James Stark is the protagonist of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series, a thirteen-book urban fantasy sequence set primarily in Los Angeles. Stark is a magician who was betrayed by a rival and sent to Hell alive, where he spent eleven years fighting in arena combat before breaking free and returning to LA for revenge. The name “Sandman Slim” followed him back from the underworld.
Over the course of the series, Stark evolves from a revenge-driven loner into someone with deeper connections and larger responsibilities. He works as a supernatural troubleshooter, taking jobs that put him between various factions of angels, demons, and old gods. His skills include both magic and the brutal fighting techniques he learned in Hell, and he maintains a wisecracking, confrontational attitude regardless of how powerful his opponents are. The series, written by Richard Kadrey, ran from 2009 to 2021.
Reading Order
See the complete Sandman Slim reading order for all books in the series.