Butcher Bird

Butcher Bird (2007) Richard Kadrey

Spyder lives just on the edge of being a deviant. He’s a tattoo artist and owns a shop with his childhood best friend, Lulu, who does piercings and body mods. He drinks and smokes and enjoys the company of women of questionable morals, but underneath that he’s actually not a bad guy.

Then he learns about the world parallel and overlapping out world.

He also gets suckered into a trip to hell, but that comes later.

The initial feel of the book is similar to Simon R. Green’s Nightside series: gritty, dark, full of nasty things, and the protagonist wise-cracks his way through the horrors. However, it’s darker than the Nightside books, and Hell feels more like Steven Brust‘s To Reign in Hell.

Initially, I had a hard time getting into the story, the world building was a little confusing to me at first, but I think that was due to the pain killers I was taking more than anything to do with the story.

The characters are all interesting and individuals, although occasionally I did think Spyder was a hair over the time with his wise-cracking. Yes, John Taylor is far mouthier and obnoxious in the Nightside books, but those books are a take on hard boiled detective novels and the dialog feels right. A couple times I thought the dialog here was a bit forced–no one is that witty all the time.

But that’s the only real fault I came across. The characters were good, the story was solid, and it kept me interested despite the pain medicine. All in all, I recommend it.
Rating: 8/10

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