I had been quite prepared to give this book two stars until Jim Butcher provided a better than average entry to conclude Blood Lite. Still, having read five anthologies in quick succession, I'm not sure I'm any better off than I was before.

The book is largely hit or miss, with a couple of notable exceptions to either extreme. If I don't comment on a story, you can conclude that it didn't make much of an impression.

Mr. Bear, by Joe R. Lansdale, is like reading Chuck Palanhiuk. You are thrown off More...

There are 21 short stories in this anthology and almost every single one was so beyond fantastic that I can't even begin to describe them! I was laughing out loud with a great number of these dark comedies. I like the twisted take of most of these stories!

I think the authors here were told to shoot for tones like "quirky" and "funny" when writing about urban supernatural and horror, and most of them overshot directly into "twisted in a disturbing and not funny or thoughtful way." More like "a bad Twilight Zone" vibe.

However, at least all the stories were readable, unlike some of the messes of short stories I have seen in some similar compilations.

I picked this up because two of my favorite authors had stories in it - as for those - Charlene Har More...

Pretty awesome! I generally don't read horror, but there was a Dresden story in this anthology, so I bought it, and figured since it was October, might as well read the rest of them in keeping with the season. There were a lot of good stories in this one! Some were just gruesome, some were verging on shocking, and some were just plain silly, but they were all pretty funny, and the Dresden story is great. All but the Dresden story really do belong in the horror section, though, so be warned.... More...

This is one of those books that I keep on my shelf because I'm a horrible packrat, and every now and then I take it down to re-read, despite vague warnings bells inside my head. Unfortunately, this collection is not very good. Most of the stories are unsatisfying at best and downright horrible at worst. There are a few good ones but the majority of them just left me scratching my head or rolling my eyes.

I think the worst offender is 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Perhaps it w More...

According to the title of the book and the plot description on the back, Blood Lite is supposed to be a "humorous" book, the stories are supposed to be funny and scary at once... but well, they aren't.

I was very disappointed by the number of awful stories in this collection. Many of them fell flat, it was clear that the authors were trying be silly and amusing, but instead they came off as desperate and bleh. In the beginning I forced myself through these stories, but after a while I just strai More...

This collection is supposed to be funny.

It's not.

Not even the Dresden story is funny. In fact, the Dresden story feels like Butcher wrote it in an hour. It involes a funny idea, werewolves with fleas, but all the women are topless. Okay, not all. And, I have to admit Harry playing D&D is funny, but that is only two pages of funny. Then sadly the story goes rapidly downhill and never gets back up.

Kelley Armstrong's story concerning Jamie is the best story in the collection. All the stories ar More...

This was a mixed read for me. Some of the stories were good (the ones by Kelley Armstrong and Jim Butcher especially), but there were others that were just mediocre. Then there was the few that were just BAD! The worst of the bunch for me was A Very Special Girl by Mike Resnick. I gather that the author was going for a specific style by writing in a somewhat present, somewhat future sort of tense, but it just didn't work for me. Even when things happened in the past, the tense was still present/ More...

The Ungrateful Dead(5 out of 5): Jerks always get what they deserve.

Mr. Bear (0 out of 5): When I read this story the first time it seemed so fucked up and completely ridiculous I didn't bother to read it again. It seemed like an "interesting" idea if you could call it that... but totally lost in the translation. Heavy horror extremely like on the fun to read part.

Hell in a Hand Basket (5 out of 5): I couldn't help but laugh my ass off... priceless even if it was a little gross.

The Eldritch Pas More...

In this review I’ve only listed the stories that are either a “don’t miss” or a “skip it entirely.” All others in the anthology are okay, but not noteworthy on either end of the spectrum. Total of 21 stories in book.

The Ungrateful Dead – Kelly Armstrong – Zombie/Ghost story… fun… 3 stars

Mr. Bear – Joe R. Lansdale – non-horror, un-humorous story… so bad I didn’t even finish it… why in hell did they put this story in here if it didn’t fit the anthology at all?... oooh, that’s the horror of it! - ( More...

