Kill the Dead
core novel 2010 Sandman Slim
Record
| First published | 2010 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.08 (21,409 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780061714313 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
In the second novel, James Stark has settled uneasily back into life in a Los Angeles riddled with sorcery, supporting himself as a freelance monster hunter and occasional operative for the Golden Vigil, an angelic organization with ties to Homeland Security. His routine is upended when Lucifer himself arrives on Earth, ostensibly to consult on a Hollywood film being made about his own life, and hires Stark as his bodyguard. The arrangement quickly grows complicated by a romantic entanglement Stark falls into and by a spreading zombie plague that turns the city into a battleground. As the dead multiply and Stark's own nature edges further toward something less than human, he has to unravel who or what is behind the outbreak before it consumes him, his allies, and everyone he still cares about.
Where it sits
- Universe: Sandman Slim
- Series: Sandman Slim core; position 2 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 2 of 12: previous Sandman Slim (2009) · next Aloha from Hell (2011)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Sandman Slim
- Fantastic Fiction: Sandman Slim
- https://beforewegoblog.com/novel-review-kill-the-dead-by-richard-kadrey/
- https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-171431-3
- MIT Press Bookstore (edition record)
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