The Getaway God
A Sandman Slim Novel
Hardcover | Kindle Edition
Written by Richard Kadrey
Harper Voyager/HarperCollins Publishers
Release Date: August 26, 2014

James Stark, aka Sandman Slim, fast with a quip and a gun (or a Qomrama Om Ya), is back in Richard Kadrey‘s sixth installation of the Sandman Slim series, The Getaway God, which lives up to its creatively sick counterparts, while also setting up for future ones.

This time Stark not only has the old gods, the Angrom Om Ya apocalypting LA and soon the world, but he must go up against St. Nick, his fiercest nemesis. And with God broken into five pieces and one piece dead, the other four are working against each other. He’s a part of the Golden Vigil, and along with Wells and Shonin, the self-created mummy, Sandman has some snarky allies united in his cause (ok, maybe the others only care about Cause #1).

His cause?

1-Stop apocalypse (indicative of the massive flooding rain in LA).
2-Help his girlfriend Candy out of her weird Jade moodiness.
3-Obtain more hard to get movies that do not exist in this dimension for his Hell version of Blockbuster video.

Sandman Slim gets himself out of very dangerous and almost impossible situations, as always, and visits his old stomping grounds of Hell (where he had a 3-month stint as Lucifer). There is an almost sensory overload as the imagery is very detailed and the action does not stop.

Richard Kadrey has a gift for producing engaging dialogues between characters — characters who have rich descriptions and abilities. Stark describes a demon as “the dandruff of the Old Gods.” One scene takes place in a meat locker, where…

“Not all of the meat in the church is animal. There’s a human body cut into six pieces-arms, legs, torso, and head-hanging like nightmare pinatas over the smiling circle of freaks.”

This is right before thirteen people happily slice off their own heads with meat saws, an offering to the Angra gods.

The Getaway God offers all the evil and gore any dystopian/apocalyptic novel can give, coupled with a sarcastic half-human, half nephilim (formerly?) dead anti-hero with a soft spot for his Jade girlfriend who needs to be medicated in order to not eat human meat. Interested?