Reading Shelf is a regular, every-other-week feature wherein I discuss a book that I’ve read recently. It’s kind of like a mini review. I try to be light on the plot discussion, but I cannot guarantee that what follows is completely spoiler-free.
Every once in a while I like to challenge myself to read a book that I don’t expect to like. Sometimes I’m right and I don’t enjoy it. Sometimes I’m wrong and I do. Either way, I always learn something.
This week’s book, Richard Kadrey’s SANDMAN SLIM, was one that I enjoyed.
SANDMAN SLIM is about James Stark, a magician who’s come home to L.A. looking for revenge. Eleven years ago his fellow magicians set him up to be kidnapped by Hell’s minions, and now he’s finally escaped. Turns out there’s more at work in the City of Angels than Stark realized and more than one group out there that wants him dead.
Stark is what you call an anti-hero. Not only does he have no interest in helping the forces of “good” (more on that in a second), but he seems to go out of his way to alienate the few allies he does have. Granted, the man has just spent eleven years being tortured in Hell, so he has his reasons for not playing well with others. Nevertheless, he’s a selfish, violent character who’s only motivation is to complete his anger-fueled quest for vengeance. In fact, many of the characters are unpleasant people, including the group who are trying to “save” the world (or at least maintain the status quo). I can can count the number of decent characters on one hand, with fingers left over. And I’d have to qualify my definition of decent to make it fit.
Yet this is still a compelling story.
That says something to me because, as I’ve pointed out before, I struggle with truly unsympathetic characters. I like to be able to root for the hero, or at least the hero’s sidekick. Under any other circumstances, Stark would have driven me crazy, but he didn’t. I wish I could articulate why. I think it’s because, although not moral in the normal sense, Stark had his own code of values that he (usually) stuck to. That and the story was good — gritty, fast-paced, and had a strong voice.
The next book in the series, KILL THE DEAD, is on my TBR list, so I clearly enjoyed the world enough to visit it again.
(image copyright Harper Voyager, used without permission)
