It’s been awhile since I had a Sandman Slim novel to chew on. And they do tend to be chewy. Kadrey is never an easy read. It took me ages to get through the one non-Sandman Slim he’s written that I’ve read. Still, I like James Stark. He’s my kind of asshole. And since I don’t know when this book was released (sometime this year I think?), SPOILERS be here.

Richard Kadrey’s latest Sandman Slim novel is The Perdition Score. Stark is legit now and doesn’t like it, can’t handle it really. He’s got a job working for the newest Augur, Thomas Abbott. He’s got a place to live and Candy (now called Chihiro) is alive and well and also with a job (one that used to be Stark’s). Most people would be happy that things were quieter.

Stark is not most people. He’s suffering from raging headaches and suffering from acute boredom. The only way he relieves both of those things is via an underground fight club. It’s very…Fight Club. I’m a little mad that Kadrey never really gets to whether these headaches were because of something physical or if it was psychosomatic. He did mention a few times that when the action started, the headaches went away, but that could be adrenaline.

In this book, Stark has two problems: A missing kid and Wormwood. Turns out that these two things are, of course, linked. It takes Stark a while to put it together because he gets side-tracked by a new and poisonous substance called black milk. It’s given to him by a dying angel and it gets him into trouble almost immediately. Naturally.

There’s a good chunk of the middle of the book where Stark is pretty convinced that Wormwood is targeting him by setting up terrible things at places he knows and people he’s met. And he’s right. Eventually, they go after his friend Vidocq directly and almost get him too. It’s this that triggers Stark going back into hell for the millionth time.

And hell is where Wormwood is now headquartered in a way. Norris Quay, whom he killed in the last book (if I remember correctly), is running the black milk scheme from the Griffith Park part of hell. Oh yeah, apparently hell is a copy of LA. Makes sense to me.

At any rate, black milk, once refined, makes berserkers out of angels. Stark finds this out first hand earlier in the book. Samael (now angel of death rather than Lucifer) sends a trustworthy angel down to assist Stark in hell and when she finds out what black milk is, she destroys the stock of it using her own blood. Stark is more messed up by this death than pretty much any other death in the series, which I find a little odd but maybe we’ll find out more in the next book.

This is the second book I’ve read recently that’s finished on a cliff hanger. ARGH! So irritating but at the same time, I know that another book is coming. As for this one, I don’t think it was the best Sandman Slim I’ve read but it was a decent read. I think that whenever the next book comes out, you could probably skip between the one before this and whatever comes after and not really miss much. This whole book was just an engine for James Stark to die. Like really die this time and not just seemingly die. It was good enough for me to devour in two days but I also couldn’t settle on reading anything else, so…I’d say overall it’s a good filler between books that you really, really want to read. Rating: B-.