Lust Of Cupids: I Love It. It’s Just So Darn Cute

A Lust Of Cupids By Laurell K. Hamilton

Okay here’s another odd one. This is a short story written by Laurell K. Hamilton. And this has nothing to do with Anita Blake or Meredith Gentry. This entirely is it’s own thing. It’s called “ A Lust Of Cupids’ and it can be found in the Strange Candy short story collection.

So what is it about? Well its about a thirty year old woman named Rachel Ceridian, who is not married and never planned to get married and have a family like her mother wants. But one day as she’s on a walk during her lunch break, she is attacked by a pack of cupids. Why are they attacking her? Because she’s over thirty and has not fallen in love. So she goes on the run dodging and fleeing the arrows of true love because doesn’t want to fall in love.

So what’s the good? Well it’s just cute. She portrays the cupids as a pack of wolves about to tear he apart while at the same time she describes them as chubby winged babies. And as she runs it’s really hilarious. As she is nearly is hit by the arrow of true love, she says, “Shit! What did I do to deserve this?” I mean how is falling love so scary? Well actually I take that back now that I look at some members of my family. But I mean normal people falling in love. It’s not all that bad.

The bad. This is the shortest short story I ever read. I wish there was more. I wish she explained. But clearly she wanted to keep the integrity of it since it’s something she wrote long ago. But I just wish there was more.
Overall, it so darn cute. Everyone should read this. If you don’t have ten minute out of your life to read this, then you’re just being silly. Because this is so well done.

Overall Rating: I love it. It’s so darn cute.

4 smoothies out of four.

P.S. check out my book and ebook website Lelue’s Realm. Google it or go directly to http://www.lelue.webs.com/

Midnight Meat Train: Delivers More Than What The Title Might Suggest

The Midnight Meat Train by Clive Barker

Not big fan of horror. And if you read my smoothie reviews, you’re probably sick of hearing say that. But I always like to try new things. After all, I wasn’t a big fan of spy novels until I read one of Ludlum’s work that made me rethink my opinion about the genre all together. And when they were cleaning out the library at my college, they were selling old books for a quarter a piece. And I found this thick book called Book of Blood. (Very cheesy title) Volume one to three. But it was written by Clive Barker. A name I hear a lot relating to horror movies, but never knew who he was. So why not give it a try.

Now this review is the first story in the gigantic book. Reviewing the whole book would just be crazy and clearly does no justice for the individual story. It’s called The Midnight Meet Train. (This guy must love to use cheesy titles) And yet this is the story that the film was based off of two years ago.

So it starts out with man named Leon Kaufman. His first name is mentioned only once, so it might as well just be Kaufman. He is a man with ambitions and worked his whole life to be in New York, only to find that it is far from the paradise that he always believed it to be. After he lives there a couple months, he finds that it murder filled, crime filled and dirty city. Then it jumps to another character named Mahogany, who is a large man who has been killing people at night on the subway trains. He feels old and wasted. He also knows that the next night he had to the job right to impress the fathers. When working late on night, Kaufman has to take the subway. He takes the same train a Mahogany and doesn’t have a clue that it is the midnight train.

So okay. I’ll start with the good. This is a true horror story, but in a sick demented way it plays out to happy ending for Kaufman. It starts with a man with ambition who finds the city he thought he loved to be nothing more than a crap shoot. But horror invites him into something is completely beautiful in a demented way. The underlying story is a man’s search for what he loves. Also Clive Barker doesn’t do what most horror authors do. He doesn’t copy Stephen King’s style. He had his own. And everything is straight forward and thankfully he doesn’t over use suspense. He in fact uses the same techniques and style as the classic HP Lovecraft tales (which by far are some of the creepiest things I read) He is willing to show you monsters and show you the secret under New York city that is over the top compared to the rest of the authors today. With this he creates a dark underworld that made me go “Wow. That’s really messed up.” But also would hold so much of a promise of a novel I would finish, if it were a novel instead of a short story,

So the bad. Well I couldn’t really connect to Kaufman. And I’m not sure if the author did either. He didn’t even bother to even mention his first name more than once, if he had family, or even where he works. He mentions him at work a couple times, but when reading it, I was asking “What does he do?” He doesn’t mention much about Kaufman other then he’s been in love and heartbroken by the city. So when it comes to parts where he found the bodies hanging upside down on the meat train, he wasn’t even developed enough character to be scared and have us care about him. At least one thing I can say about Stephen King has Barker beat with, which is the character development, but not much else.

Overall its fun read. And if you love the Lovecraftian old school in your face horror, this is it. It goes beyond what you would think it would be. Though it’s not perfect, it pretty good. I recommend this to anyone who likes horror.

3 ½ smoothies out of four.

Over all Rating: Delivers more than what the title might suggest

P.S. Check out my book and ebook website Lelue’s Realm. Google it or go directly to http://www.freewebs.com/lelue/