Sandman Slim audiobook: magical hardboiled revenge story

By Cory Doctorow at 1:53 am Friday, Aug 28

Last month I blogged about Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim, a glorious, gritty revenge novel from hell, tinged with Aleister Crowley, Tom Waits and Raymond Chandler. Sandman Slim, AKA Stark, is one of Los Angeles's magicians, and 11 years ago, his fellow magicians sent him to hell because they were jealous of his power. He's spent the past 11 years fighting in Hell's gladiator pits and working as an assassin for one of Hell's Dukes, but now he has escaped to Earth and is on a quest to hunt down and execute his betrayers.

I've just finished listening to the unabridged, 10-hour audiobook of Sandman Slim, which is available on a single MP3 CD without DRM from Brilliance Audio. The reading is performed by Macleod Andrews, who does the narration in a perfect whiskey voice that's 80 percent Tom Waits, 20 percent Clint Eastwood. The performance and production are marvellous, a great interpretive reading that really brought the novel to life for me. I also love that I could get it without having to suffer through either DRM through one of the audiobook download stores or through ripping ten CDs' worth of material, which is how I normally get my audiobooks onto my computer.

Sandman Slim Audiobook MP3 CD