An excellent book. One of my fav's by Mr. Moore. I liked the link to some of his other stories. I like his willingness to return to a location, and give us a completely new story, while keeping some of the minor characters from his other stories. ( )

This wild roller coaster ride of a book is like a spoof of my favorite type of horror story – the kind where the menacing monster comes to terrorize the isolated small town. In this case, the small town is on the California coast, and the monster is a gigantic, prehistoric sea monster/dragon, with a long memory and an unquenchable lust for just about everything, from gasoline trucks to a former B-movie actress.

When the “lust lizard” comes to town, he makes the whole town go horny, bringing together some very unlikely couples. As in all good small-town horror stories, we get to know a variety of kooky characters (and one kooky dog), who all must work together in the end to defeat – or do I mean save? – the monster. Only this time, the horror story isn’t horrible, but uproariously funny. ( )

Lust Lizard is the first book by Christopher Moore that I've read and I don't intend it to be the last. It's well written and very funny, as the title leads you to expect. It keeps the main story and the various sub-plots moving along and it maintained my interest right to the end. By means of the backgrounds and interactions of the characters, it touches deftly on social issues, politics and religion. Except when it would be incompatible with the plot, Moore attempts to get the relevant scientific background right, and in this he succeeds better than some well-known science fiction authors.

The main characters are eccentric (or downright crazy) residents of Pine Cove, a small town on the coast of California, and a couple of visitors to the town, one of whom is the Lust Lizard itself. It is a strange beast, as big as a large dinosaur, equipped both with lungs for breathing air and gills for living in the sea. It is five thousand years old and is at present male and horny, though it was female fifty years ago. It can signal its emotions by producing patterns of colour in its skin. It can use colour changes for camouflage too, though its abilities also run to amazing changes in shape. Very importantly, it has some telepathic ability, which it uses to attract susceptible prey, though there is also some leakage of its emotional state to susceptible minds: that is how it comes to be a Lust Lizard rather than just a very dangerous predator. At the beginning of the story, it has spent fifty years near a black smoker in the deep ocean, but then in the tradition of Godzilla it is attracted back to shore by a trace of radioactivity, though in this case not from weapons testing but from a slight temporary leak in a power plant.

The story is told in the third person but in little sections from the points of view of several main characters: the Sea Beast or Lust Lizard; Molly, known as the crazy woman, who was previously the star of films about Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outland and still lives much of the time in a fantasy of Kendra, and who befriends the Beast; Theo, the pothead cop; Val, the psychiatrist, who switches from careless over-prescribing of tranquillisers and antidepressants to nothing but placebos; Gabe, the biology researcher; Skinner, Gabe's dog; Estelle, the would-be artist; Catfish, the Blues singer, whom the Sea Beast hates because of an encounter with him fifty years before; Mavis, the cyborg-like barkeeper; Jenny the eavesdropping waitress; Burton, the psychopathic Sheriff who runs an organisation which manufactures and sells illegal recreational drugs; Winston, the dishonest pharmacist who fantasises about sex with marine animals but has to content himself with an inflatable dolphin.

When the Beast gets near Pine Cove it has two things on its mind, food and sex. It can tell that there is prey onshore that it will be able to call, so it sends its signal, which attracts enough animals to satisfy it for now, leaving it with other problem, sex. This doesn't turn out well: its attempt to copulate with a delivery tanker at a filling station causes an explosion which destroys the station and leaves the Beast with burns and serious damage to its gills, so it's stuck on shore for a while. It hides in a trailer park and disguises itself as a double-width trailer. Molly sees it and thinks she's hallucinating, until she pokes it with Warrior Babe Kendra's sword and it opens its eyes. Later she will acquire a large quantity of burn ointment for it and bandage it with fibreglass fabric fixed with roof-patching tar. She will have some control over the Beast so that although it still eats people, it doesn't eat anybody you would like.

Meanwhile the Beast's broadcast lust is having its effect and a lot of people get less sleep than usual. However some of the excess lust sloshing around leads to romantic attachments that by the end of the book look as though they will persist without the Beast's influence.

(Changed 2009.08.12 after useful comments at Reviews reviewed.) (Changed 2009.08.13: last two paragraphs added.)

A Sea Monster visits a semi-sleepy California coastal town. Molly, the crazy person, Theo, the kind-of-a-cop and other colorful residents confront the BIG fella while temporarily taken off of anti-depressants by the Val, the psychiatrist. ( )

'Lust Lizard' sees a return to the sleepy town of Pine Cove, some ten years after the absurd happenings of 'Practical Demonkeeping'. There is no reason to read Demonkeeping first since Lust Lizard is a self-contained story and only uses Pine Cove as a backdrop, the continuity between books is almost non-existent. The central theme is that of a lizard as old as the dinosaurs, (which makes people horny) who turns up amidst a town of habitually depressed people (who are missing there anti-depressants). Expect anything different from Moore, who is consistently producing curveball material? There are several other plotlines, all intersecting throughout the novel, it's cleverly plotted stuff. The only negative point is that Lizard is not a directly funny as Moore's other works. It's imaginative, daring, incredulous and will keep you interested until the finale. A recommended read, but be aware that there are better Moore books out there. ( )