LUSTLOCKED by Matt Wallace – Review – Was David Bowie the Goblin King??

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Lustlocked by Matt Wallace
Series: Sin du Jour #2
Published by Tor.com on January 26 2016
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Pages: 224
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Another hilarious entry into the Sin du Jour world, with some of the funniest dialogue I’ve ever read.

“Are you guys almost done down there?” he asks the impossibly small piece of composite concealed in his right ear. “I’m fuckin’ bored.”

“Us ‘guys’ are rigging the final charge now,” Cindy’s irritated voice answers him over the earpiece.

“Sorry,” he says. “Folks. People. Whatever. Nonoffensive gender neutral pronoun. When did you graduate from Feminist Police Academy, Cindy?”

“Words matter.”

If you’re in the mood for a quick and entertaining story, and especially if you appreciate absurd humor, then grab a copy of Lustlocked as soon as you can (Better yet, start with Envy of Angels so you don’t miss any of the hilarity!) As I’ve mentioned before, humor doesn’t always work for me. It’s got to be just right. But somehow, Matt Wallace gets me, and I’m sure thousands of other readers. This time around, the chefs of Sin du Jour, a very special company that caters to the supernatural realm, is preparing to serve the wedding of the century: the wedding of the goblin prince, who just happens to be marrying a human girl named Bianca. As you can imagine, things do not go as planned, and before long the wedding reception has devolved into nightmarish shenanigans.

Newbies Darren and Lena, whose first assignment with Sin du Jour took place in Envy of Angels, are now full members of the team and ready for their next job. As they prepare thousands of hors d’oeuvres for the wedding guests—making sure to separate the human food from the goblin food—something goes wrong, and before you know it, all the human guests have turned into giant, sex-crazed lizards. With the wedding reception in shambles, it’s going to take every member of the team to set things right before things get, well, even more out of hand.

One of my favorite things about this story is the conceit that goblins are all famous Hollywood actors and musicians, and I’m pretty sure I know who the goblin king is, from this description:

His hair, which has gone through so many famous and kaleidoscopic changes on decades of album covers, is now a simple, chemically flawless blond that falls loosely just past his ears.

The cast of characters is more or less the same from Envy of Angels, and Wallace gives us lots of funny banter that keeps this fast-paced story rolling along. These chefs have seen a lot, so even the unusual sight of giant lizards wreaking havoc doesn’t surprise them that much:

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“This giant lizard thing in a tux is trying to bone that dude from Grey’s Anatomy,” Pacific says, totally unfazed. “You know, the one with the hair.”

Wallace does a great job integrating the Hollywood elite into his story, while poking fun of them at the same time. The story takes “silly” to a new level, but I still enjoyed every crazy moment.

A short bonus story called Small Wars, which was recently published on the Tor.com website (and you can read it for free, if you’d like a taste of Matt Wallace’s writing!), appears after Lustlocked, and tells the adventures of Sin du Jour’s stocking and receiving department (Ritter, Moon, Cindy and Hara) as they attempt to find a critical ingredient for the wedding, a rare mineral called Welsh gold.  I loved that Wallace takes this opportunity to use flashbacks to show how each member of the team was originally recruited by Ritter, and it reminded me of the Firefly episode Out of Gas, which does the same thing. Wallace has created a world that is rich with story possibilities, and I look forward with glee and anticipation to the next one.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy. Above quotes were taken from an uncorrected proof, and may differ in the final version of the book.