The Getaway God audiobook

5 StarsThe Getaway God, book 6 in the Sandman Slim series is still fresh and exciting to me. This series is tailor made for me. It has an amazing, bad ass, natural born killer, that is loyal down to his core for a hero. It has Gods, Demons, Ghosts, Vamps, Zombies, and much more. It is extremely violent, with no holds back, heads a rolling on the floor writing. Kadrey uses clever dialog, sarcastic humor, and relevant references to make things fun and fresh.In this book we are treated to an ever darkening setting with even more end of the world doom at stake. James travels back to Hell on several occasions and that rocks. This book is a page turner that never lets up. Once again, I love the clever references that make me like Sandman Slim and Richard Kadrey more and more.“…Samael is the prick who stuck me with the job of playing Lucifer. But we kissed and made up. We have similar tastes in Dario Argento and Takashi Miike flicks.”—-my favorites as well.Humor and wit…““How’s this? I’ve saved this world more than once already. I have friends here and I’ll kill anything that walks, crawls, flies, or oozes out of the ground if it hurts one of them. I know God and the Devil and their worst secrets. I know how to pull the plug on this whole rotten world and I don’t do it. You know why?”“So, to sum up. Tonight I had my throat crushed. I was tossed around like a beanbag. I was beaten with a gun butt. I was shot. And now another God hates me. I want a smoke, but when I cough I taste blood. Maybe some bullet fragments in a lung. I put the Maledictions back in my pocket.”The only thing that I do not like about this Urban Fantasy series is the wait for the next book. I love this series, the writing, and the whole biblical horror genre. I cannot recommend this series enough to fans of Urban Fantasy and Horror alike. It is not to be missed.Freaking bad ass fun….

"Death, like birth, is a secret of nature."Only with birth you get a blanket and a bottle. You get a blanket with death too, but they call it a shroud and everyone else gets the bottle. How am I supposed to be okay with that? What an experience it was! By far, it is the best book in the series with Sandman Slim running a close second. The book is a like a galvanizing baithak with a bottle of Aqua Regia and a pack of Maledictions. The one-fifth of the book builds up serenely to the last titillating eight-odd pages. How the book can go wrong if it starts with - You'd think the end of the world would be exciting, but this apocalypse is about as much fun as dental surgery. The book is full of dark humor and dank jokes. E.g. It’s like a joke the Irish used to tell.“What do you call a dead Englishman?”“What?""A good start.” I always was in awe of the way Richard Kadrey has portrayed his magical world with the framework (shit! I do sound like an Ivy League prick!) of our Christian own world. The truth that everybody some of the people feel miserable is perfectly articulated. E.g. "No matter which God is in charge, we’re bugs on his windshield. Always were. Always will be. Amen."And then there is the usual dose of philosophy - "Only a man with a guilty conscience keeps reminding you of how innocent he is."Strangely, one sui generis (Power-to-you! It is the word of day at theasaurus.com) appears with the Golden Vigil, a four hundred-fucking years old Japanese monk. I had enjoyed his literary jabs with Stark. Moreover, I am starting to like Samael more and more. Read this, Wino!"I heard one about someone using your skull as a bedpan."Seventh book! Hear I come to break your spine!

I think we've settled into a nice, humorous, extremely bloody routine. Not all routines are bad, of course. Some just grab you by the throat, spill all your secrets upon the ground, and then dance in a river of entrails while they laugh about gods, devils, and outsiders.This happens to be one of those routines.I do note one little detail, however. Our favorite Nephilim seems to be losing all his most powerful toys. Pretty soon he's going to be one DE-powered freak.Well, to be fair, it seems like every supernatural baddie in LA and the cosmos is headed in the same direction. Call it an economic downturn.Am I still having a ton of fun? Yep. Popcorn UF all the way, baby.

