Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Killing Pretty: A Sandman Slim Novel
    Killing Pretty: A Sandman Slim Novel
    Killing Pretty: A Sandman Slim Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Killing Pretty: A Sandman Slim Novel

    Written by Richard Kadrey

    Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Sandman Slim investigates Death’s death in this hip, propulsive urban fantasy through a phantasmagoric LA rife with murder, mayhem, and magic.

    James Stark has met his share of demons and angels, on earth and beyond. Now, he’s come face to face with the one entity few care to meet: Death.

    Someone has tried to kill Death—ripping the heart right out of him—or rather the body he’s inhabiting. Death needs Sandman Slim’s help: he believes anyone who can beat Lucifer and the old gods at their own game is the only one who can solve his murder.

    Stark follows a sordid trail deep into LA’s subterranean world, from vampire-infested nightclubs to talent agencies specializing in mad ghosts, from Weimar Republic mystical societies to sleazy supernatural underground fight and sex clubs. Along the way he meets a mysterious girl—distinguished by a pair of graveyard eyes—as badass as Slim: she happens to be the only person who ever outwitted Death. But escaping her demise has had dire consequences for the rest of the world . . . and a few others.

    For years, Slim has been fighting cosmic forces bent on destroying Heaven, Hell, and Earth. This time, the battle is right here on the gritty streets of the City of Angels, where a very clever, very ballsy killer lies in wait.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 28, 2015
    ISBN9780062395344
    Author

    Richard Kadrey

    Richard Kadrey is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim supernatural noir books. Sandman Slim was included in Amazon’s “100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime,” and is in development as a feature film. Some of his other books include The Wrong Dead Guy, The Everything Box, Metrophage, and Butcher Bird. He also writes the Vertigo comic Lucifer.

    More audiobooks from Richard Kadrey

    Related to Killing Pretty

    Related audiobooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Sunrise Manor Routine

      Jun 1, 2019

      The Sunrise Manor Routine
      10 min read

    • Article

      Restless Souls

      Mar 6, 2018

      Restless Souls
      8 min read

    • Article

      Righteous

      Jan 22, 2019

      Righteous
      8 min read

    • Article

      I Saw Plenty

      Jun 1, 2020

      I Saw Plenty
      6 min read

    • Article

      Good Bones

      Mar 19, 2020

      Good Bones
      18 min read

    • Article

      The Book of Loki

      Mar 12, 2018

      The Book of Loki
      20 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      Penny

      Jul 2, 2020

      Penny
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Conversation

      Nov 1, 2023

      The Art Of Conversation
      4 min read

    • Article

      Lil Spin

      May 17, 2019

      Lil Spin
      8 min read

    • Article

      Coffee, Camping And Murder

      Jul 15, 2022

      “I'm going to kill him and kill him dead,” I hear a young woman from my neighbourhood saying through clenched teeth. She is part of a group of early birds that regularly flocks to a little coffee cart that parks for an hour or two each morning on a q

      3 min read

    • Article

      When Life Bites

      Sep 14, 2020

      When Life Bites
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      Starbucks and Shipwrecks

      Jan 18, 2019

      Starbucks and Shipwrecks
      5 min read

    • Article

      Last Saturday Night

      Dec 7, 2023

      Last Saturday Night
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Secretion

      May 5, 2022

      The Art Of Secretion
      8 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      I settled for the reverse narrative. The after ever, happily. I’d purchased a dragon, a handful of teeth in a tin (they’d advertised it as arattle!), a surgeon’s veil, some Oil of Olay, a few parasites. The water rippled, and I stood very close to it

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Devil You Know

      Jul 10, 2021

      I met the Devil today. He was walking down main street, right by the undertaker in B____, which is a little town near here, and which, for obvious reasons, I’d better not name. I recognized him straight away because he had furry legs with hooves for

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Money Box

      Jun 10, 2022

      This is not a morality tale. It’s simply a story. It began innocently enough, over a lunch of beef pho in the Financial District, when my friend Paolo first mentioned the Money Box. Paolo was a pupa of industry then, waiting to emerge as a titan. He

      19 min read

    • Article

      Parakeet

      May 29, 2020

      Parakeet
      11 min read

    • Article

      Foxes

      Jun 15, 2019

      What’s worth happening happens in deep woods. Or so my daughter tells me. Her plotlines: In the deep woods someone is chasing, someone else is getting hacked. Hatchets are lifted, brought downdowndown. Men stutter blood onto snow. A cast of animals—s

      17 min read

    • Article

      Killing Everyone In Hitman

      Dec 28, 2021

      Killing Everyone In Hitman
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Killing Pretty

