3.5 Zombie-spine-ripping-starsThis series is ripe with humour, guts and evil machinations and has the potential to become one of my favorite UF series.Kadrey is a hell of a writer and I can't wait to see where he takes this merry band of donut loving misfits.

James Stark (a/k/a Sandman Slim) is back, and has to save L.A. from an infestation of zombies by determining who has unleashed them -- perhaps the Sub Rosa? Meanwhile, Lucifer has come up and asks Stark to act as his bodyguard as Lucifer is consulting on a film, including a new female character, Brigitte Bardo, a Czech gypsy porn star, whose real purpose in life is to kill zombies. Things get pretty interesting after she gets bitten, and has to be frozen while Stark tries to find a way to save h...

Let's continue this dark adventure.

➽ And the moral of this reread is: my boyfriend Jimmy Stark vs. the zombie apocalypse + the hidden talents of Czech Gypsy porn stars (it's not what you think, you filthy-minded barnacles) + my boyfriend Lucifer getting a consulting job for a big-budget Hollywood production on his life story + chain-smoking Victorian centipede roommates = Obviously.[August 2017]Express Super Extra Crappy Non Review Time (ESECNRT™)! Yay!Okay, so my boyfriend Jimmy Stark is kinda sorta lost here. I mean, he just sp...

*** 4 *** This is a really cool pulp-noir series with Angels, Demons and Zombies, and you still can't tell who are the good guys! I love the perspective on the whole mythology and it is very well incorporated into a modern world Los Angeles, a city literally full of those souls following the prettiest of the fallen Angels. Lucifer is filming a movie about himself and Stark/Sandman Slim is acting as a bodyguard while he is in LA. I am not exactly sure what her role is, but a stunning European ac

I was just complaining about unoriginal urban fantasy when Sandman Slim came along to show me it is possible to do UF right. Kadrey's writing manages to rope me in despite lukewarm genre interest in angel-demon based urban fantasy. The plot sounds unexceptional enough: Richard Stark, the ultimate noir anti-hero, has gone to Hell and back. He's now freelancing for Lucifer, as well as the competition, an arch-angel working with the government. The feds want his input on a murder scene, while Lucif...

This was an OK second instalment of what is turning out to be an OK UF series. It matched the quality of the first book in the series and continued to add a bit of depth to the world and the characters. I'm of the opinion that the Sandman Slim series is neither overly dark or overly light in tone and that it falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. I feel like that gives the story a pretty good balance and I enjoy the mix of humour and grit we get in these books. The plot in this instalmen...

"Subtle hunting, acting like a grownup, I really miss Hell sometimes." pg 4First of all, don't read the Goodreads description of Kill the Dead before you read it. It gives far too much away!Here's a Heidi-no-spoilers blurb that should serve you just as well: James Stark, the half-angel, half-human and one hundred percent pissed off anti-hero is back. Keeping an apartment in Los Angeles doesn't pay for itself, so Stark is on the hook for contract work for a variety of agencies including Vigil (a

Smile from ear to earThis being the 2nd book in Kadrey's ongoing uf series was solid. We get an aside from the main story thread filled to the rim with fast paced action, sherlockesque plot twists, and some sick and twisted fun for the whole family. Throughout the mayhem we learn more about Stark, and the current situation in hell. To be dealt with I'm assuming in book 3. We meet new characters, and watch the old ones mature. Since Stark can travel via shadow or gta the setting shifts from scen

A blast of a read. It always shocks me when a sequel can outdo the original, and that is exactly what Kadrey has achieved with this one "Kill the Dead". This book is paced like the first, non-stop but is an adrenaline overload. Sandman Slim is one bad mutha and he is as nasty as it comes and is at his best when he is killing something or someone. I love the humor and the one liners through out this novel, a great example is the following. “Let me make sure I have this straight. The cavalry just

It’s dark and it’s sometimes sad and often hilarious. Sandman Slim is awesome and also really screwed up but I enjoy his world (from a distance). This series is so entertaining. Who would have thought an apocalypse could be such an escape? Maybe it’s just me. 😉

I'm so glad the second book kept up the pace of the first. All the surprises from the first continued on in fine form to give us... a zombie apocalypse meeting a noir half-angel smartass who got his chops whetted in hell. Oh, and he hates everyone pretty much equally. It doesn't stop him from WORKING with all the various baddies, baddies, or baddies of any stripe, (including those of angelic description) but it does certainly make things interesting.I'm very happy with this UF. It reminds me of

Something about this second book just didn't do it for me, despite the action and the twists and turns in the plot. In this sequel, Sandman Slim is paid big bucks to be a bodyguard to Lucifer, who has come to Hollywood to make a movie of his life. The vampires and porn stars and zombies make this book sound wicked and glamorous as all hell, but to be honest, I had to really struggle to stay focused on the story. Stark's background, which actually is actually quite original and unique for urban f...

I was really disappointed with this one. After the awesome first book in the series I was expecting big things but it just failed to deliver. The main character went from being a cool, take no nonsense ass kicker to being a bit of an immature snippy annoying teenager type. There were a few things fundamentally wrong with the book also. My main issue with this book was lack of saidisms. It leaves you really confused as to who is speaking, causing me to check back and confirm if I had it right. Al...

3.5 stars, rounded up.Better than the first. Snark and sarcasm run rampant, along with zombies, zeds, and more undead over-running LA.There was something lacking in this book, however: a start-to-finish coherent plot. The start is good, the finish is good, but the middle fell off completely. There's a lot of soap-opera-type plotting (Stark trying to figure out who his father is; falling for an undead-killing porn star), there's a lot of talk and not much action or story movement until the grand

I loved Sandman Slim so much, I picked this up the instant I finished it, and did not put it down until I had finished it. (In fact, I read it so quickly, I didn't have a chance to put an entry here and track progress. I devoured it in 3 or 4 days.)Kill the Dead doesn't exactly pick up where Sandman Slim left off. Instead, it's a while later, and we get to see what Stark's been doing since we last saw him. Richard Kadrey weaves an even more sinister and complex -- but ultimately satisfying -- st...

Buddy read with the Machalo Group!This is my new favorite series and James Stark is my new book boyfriend--right at the very top of that exclusive list. I won't bore you with too much fangirling, so here's the short of it: it's hilarious, gritty, dark and terrifying, all of my favorite things rolled into one. Jimmy drinks hard, smokes too much, steals over-the-top expensive cars to get around, and kills anything that deserves it without batting an eye, all while making witty observations about t...

In the first book, Sandman Slim, we're introduced to our world but it's complicated by layers of magic and the mythical. A man comes out alive from depths of Hell, and rails down his vengeance on those that have wronged him. There are angels, demons, divine, corrupt, careless, haunted and apathetic. A cascade of what makes the world turn collides with nightmares that are all too real. Death and taxes are the only things you can count on. In between, money makes the world go round and pays for th...

I would hate to have to pay Stark’s clothing and laundry bills because this guy can’t go ten minutes without getting his duds ripped to shreds or covered in the gore of various monsters and his own blood. This series is making me a little nuts. In the first book, Sandman Slim, I thought the first half was a waste of a good idea and that the main character Stark came across as a whining impulsive punk who got regularly beaten like a rented mule rather than the super-tough anti-hero hitman from He...

First off, you really should read "Sandman Slim" before this one. If you loved S.S. you might not like this one. If you thought S.S. was good but limited by the narrowness of Stark's focus, you might like this second one as much as I did. Look, if you have a problem with zombies and angels and "special powers" go read something else. There's a character who's a severed head; you just have to accept that. This book does all that is required, which is to stick to the stated powers while explorin...