I received a digital advance copy of this book for personal blogging and review.Once again I had a nice four hour long chat over drinks with my favorite anti-hero, James Stark. Oh my god, this book! AMAZING. Kadrey does it again (no surprises there) with more exploits of the hero we all love to hate, and hate to love. Stark deals with the less than appreciative Golden Vigil bossing him around about a serial killer investigation, all while facing the looming threat of the Angra Om Ya in the latest installment of the Sandman Slim series. Old friends, and some old enemies, find their way back into Stark's life as the world is about to end. Yes, again. It's always a frolic through a field of daisies when you're with Sandman Slim. Who's side are Stark's allies really on? Will they find a way to stop the Angra Om Ya in time, or will Heaven, Earth, and Hell all be destroyed from internal, and external forces? Read this book. Find out. You won't be disappointed!!

3.5 stars rounded up to 4I've been a big fan of this series since book one but this definitely fell short for me. Stark spends a lot of his time running from place to place, worrying about the destruction of earth. While that's a huge thing to worry about, I miss the books where Stark was tearing stuff up all of the time. He does get back to his nature around 80% through the book when he brings back some hellhounds to assist him. The rest of the book goes on the be a bit anti-climatic with how easy some problems were solved.

Mixed feelings here. You have to like, "I don't want wisdom. I want a bazooka" or "we could have been playing badminton with a baked ham for all he cared." You have to admire the constantly increasing scope of Stark's adventures, and that despite being almost a cartoon character he is still showing a tiny bit of emotional development. You have to recognize the challenge for Kadrey to bring the series to a major turning point, if not an end. There are a lot of things to wrap up, a lot of characters to account for. I will, however, be glad to see the end of the motorcycle, the Aqua Regia and the Maledictions. Couldn't help thinking they were just there to pad out the word count. The ending, as others have noted, felt like the kind you get when the author realizes that he's only got a thousand words left and has to wrap it up. Kadrey tells and shows us at great length what a powerful badass (Saint Nick) is, and at the end he is taken out by (view spoiler)[ an ordinary pistol. (hide spoiler)]. OK, we have been shown that Stark himself is technically vulnerable that way too - but still. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think we are ever told (view spoiler)[who was poisoning Candy or who possessed Wells in the big end scene. (hide spoiler)]Still a worthy part of the series. At the very end, Stark has a new career. I wondered briefly ... Stark, as in Richard Stark, pen name under which Donald Westlake wrote the great "Parker" series ... and James Stark is more or less Parker with magic weapons. He could have a worse future.

Really good book. Extremely happy that 98% of the loose ends were finally tied up allowing for a new arc of Jimmy Stark.

A satisfying conclusion and a good wrap up of the cosmic stories of Sandman slim so far.

I got an eGalley of this book from Edelweiss for review. I have been a huge fan of all of the Sandman Slim books, although I will say the last couple had slowed down a bit in pace. This book did not disappoint, it picked up pace and resolved a major storyline that had been dragging on for some time. This book mainly deals with Stark aka Sandman Slim as he works to prevent the Angra Om Ya (the Old Gods) from entering this realm and destroying Earth. In addition to that there is a new serial killer in town who likes to reduce people to their separate parts and Stark is trying to help the Golden Vigil track down that killer as well. There is also a side story about Candy getting very sick and we learn a lot more about her Jade nature.As with all the books in this series this is a very very adult book. There is a lot of over-the-top violence and gore and swearing and any other thing you can think of that might be offensive. Stark is still as snarky and offensive as ever. He is the pin-up boy for anti-heroes. Despite all his rough edges he is doing his best for mankind and the world he lives in...he just does it his way. He has actually obtained some balance and happiness in his life and it was fun to see that. That’s not to say that Stark as mellowed, he just seems a bit happier with things.As with previous books this book has a very dark somewhat noir vibe to it and is darkly humorous. There are lots of one-liners and references to obscure movies (some of which I got, some of which I didn’t). The Golden Vigil features throughout the book. Stark works with them quite a bit. We also run into a lot of different Angra Om Ya gods and their rather crazy worshippers.Overall I loved this book, it ties up the Angra Om Ya storyline nicely and leads into the next chapter of Stark's life. I always really enjoy these books and hope that the series continues. I would recommend this whole series to fans of gritty and violent urban fantasy. It’s been a very creative, action packed, and well done series that I enjoy reading a lot.

