This was the first book I finished during my trip – mentioned in my Holiday Reading Post on 12/11/2018. I’ve also posted on “Devil Said Bang” – the fourth novel in the series. “Kill City Blues” is the fifth novel in the series, published in 2013, and it’s every bit as fun as the first four. As I go deeper into the series, though, I find that a few things are starting to come into focus.
I can’t escape the feeling that, in so many ways, the books are kind of a hot mess. The Cosmos in which they’re set and the whole origin story has a pretty random feel – like the author is just throwing things against the wall – hoping that something will stick.
It starts simple in the first book – Heaven, Hell, Angels, Demons, God and Satan – but things start to swerve all over the place as you progress into the series. You go from a pretty simple and relatively tight premise in the first book to a second book that feels like a couple of stories crammed together. It winds up focusing on a Zombie Apocalypse in LA. I don’t think it’ll spoil anything to reveal that the main character saves the city from flesh eaters but the third book starts in an LA where everything is back to normal – after the city was, for all intents and purposes, burned to the ground. The whole thing requires you just to push on and not obsess over the disconnects.
Same thing with the subsequent books – it feels like the author is just banging along, mashing together multiple stories, not really worried about connection or continuity but having a great time as he writes.
Here’s the thing though – mentioned more or less in my post on “Devil Said Bang” – while that would normally annoy me and lead me to dismiss the whole series as poorly conceived – it doesn’t really bother me with these books. You read them because they’re funny. The main character – Sandman Slim – is an arrogant, anti-social, violent, one man wrecking crew oblivious to the damage he causes everywhere he goes.
He’s also ironic and witty and obnoxious and hugely entertaining. My wife can always tell when I’m reading one of these books because I wind up laughing out loud – literally – every few pages. The Cosmos and the plots may not be tight but the dialogue is – crisp and cutting and hilarious. The interactions between the characters and the absolute disregard that Slim and his band of weird brothers have for almost every social convention is both disorienting and oddly endearing.
That’s been more than enough to keep me interested and connected through the first four books and “Kill City Blues” was no different. It was fun in a cringe-worthy sort of way – kind of like the mixture of horror and humor you feel watching the scene in “A Christmas Story” where the kid freezes his tongue to the flagpole.
Having said that – I worry a little – sitting at the halfway point in the series – whether this will be enough or whether the whole shtick will start to lose it’s bizarre charm. I’ll get back to Book Six – “The Getaway God” – as soon as I finish “Midnight Tides” and let you know. In the meantime, definitely worth the time.