes through a mid-life crisis.“When did things get so complicated?” “They didn’t. We did. Men like us, with intemperate natures, we’re not supposed to consider our actions. We just do and clean up the mess later.” “In

Harper Voyager granted me an e-ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review. CSI with a dark, devilish twist, and quite a bit of historical tie in, the latest installment in the Sandman Slim series pits Stark against someone who has murdered Death. Seriously. And Death unable to do his job not only screws with the universe, but it's screwing with Stark's sense of self, as well. This book shows us the more human side of Stark's life, interpersonal relations, and consequences of his actions....