Saturday morning on the treadmill, desperately needing something with enough forward momentum to keep me from hitting the stop button at mile 2. Kill the Dead delivered exactly that — for about the first 8 hours. Then it got... chatty.
TL;DR: Worth your commute if you already listened to book one. Kadrey's punk-rock urban fantasy still slaps, but this sequel coasts on vibes more than plot, and Andrews' narration carries it harder than it probably deserves.
Stark's Still Fun, But the Sequel Tax Is Real
I burned through Sandman Slim (book one) in maybe four commutes and immediately grabbed this. James Stark — half-angel, Hell escapee, Lucifer's former personal assassin turned reluctant bodyguard — is basically if John Constantine and Deadpool had a baby raised on punk rock and bad decisions. The voice Kadrey writes for him is just perfect for audio. Snarky internal monologue, zero respect for authority or physics, constant improvisation when plans go sideways.
The problem? Kill the Dead has about 9 hours of plot stretched across 13. The zombie apocalypse setup is genuinely fun — there's a whole thread involving an undead-killing porn star that's exactly as ridiculous as it sounds, and I was grinning through those scenes at the gym like an absolute weirdo. And the Lucifer-stuck-in-a-mortal-body stuff? His exhaustion, his irritation at being human? That's the good stuff. You can feel the cosmic being chafing against meat and bone, and it's the most interesting subplot in the book by a wide margin.
But then there are these long talky stretches — almost soap-opera plotting — where Stark's identity crisis with his angel half gets circular. I zoned out during a couple of those sections on Monday morning's commute (6:12 AM, packed Caltrain car, you know the drill) and didn't feel like I missed much when I tuned back in. That's never a great sign for a 13-hour listen.
Andrews Does the Heavy Lifting (Mostly)
MacLeod Andrews is a solid narrator — Audie winner, Grammy-nominated, the whole résumé. And he nails Stark's internal monologue. That deadpan snark, the outrageous posturing that reads as self-aware rather than cringe — Andrews' timing on the humor delivery is genuinely sharp. When Stark cracks a one-liner mid-fight, it lands.
Where things get wobbly: supporting characters. Andrews doesn't differentiate voices enough, so when you've got three or four characters in a scene, you're doing mental work to track who's speaking. Lucifer should sound fundamentally different from regular humans — this is the actual Devil wearing a human suit — and Andrews gets the bone-deep weariness right but doesn't quite make him feel otherworldly enough. It's like when you have a distributed system where all the nodes are returning similar error codes. Technically functional, but you're losing signal that matters.
His reading of the action and horror scenes, though? That's where he earns it. The grand finale fight sequences had me accidentally increasing treadmill speed out of pure adrenaline proxy. (Kevin asked why I was drenched in sweat after what was supposed to be a "light cardio day." Blame Kadrey.)
The 6AM Zombie Test
Here's my honest diagnostic: would I have finished this if I had something better queued up? Probably yes, but I wouldn't've rushed. It passes my commute-worthiness bar — you can follow it at 6 AM surrounded by other commuter zombies (fitting, given the plot), and the snappy dialogue keeps pulling you back when you drift. But it doesn't pass my "skip lunch to keep listening" bar the way book one did.
The ROI on this audiobook is medium. 13+ hours is a real time commitment, and the pacing doesn't justify every one of those hours. I bumped it to 1.5x during the talkier middle sections and that helped significantly — Stark's narration actually gains a manic energy at speed that suits the character.
Perfect for: train, gym, commute. Skip for: bedtime (you'll lose the thread during the slower middle act and wake up confused about who's undead and who's just acting like it).
If you're a Dresden Files fan who wants something with more punk and less procedural, this is your lane. If you need tight plotting and can't tolerate vibes-over-structure, you'll start getting restless around hour 9. And if you haven't started the series — go back to Sandman Slim first. Seriously. This one assumes you know the lore and doesn't hold your hand.
Solid sequel. Not a must-listen. But I'll probably grab book three next week anyway, because Stark's voice in my head is basically an addiction at this point.
