45.13: Sandman Slim, by Richard Kadrey (2009 paperback)

While looking through the new arrivals in the hardcover fiction section at Northtown Books, I was drawn by a book that was more square than usual. While it's not enough to make me buy a book, books with unusual dimensions, formats, titles, etc. do catch my eye on the shelf. Sometimes (read House of Leaves by Danielewski or most anything by Eggers) such oddities can show a creative thinker--or at least one able to convince the publisher to spring the extra $$ for off-standard volumes. Looking further, I was enticed by the cover blurb of praise by Cory Doctrow, and on the back cover, I encountered further laudations from Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, Charles de Lint, and William Gibson--all authors I know and love, in ascending order. Come to find out, as the subtitle of that book in my hands indicated, that it is the fourth in the Sandman Slim supernatural fiction series. So, I wandered down to the paperbook fiction and quickly selected the first in the series, appropriately named Sandman Slim.

Not quite as quickly--but fast nonetheless--I galloped through this action-packed, violent, and funny novel depicting your average guy who has just been spewed out of hell after 11 years of living there (he never did die, you see, but was sent there by a pack of evil magicians). One minute he's in the underworld, and the next James Stark (aka Sandman Slim) is in an L.A. cemetery, getting acclimated to daylight and plotting to kill the band of magicians who sent him Downtown--and killed his girlfriend. It's not a simple task, and one that includes encounters with angels, Hellions, magicians, fallen angels, jades (vampires), and the Kissi (a type of forgotten celestial splinter off of god's original creation, set on wreaking havoc on earth. The first book was creative, had some interesting good vs. evil themes, and makes me look forward to heading back to Northtown and picking up the rest of the series soon.