This is not my type of book, but it was in a stack lent by a friend, so I tried a few stories and ended up reading the whole thing. I like the humor of the Jim Butcher story "Day Off", but the prize of the collection is Don D'Amassa's "No Problem": well-paced, good length, fine punch-line. "The Ungrateful Dead" was pretty good; without it as a lead-in, I may not have read as much of the book. "Hell in a Handbasket" and "Old School" were also pretty funny, but skip, skip, skip! "Mr. Bear", "Love More...

Ok, so the discription of the book says this is a collection of horror stories with a humorous bite. Well if you are expecting humor, look elsewhere. After the first seven stories I couldn't stomach reading any more of this collection.
The worst of the standouts includes Mr. Bear: A horrible not-so-short story about a bear who I'm assuming is supposed to be Smokey The Bear. There is no humor whatsoever in this story. Mr. Bear kidnaps a human male to become his buddy which is to involve rape in More...

So I only read Sherrilyn Kenyon's Where Angels Fear to Tread...

And it was awesome! Very, very short, with zero romance, this was such a unique little story! I was not really expecting there to be any romance in it, since it is a compilation of the Horror Writers Association, of which Sherri is a member. As such, because I wasn't expecting this aspect, it didn't "let me down" at all.

In fact, the story was great! One, it was an awesome glimpse into Zeke's character and contained a lot of surprises More...

UGH! The only stories that were truely awesome in this book, in my opinion of course, are as follows:
The Ungrateful Dead by Kelly Armstrong
An Evening with Al Gore by Charlaine Harris
Day Off by Jim Butcher

Please note: I am by no means a Charlaine Harris or Kelly Armstrong fan. As a matter of fact the only way I seem to like Kelly is when she writes short stories, and to be honest this was the first piece of work I have ever ready by Charlaine Harris.
On the other hand, I LOVE Jim Butcher.

In the More...

This book was a toss-up for me, because half of the stories I loved and the other half I thought were complete wastes of time. It so happened that the first story (from my favorite author Kelley Armstrong) The Ungrateful Dead and the stories at the end were beyond my favorite.

Although True Blood is my absolute favorite show, Charlaine Harris disappointed me with An Evening with Al Gore. This because most of the story was building up to 2 pages of actual action. Dear Prudence I also found was ex More...

Blood Lite is a collection of humorous horror stories, which more often than not means poking fun at horror tropes. If you're a fan of Jeff Strand-style stories you're in luck, because not only is he in here, so are 20 other tales of tongue-in-cheek terror.
Stand outs include Kelley Armstrong's "The Ungrateful Dead" about a woman who can see the dead and finds them to be as annoying and pushy as the living, "A Good Psycho is Hard to Find" by Will Ludwigsen which points out some of the more reali More...

This anthology is a 21-story salute to the light-hearted side of horror stories. First off, the intent of this collection was not to scare the pants of the reader. If your looking for seriously Steven King-ish or Lovecraft-ian work (though some of those elements can be found here), then look somewhere else. If you're looking for some vampire/werewolf/zombie love that is the predominate fad the last few years, again, your looking on another shelf. I would consider the maturity to be PG-13. It IS More...

This anthology was an attempt at horror related humor, emphasis on attempt. Largely the short stories were crude, immature, predictable and worthless.

The two best short stories in the book were Kelly Armstrong's and Steven Savile's. Armstrong wrote a short, to the point story about a couple of her characters from the Otherworld series. Nothing serious, but it was rather entertaining. Savile's story, Dear Prudence, is disturbingly hilarious. Savile's story is about a guy who keeps rewriting a no More...

Insoddisfacente come la maggior parte delle raccolte. Qui abbiamo autori famosi come Kelley Armstrong, Joe R. Lansdale, Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Nancy Kilpatrick e Jim Butcher, e altri meno famosi (o meglio, che non conoscevo prima di leggere questa raccolta). Come sempre il problema dei racconti è che sono troppo corti per poter fornire approfondimento psicologico. Spesso ho bisogno di leggere cinquanta/cento o anche più pagine per entrare davvero in un libro, figuriamoci quanto poco More...

