The Kill Society: There are parts of Hell even Sandman Slim hasn’t seen

The Kill Society by Richard Kadrey 

The Kill Society (2017) is the ninth SANDMAN SLIM book, even if Stark prefers to go by Stark now, rather than the name he was given when he fought in the arena in Hell. Hell is not the eternal absence of God, or some theoretical dimension of punishment; it’s a county, a landscape. And Stark, alive or dead, is very familiar with it. In The Kill Society, Kadrey takes Stark, and us, on a tour of a previously unseen area of Hell, the Tenebrae. Even Stark is not very familiar with the desert-like stretch of Tenebrae with its mummified ghost towns. He’d prefer to be in Pandemonium, the capital, but he has no choice, because he’s been captured by a charismatic, mad soul who calls himself The Magistrate, and his caravan of killers called the horde.

(This review may contain mild spoilers for earlier books.)

This is a fairly short book, with a Sandman Slim novella filling it out at the end. A lot of the touchstones that make the Stark books so much fun are missing: The Bamboo House of Dolls, Kasabian, Candy. What’s left is Stark’s wit and expertise at killing, a new set of characters who grab our attention, and a plot involving a weapon that might kill God.

Before he woke up on a hill above Tenebrae, Stark managed to open the gates of Heaven. A group of rebellious angels decided that they preferred Heaven as a gated community and began locking out all human souls, even the good ones. Now there is a full-fledged civil war. The Magistrate hopes the weapon will end the war, but he is reckoning with two groups of angels, the God loyalists and the new rebels. There is a spy within the horde, the Magistrate doesn’t trust Stark, and one more thing… The Magistrate is crazy.

Tenebrae and the under-the-mountain river that plays a part in this book reminded me of Kadrey’s earlier phantasmagorical book The Butcher Bird, but the two books are nothing alike. The tone in The Kill Society is acerbic and gritty, unmistakably Stark, even without his usual sidekicks. In this book, Stark meets up again with Father Traven, a damned priest (no, I mean literally damned) who is a pretty good guy, and he reunites with first love Alice, who is now a full-fledged angel.

Among the new characters are Daja, a loyal follower of the Magistrate, and members of a group Stark calls the Dog Pack. I especially liked Doris, a very different take on a damned soul. Doris did bad things, very bad, when she was alive, but I could understand why, and gosh-darn it, I kinda liked her. Doris is an example of the kind of absurdity Kadrey pulls off flawlessly; well, sure, she killed people, but can’t you see her point?

The strengths of this short book are in the descriptions of the desiccated countryside, the weapon called the Light Killer and the ingenious way Stark uses it. Secondary characters like Daja, Doris, Father Traven and adversaries like Johnny are well-depicted. Kadrey’s ear for syncopated, snappy, noirish dialogue is unparalleled and this book revels in the art of the quip and the clever putdown.

The novella, The Devil in the Dollhouse, actually answers a question that is raised in The Kill Society. While the first two-thirds of it were compelling, the end was too long, recapitulating the beginning of Devil Said Bang.

I liked this book, but it was not my favorite of the SANDMAN SLIM series. As wild and vivid as the landscape and the people are, Stark functions best in LA, surrounded by his peeps and by the weirdness that is humanity (and Los Angeles). I’ll be glad when we’re back there.