This book was addictive. The world building that Kadrey did is wonderful and I hope some day to be able to return to it in a sequel.

I'm a long-time fan of Richard Kadrey's work–#sandmanslimforever—and this new world that he's built is fascinating and irresistible in its villainy. He's a master at creating characters that represent the beauty and monsters in us all, and the writing is atmospheric without ever getting in the way of the gripping story.

This book was... okay.

I usually try and be more descriptive (or more verbose) with my reviews, but I'm finding it difficult. I liked the Grand Dark, but I didn't love it. Something about it just didn't work for me, though I finished the book and found it entertaining. Kadrey is a good writer, and I enjoyed his Sandman Slim series immensely. I see echoes of it within this- good prose, a sense of humor, characters who have bitten off more than they can chew.

Here were my two main issues-

1. Pacing. The book felt slow to start, as if the crux of the action didn't actually begin until 3/4 of the way into the novel. It very much felt like the introduction to a series rather than something meant to stand on its own, which meant that getting through the beginning 2/3rds often felt like a slog. Given that it's meant to be a stand-alone, that's somewhat troubling.

2. Character development- Largo felt like a fully realized character but his girlfriend did not. We see an awful lot of her, and she becomes a plot critical character but she never seemed like a full human being. I always had the distinct sense she was written by a man- she fulfilled the role of a fantasy girlfriend very well, but never had enough depth to stand on her own two feet.

Ultimately, I do think people will enjoy the Grand Dark. It has some innovative world building and Kadrey's gift for words. Would I recommend it? I'm not sure. It didn't work for me, but it may work for you. Only one way to find out.

Kadrey's The Grand Dark is an expedition into a world of fantasy very different from sword-battling rascals and pirate conquests. Think more Kafka meets Orwell meets Germanic Steampunk. First, of all, the world created in this novel is at once sort of familiar, but in other respects, unique, different, odd. The setting is dreary, coal-fired smoke-filled, war-ruined City of Lower Proszawa following a Great War that left Upper Proszawa a world of desolation, ruin, and plague.

The place names and words used to describe things feel German, or at least Eastern European. The setting is a city after a huge war struggling to recover and filled with theaters, actors, dancing, parties, and drugs. It feels like the decadence of Weimar Germany after the First World War, but it is not, despite the U-boats. It is someplace in Kadrey's wild imagination. It is also a city that operates like a police state with secret informers everywhere, a ragtag band of revolutionaries, and proletariats everywhere. Drabness, uniformity, and fear are spread like a cancer. And, there's plague brought back from the war and veterans from the war so scarred that they wear masks and parade through the streets.

Kadrey doesn't exactly give a full exposition of the world he creates and allows the reader to slowly grasp it as the layers of the onion are each pulled back. And, perhaps that is why, rather than have the main protagonist be the greatest swordsman of two worlds or a swashbuckling .007, it's a lowly bike messenger who is half the time hopped on Morphia, late for his own funeral, and without a care for anything beyond his own daily life which includes cavorting with famed actress Remy and her happy-dappy thespian friends at crazy parties at which costumes, cocaine, and morphia are everywhere.

And, this world also includes Maras, the German word for nightmares, which are automatons that carry things across the city and work in factories and as maids and butlers.

As fascinating as this whole world is, the key to this novel is that you are not sucked into a great adventure at the start, but the bike messenger's petty little world, his promotion to the chief courier, his plodding through bad neighborhoods, and his sweet romance with Remy. You wonder at first where this is going and whether the plot will ever thicken. Just be confident that you are slowly being swept into this gray world and many things may not turn out to be what you think or characters who you think they are.