I have loved the Sandman Slim series from the first. Outrageously violent and enormously clever and thoughtful in mythology and world-building -- a rare combination. This most recent entry feels like the end of an era for the series, and while Stark has undergone transformation before (for instance, he served in place of Lucifer), he's left in the employ of private detective and has been stripped of his most extreme power - the ability to Shadow-walk. Increasingly, as the story has gone on over the series, Stark has become humanized and the novel ends with him considering his place in the world as well as learning to use a coffee maker and worrying about money. While I'm certain some may find this reassuring, I'm actually a bit disappointed; the contemporary tendency to explain and and understand our monsters is an ugly tendency in my opinion that removes mystery from the world. I don't want him to be like me (although we all know I'm expert with a number of coffee makers), I want him to be more. On a final, totally personal whine, since the Greywalker series (by Kat Richardson) just ended in a book released last month and this feels like an ending, I'm feeling kind of bereft and wondering where I'm going to find anything this good again.

What can I say, I love me some Sandman Slim. These stories flow like a shot of Aqua Regia on a humid summer night in hell.

This is a hard book to review without tons of spoilers. Things that have been building since the first book come to a head and are (mostly) resolved. I’m going to be coy and talk around things because I want you people (yes, I said “you people” and you know who you are) to have the joy of discovery. And People, you should be discovering Sandman Slim. If you are thinking about investing in a series of audiobooks this year, I highly recommend the Sandman Slim audiobooks. McLeod Andrews is a wonderful narrator, and his voice performance is perfect for Sandman Slim.The apocalypse has arrived and it’s going slowly. Stark has to do more thinking that head bashing, and that’s not his strong suit. Stark is working for the re-formed Golden Vigil, and it’s going about as well as it had before. He and Candy have settled back in to Max Overdrive with Kasabian and have settled into a domesticity that terrifies Stark. As with previous books, Stark can’t seem to get away from the dead. Stark is growing up and becoming more contemplative. He is starting to consider that there are consequences to his past actions. In addition to averting the impending apocalypse, he’s also trying to clean up some of the messes he has made.Kadrey’s language is beautiful. Not in a sweeping prose sort of way, but in a profane and hard driving way. The descriptive passages are evocative and the dialogue is fast and biting.I’m used to Aqua Regia’s kick, but down enough at once and it’s going to turn anyone’s cerebral cortex into chocolate pudding. I let it and the tea do their work. They fight it out in my stomach. The Hellion hoodoo wrestling whatever kind of magic Mr. Bones uses. My stomach cramps and for a few seconds I want to throw up. But I hold on and the feeling passes. The room gets thin, like it’s made of black gauze. I put the crow feather between my teeth just as I fall out of myself.***“Okay, Cassandra, there’s something else. Did it rain much when you were down there?”“No. I don’t remember it raining at all.”“Well, it is now. Raining cats and dogs and little imps with pitchforks. I mean, there’s doomed. There’s screwed. And there’s monsoons-in-Hell fucked. And we’re at fucked o’clock.”More than before, Stark has a metaphysical point of view. He’s evolved from “it’s not fair.” to “it’s better to be somewhere that is terrible than to be nowhere at all.” When we first met Stark crawling out of Hell, he would have as soon burned the Universe down as looked at it. Cars, clothes and people were disposable. Since then, Stark has possessed devices that would allow him to end this Universe and start a new one. He has chosen not to use them. He has allowed himself to become a little bit domesticated. He’s not just Sandman Slim, the monster who kills monsters anymore. Even at the very end he ends the apocalypse with as much of a possibility for a new beginning as a possibility for annihilation.