    4/5

    160 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Aside from a couple of gruesome scenes, this one's somewhat tamer than the earlier ones. Is our boy settling down?
    • 4/5
      this excellent saga continues! Sandman Slim saves us yet again.
    • 3/5
      This series just refuses to lose speed. Big things have changed for Stark. Maybe that's how it stays fresh, but it certainly hasn't jeopardized what makes me love it. This continues to be pure, brutal, and sometimes gruesome, incredibly dark fun.
    • 5/5
      Richard Kadrey is never a disappointment.
    • 5/5
      The best one yet! I love this series. The stories are funny and suspenseful with a nice twist at the end. I have read all 7 in the series and never want it to end! Sandman slim is such a badass Lol. And Macleod Andrews gives each character life!
    • 1/5
      There is a part of the book that is missing
    • 4/5
      My Thoughts:The thing I like so much about this series is, other than the bad-ass-ness that is, is the real-ness of the world building. I can so totally believe that god is broken into little pieces of himself. Like he gave birth to himselves by breaking up into smaller parts of him. He can't grow anymore bigger so he broke up. Totally believable. I mean at some point in his life, he can't get any bigger than he already is. So maybe the next logical step in his evolution is to give birth to himselves. And so appealing to me because that would explain so many shit in the world. This is one of the many reasons why I am such a fan of this series. I also kinda really like the idea of an anti-hero who kicks ass! :)This book also have the most solid plot in the entire series that I could remember. Investigating a murder with a twist, nice plot! Ok, so there never was much of a plot in any of the books in this series, but this one got more than the others. But, for some reason, I find this book really slow... and I could not find the reason why because the story telling quality is as good as it always has been... maybe it's me being slow. I think another factor contributing to this book being slow is the fact that the introduction to the main plot is very long. As in, half-the-book-worth long, of introduction. That gets tiring...Empirical Evaluation:Story telling quality = 4.5Character development = 5Story itself = 4.5Writing Style = 4.5Ending = 4.5World building = 5Cover art = 2.5Pace = 2Plot = 4.5Narration = 4.5Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5
    • 4/5
      Funnily enough just as I was reading this a documentary came on TV about Nazi supporters in the US, and some of the plot of this involved these people, so I could actually put faces on people and see places in my mind as I read the story rather than just making it up in my imagination. Strange coincidence!Someone has tried to kill death so they can create their own and Stark is sucked into another adventure. He's trying his best to restrain himself and think about consequences but it's complicated and messy and he's apparently just digging a bigger hole for himself.It was a fun read and Stark is learning how to be a better person, it's a slow process.
    • 4/5
      I never thought I'd see Jimmy Stark grow up and own his shit. I look back from this book to the first and I am amazed at his growth as a person. He's still the same dick we know and love, but he's thinking past the current moment. This book gives the series new life.
    • 4/5
      Interesting twist to the series with this one: Stark is now a private eye. Believe it or not, it works.
    • 3/5
      Stark investigates the murder of Death, which is preventing people from dying around the world. (Supposedly not everyone knows about the supernatural in this universe, but it’s hard to imagine why not.) Nazis and vampires turn out to be involved. Reasonably clever.
    • 4/5
      Someone has trapped Death in a human body so he can’t collect the dead. As a result, no one is dying but the hospitals are full of coma patients. He has come to James Stark AKA Sandman Slim to help him and is now residing in Maximum Overdrive, Stark’s video store while Stark tries to find who is responsible. Problem is Stark can no longer shadow walk which makes his investigation a whole lot harder as he must confront some very dangerous adversaries both old and new.Killing Pretty is the 7th in the Sandman Slim urban fantasy series by author Richard Kadrey and, although it is a bit slower than some of the others, it is just a whole lot of fun. The story is told in the first person by Stark who is, at least for now, earth-bound but he is at his wittiest best as he roams the streets of San Francisco from nightclubs populated by vampires to a very unusual fight club and as he tries without a whole lot of success to act as a responsible member of a team. For fans of urban fantasies, it doesn’t get any better than Sandman Slim and Killing Pretty is no exception to this rule. It is dark and gritty, occasionally violent, often humorous, and always entertaining.
    • 4/5
      I got a copy of this book through Edelweiss to review. This is the 7th book in the Sandman Slim series. I enjoyed this continuation of the Sandman Slim series but didn't like this book quite as much as the previous book in the series. Stark is back at his video store trying to make his life work. He’s adjusting to not being able to shadow travel anymore and trying to deal with the fact that Candy (now called Chihiro) looks completely different and is pretending to be a completely different person (to evade arrest). Then of course there is the fact that Death showed up in a completely dead human body and is languishing in his video store. Stark needs to figure out what the deal is with Death and how to get Death back where he belongs. When people all over the world stop dying the matter becomes incredibly urgent.This book is a bit of a transition novel as Stark tries to figure out what to do with his life. It is a bit plagued by Stark's whining; he is either whining about how sick he is about getting forced into world-changing events or whining about how he hates having a normal "white-picket fence" type of life. I got kind of sick of those parts since you know...you can't have it both ways.There is also less action in this book than in others. Which is not to say there aren't some high-octane scenes and gruesome violence...it's just a bit less in this book. There is a lot more of Stark trying to work as a team (which is not his strong suit) and investigate Death’s appearance.I did enjoy the idea of Death being forced into a human body. It was a fun and interesting mystery for Stark and crew to solve. The side plot of Candy taking a new identity as Chihiro was also intriguing. I am curious to see where Chihiro’s story goes from here. However the story wanders...a lot and it made the book quite a bit longer than it had to be. We spend a lot of time reading about Stark as he wanders about his somewhat disorganized and non-sensical life. Some of these parts were a bit boring and I kept hoping we would get to the point sooner than later.Overall, while not my favorite Sandman Slim novel, this was still an entertaining read. The Sandman Slim series is full of witty dialogue and attitude and definitely has a unique style all its own. I recommend it to those who enjoy gritty urban fantasy. If you like gritty and slightly disturbing urban fantasy I would also recommend the Jessie Shimmer series by Lucy Snyder.
    • 4/5
      A new Sandman Slim novel is always something I look forward to reading. As usual the author does not disappoint his fans. In this one Death takes a holiday, sort of and not by choice. It is up to Stark to put things right. Even as he has to learn a new job and try to learn to play nice. We all know that is not going to last. With a nice twist at the end I didn't see coming that should be interesting for the next book in the series. Put it on your calendars for when it comes out in July.