Devil Said Bang
core novel 2012 Sandman Slim
Record
| First published | 2012 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.05 (13,183 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780062094575 |
| Internal chronology | 4 |
Synopsis
Following his elevation to the throne of Hell at the close of the previous novel, James Stark finds himself an unwilling Lucifer, resented and targeted by power-hungry factions among Hell's denizens despite the trappings of the job, including an infernal motorcycle and enchanted armor. Returning to Los Angeles to reconnect with a woman from his past, Stark is confronted with a ghost whose presence threatens to destabilize the boundary between reality and the afterlife, forcing him back into the kind of violent problem-solving he thought he had left behind. At the same time he has to wrestle with what ruling Hell, even reluctantly, has done to his own sense of who and what he is. The novel follows him as he tries to hold onto his humanity while navigating the treacherous politics of both Los Angeles and the underworld.
Where it sits
- Universe: Sandman Slim
- Series: Sandman Slim core; position 4 of 12 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Richard Kadrey
Notes
- From the series record (Sandman Slim): Complete 12-novel urban-fantasy sequence (2009-2021) following James Stark, a magician who escaped an eleven-year exile in Hell to hunt down the people who murdered his girlfriend and sent him there, working cases across a supernatural Los Angeles. "Devil in the Dollhouse" (2012), a novella slotting between books 3 and 4, is kept out of Core as companion material, not one of the twelve main-sequence novels.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Sandman Slim: position 4 of 12: previous Aloha from Hell (2011) · next Kill City Blues (2013)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Sandman Slim
- Fantastic Fiction: Sandman Slim
- https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780062094575
- MIT Press Bookstore (edition record)
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