Ellora’s Cave, $4.45, ISBN 978-1-4199-0023-5
Fantasy Erotica, 2004

Dark Lust is a collection of naughty stories but like most stories of this kind, I find them too comical and laugh-out-loud funny rather than fanning myself and turning up the air-conditioner. I think my favorite story is The Love Letter where Debbie discovers her daughter’s juvenile love letter to a boyfriend, assumes that her husband is cheating on her, and beats the man bloody with a frying pan before the daughter shows up to clear the air. Or is it The Right Time where poor Alfonso gets off while watching Scooby-Doo cartoons, tries to pick up a French lingerie model online only to realize that he’s, er, talking with his own aunt, and being arrested by an undercover cop for offering her twenty bucks for a blow job? He finally finds the courage to approach a woman he has his eye on only to be mowed down by a bus as he crosses the street.

To be honest, a part of me should be appalled that a collection of stories poking fun at losers in sex (many of these stories don’t even have sex, instead there are too many ugly or dumb people who get brutalized or killed while trying to have sex) is marketed as erotica. However, I’m too busy laughing at how absurd most of these stories are. The rude “sex therapist” who insults everyone that calls in on her radio show in Sex Talk has me giggling non-stop. Interspersed in the collection are four related stories about four women who discover this medallion that can summon a Dark Lord to roger them senseless in their dreams. Even so, the sex is more comical than anything else, with people constantly screaming and throbbing monsters constantly spraying and heated furnaces continuously burning and all.

Dark Lust is a fun comedic read with little substance but lots of tongue-in-cheek humor, period. Depending on what you are looking for, I’d say that this is either a book to avoid like plague or to rush out to purchase on a dreary afternoon when you need some pick-up read.