It took me a moment to digest this book after I finished it. The little tidbits from articles, books, etc. in between some of the chapters gave a wonderful sense of the history and helped with the world building.

Then the book moved very slowly. Granted a bicycle couriers life is going to be a lot of deliveries and navigating through the streets. It’s understandable. It also helps to give a better sense of the bigger picture in a way; showing what life is like in the differing neighborhoods.. Over halfway into the book I started to wonder if all the deliveries and little tidbits would tie in together or if we would just keep following Largo on his deliveries and his morphia nights with Remy.

The last third of the book is where all the action took place. It left me feeling it was slightly rushed. I wanted to learn more about what was happening. What changes were forced onto Remy? Why Largo suddenly went from yes sir quiet to I’m breaking all the rules and I don’t care felt rushed. Things were finally happening but they happened so quickly without a lot of detail it felt out of character.

For me this left me wanting more development in that portion of the book. If I had gotten it, this book would have been a much higher rated one for me. It was dark and I enjoy a dark read. I liked Largo. I wanted to see him come into his own, but not in a forced rushed way.

A new book in Richard Kadrey's repertoire, he out-does himself AGAIN! Darker than my usual fare, I nonetheless completely enjoyed this complete departure from the Sandman Slim series! Way to go Richard! Another winner here!

The world building is beautifully and cleverly done in this novel. The insertion of news articles, diary entries and the like between the chapters of the narrative is a great way of giving the reader some history of the city and the world without boring them. The grimy atmosphere the whole novel has sets just the right tone.
The problem I found was the pacing. The plot takes much too long to start and nothing that happens to the protagonist for the first 2/3s of the novel is really all that interesting. There is a sense of disjointed pacing, too, when the action does take off. The scenes in Higher Proszawa are really rushed. I would have liked more world building there, to give us a sense of the horrors that lurked, but the author takes us through it at breakneck speed. Too much happens in the last 1/3 of the novel. It is packed with action that feels off when the rest has been so sedate. I mean, following a bike messenger on his errands is not all that captivating, especially since the author does not manage to tie all of those meetings and errands together in a way that actually matters.
It really feels much more like the first part of a series than a stand-alone novel. Even Remy's storyline gets cut off abruptly, without any real explanation to the changes that have been forced on her.
If this were part of a series, I could excuse some of the faults and would probably pick up the next installment to see what happens. As a stand-alone...eh.

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.