Blood Lite
Blood Lite, Various Authors
reviewed by SarahBella
This book contains sixteen stories by sixteen different authors who write within the paranormal genre. Each of the stories is macabre’ with a twist, the twist being some form of humor – slapstick, irony, etc. I’ll preface this by saying that I hadn’t heard of many of the authors, but I loved the concept of the book.
The well-chosen authors are an eclectic mix of well-known and obscure to the general public. Their topics were varied enough that at the end of the last story, I hadn’t felt that any of them were repetitive. Each of the authors also did a great job of paring the story down to the essentials; it never felt like we were missing some important part of the back story.
The Charlaine Harris (Southern Vampire Mysteries) story, ‘An Evening with Al Gore’ was hilarious. She writes of the exploits of a group of environmental do-gooders and the means they use to try to persuade a group of the worst known environmental offenders. Even knowing that the story was suppose to be bloody and paranormal, I never saw the ending coming.
‘The Ungrateful Dead’ by Kelly Armstrong introduced me to a new author whose books I will run out and buy. Her story about a necromancer doing a job for a particularly obnoxious ghost was laugh out loud funny and extremely well written. I got so completely in to the story that I forgot I was reading a book of short stories and therefore was incredibly disappointed when I finished the story!
‘Hell in a Hand Basket’ by Matt Lucien is also a favorite read. It tells the story of a baby, mysteriously showing up at the gates of Hell.
My least favorite story was likely ‘The Eldritch Pastiche from Beyond the Shadow of Horror’ by Christopher Welch. The story is well written, but the concept was lost on me. A wannabe paranormal fiction author gets rejection letter after rejection letter. Just when he’s finally decided to give up, the characters he writes about come to life and tell him he has to keep writing. It’s not a bad story, just my least favorite.
The book was well worth the $5 that I paid for it at Target. I’ll probably reread it, at least in part if not in total.
Overall, I give the book 4 out of 5 fangs.
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