Brava, $14.00, ISBN 978-0-7582-6309-4
Fantasy Erotica, 2011
There is a good reason why Demon Hunting in Dixie carries a recommendation by Angie Fox. This debut effort from Lexi George is not a sober urban fantasy romp, it’s a ha-ha-ha affair comparable to the works of Angie Fox and Katie MacAlister. Although maybe the comparison to Angie Fox may not be strictly accurate, because the old ladies in Angie Fox’s Demon Slayer series are pretty tough. The old ladies here on the other hand serve only to embarrass themselves for cheap humor.
The plot is pretty simple. Adara Corwin is taking her dog Dooley for a walk one day when she ends up encountering a demon in the woods. Then a hunky stranger who calls himself Brand steps out from a portal to slay that demon. He claims to be a Dalvahni, an intergalactic space warrior who has been going around the block slaying such demons for the last 10,000 years. Now that Addy has seen the demon, he’d come back and kill her. Brand, therefore, is staying around to protect her, whether she likes it or not. Meanwhile, the town becomes more lively as dead old men seem to come back to life. Mostly, though, the old ladies won’t stop screaming and brawling in public just to keep things “fun”.
Seriously, the old women populating this story are so painfully over the top that I actually wonder for a moment whether they have all been possessed by demons. We have women dismembering a dead man’s penis in order to keep him from cheating on them in the afterlife, calling their loves “Sugar Scrotum”, screaming and getting hysterical to the point that everyone else covers their ears, fighting in public, and more. Also, old people in love is such a funny concept, so that is also played up for laughs here. There is just too much of old women behaving badly in this story for me – way too much.
The romance is woefully underdeveloped due to the focus on old women behaving like ravenous hyena clowns from hell. Addy is mostly flustered in this story when she’s not valiantly throwing out one-liners that are a mix of Valley Girl speak and clichéd “sass” lingo. Brand is… okay, let me start again. We have a 10,000 year old fellow who apparently cannot feel any emotion until he meets Addy. Okay. He is not a virgin though – these Dahellwhatever have, uh, outlets for their needs. Apparently, emotions are a no-no to these alien Chippendale-wannabe brawn bears while lust is A-OK because that’s a “need”. Brand is also immune to the effects of drugs and alcohol, like the rest of his people. That’s… fun, I guess. That’s all I know about him, because this is one story where the hero’s alien traits encompass the entirety of his personality. He speaks like Arnold Schwarzenegger with longer hair, he molests the heroine in her sleep, and he generally behaves like some thing that I will generally run away screaming from on a good day. But here he is presented as a sexy alpha male. I don’t know why.
The story also has plenty of jokes revolving around penises, if the Marauding Old Women from Hell aren’t enough for you. Really, this story has all the “wacky” and “funny” over the top antics I can take in one sitting, with everything dialed up to over the top levels. The only thing missing is a believable romance, an actual story that goes somewhere, and a hero who has more going for him than an permanently wired erection and a tendency to molest women in their sleep.
Read this one for the ha-ha-ha’s, but even then, I’d suggest that you should do this only if you are a fan of such juvenile humor.
