Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand
Lust Lizard The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
by Christopher Moore
Orbit Books

Supplied for review by Hachette New Zealand

Reviewed By: Alan Robson
and Simon Litten
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove introduces a large sea monster lured ashore by lust. However when he rapes the fuel tanker he was attracted to, it explodes beneath him. Miffed, he disguises himself as a caravan and eats several passers by, and a herd of cows. But  it turns out that the monster is lactose intolerant, and he vomits the herd of cows back up again. After that it gets silly.

It's impossible to describe a Christopher Moore novel. The word indescribable was especially coined so that it could be used to describe Christopher Moore novels. Suffice it to say that the novel is extremely sick, extremely funny and extremely extreme. I loved it.

-Alan Robson

Take a small coastal Californian community called Pine Cove, a suicide, a repentant psychiatrist (the suicide was one of her patents) who takes all her patients in that community off their anti-depressants and with the connivance of her tame in-therapy pharmacist (he’s another of her patients), a cannabis-dependent policeman under the thumb of the county sheriff, a certified insane former actress, a dog, and a caravan-sized reptile with impatient chromosomes and you have the starting ingredients of The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove.

The reptile tries to have sex with a petrol tanker with explosive consequences; the suicide wasn’t; the reptile gets hungry and eats people (but manages to hide as a caravan); his food gathering pheromones cause an outbreak of unbridled lust in Pine Cove; the policeman investigates against the orders of the sheriff; and the dog adds his tuppenceworth of commentary.

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove is a comic tale of havoc and mayhem in the tradition of Tom Sharpe and Carl Hiaasen. The bad guys get their just desserts and the good guys get their mates. And the dog gets away with mauling someone. A fine book with lots of laugh aloud moments.

-Simon Litten
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