REVIEWED BY CINDY
TITLE:City of Monsters (Part of the My Haunted Blender’s Gay Love Affair and Other Twisted Tales Collection) 
AUTHOR: Andrea Speed
PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing
LENGTH: 80 Pages
Blurb:
Hunter is a human turned animal shifter in Nightshade, a literal city of monsters in a near-Earth dimension called Dev. All sorts of beasts reside here, unable to return to Earth, yet still plagued by the same jealousies, rivalries, and needs of any human. Resolving them is Hunter’s job.
Hunter faces supernatural perils at every turn: vampire debt collectors who most decidedly don’t sparkle, werewolves who literally piss on everything you love, and surprise shifters. And just like back on Earth, there are mundane struggles too. Like paying the rent—which isn’t easy for a guy with more vices than virtues—and keeping his haunted blender happy with pricey produce. So he takes a job from a foul-mouthed reverse tooth fairy to find her missing twin.
Just when things seem like they couldn’t get any worse, Hunter meets Sakari, a hot newcomer to Nightshade with a taste for danger. Will Sakari change Hunter’s bad luck, or will he only mean more trouble? Can Sakari help him solve his case? And how will Hunter explain the new man in his life to his blender?
Review:
I love stories about different worlds and the supernatural and if it’s fun too, well then all the better.
Andrea Speed creates a very interesting world in this short story. It’s smart, funny and gives us fantastic reasons as to why monsters are very hard to see on our Earth.
Hunter ends up in Nightshade, a monster-filled, Medusa-run city in another dimension. He’s a shifter, but has no idea what kind because he’s almost scared to find out. Plus he has no one he trusts to shift in front of and having someone else tell you is the only way to discover what you are.
Hunter is a finder, a private eye of sorts. In the middle of a big case, he finds Sakari. The guy is new and hot and Hunter looks out for him, mostly because he’s kind of hoping for a date once his case is done and being new in Nightshade can be deadly.
I love the humor in this story. I spent most of it giggling at the antics of all the different characters. The way the author portrays the different supernatural beings that live in the city is spot on for me. Vampires and werewolves are dicks who think they’re better than anyone else and the fairies are definitely not Tinkerbell.
Hunter is a man who is just doing his best to survive after ending up in a totally different world but when Sakari ends up in his life, he starts to realize that maybe survival means nothing if you aren’t really living.
I really don’t have any complaints about this story. There’s not a whole lot of sex in it and it’s mostly implied instead of explicit, but it’s not really missing anything because of it.
All of the characters are well written, although being so short, some of them are never truly defined. I do wish the story was longer, but only in a “I love it and want to know more about what happens to these characters next” kind of way.
I have read other Andrea Speed stories and she really does have an amazing grasp on how to write characters that are different and compelling.
I have no problems recommending this story to anyone who’s looking for quick, well-written story that will leave you with a smile.
Oh, and the little two paragraph short story at the end about the blender will leave you giggling.
Rating: 
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