I read Blood Lite on my Thanksgiving airplane trips. It was... pretty good. I thought that there were a few stories that were funnier than others, and a few stories that were too horrible for the humor. The story that I enjoyed the most was about a hack horror writer whose absolute drivel was actually what was keeping the Evil at the Center of the Universe sated and happy. My runner-up favorite was a Harry Dresden story that was short and funnier more for what Butcher implied about Megan's antic More...

49th book of 2009!!

Horror and Humor make interesting bedfellows in this collection of short stories. Having been presented by the Horror Writers' Association may provide reason for this collection being well-thought and of good quality. I enjoyed all of them except for a story called "Dead Hand" which I couldn't get into because of the NASCAR element. Some were ridiculous, some were laugh-out-loud funny, others were clever.

I especially loved "An Evening with Al Gore" by Charlaine Harris
and "Hell More...

I picked up this book because Charlane Harris had a short story in it and I am currently caught up on ALL my fiction authors and needed a new list of people to start reading.

Most of the stories in this book made me smile and giggle-a lot!

vampires, zombies, necromancers...ghouls...you name it, this book has it.

Honestly, my favorite stories were:
~The Ungrateful Dead
~Elvis Presley and the Bloodsucker Blues
~The Sound of Blunder
~An Evening with Al Gore
~A Day Off

But even looking back over the list the More...

This is a fun little anthology all about love, lust, vampires, and werewolves. Some big A listers in it, like Jim Butcher and Charlaine Harris, so its a good read no matter how you slice it.

Nothing really notable to say about this one. Too many stories to keep straight after so long, but I do remember that I loved the Dresden story with the magical parasites that turned Harry's tennage lycanthrope friends into bundles of raging lust and hormones...well...moreso than warrented for being a teenage More...

This collection has not reached mediocre status so far.

"The Ungrateful Dead" - story about a medium and her encounter with a self-important spirit and his zombified brother. 3/5

"Mr. Bear" - I am a big horror fan and not usually disturbed by much of anything but this story is just sick in all the wrong ways. 2/5

"Hell in a Handbasket" - A baby, the spirit of innocence, is sent down to hell and wreaks havoc on the demons who wish to eat her. A second baby is sent back with her to heaven and poops a More...

*2.5 stars if the system allowed it*

Despite a few solid stories like Jim Butcher's "Day Off" the collection as a whole is rather flat. The cover blurb claims "...a collection of entertaining tales that puts the fun back into dark fiction, with ironic twists and tongue-in-cheek wit to tempter the jagged edge." Most of the stories are not particularly clever and the ironic twists are generally telegraphed from almost the first paragraph. Quality of the writing varies from barely competent to excel More...

As a whole, this book just didn't live up to its promise. Very few of the stories were funny. There were four that I really enjoyed and found amusing, seven stories that were ok-I could have taken or left them. Then there were the rest, ten stories that I felt were absolutely dreadful, so bad that I'd like my time back. The good stories were really very good, and the bad were very bad. It really made me wonder if the editor read them at all. They didn't belong in the same book, much less one tha More...

I picked up this anthology strictly because I'm trying to read all of Jim Butcher's short stories. In this collection, it is a Dresden Files short story entitled "Day Off". Just from the title you know that Harry Dresden's not lucky enough to get a day off -- there wouldn't be a story otherwise. A classic Dresden tale including the characters that we've come to know and love -- and entertaining & engaging enough to entice readers to his series.

With the aforementioned exception, if anthologie More...

A collection of mostly funny short stories, with Harry Dresden not getting a day off in “Day Off.” The “PR Problems” of ghouls as compared to werewolves and vampires are explored in the story by Eric James Stone. “Dear Prudence,” by Steven Savile is an epistolary short story, with the hero imaging yet more violent ways to kill his wife. Charlaine Harris’s story is about rich people who do not sufficiently change their ways after “An Evening with Al Gore.” Jaime the necromancer has to contend wit More...

Apparently, I need my horror ultra lite, since these stories were still too much for me. Some of the stories were fun('Day Off,' 'Dead Hand,' 'The Bell...FROM HELL!!!!,' 'A Very Special Girl,' 'PR Problems,' 'High Kicks and Misdemeanors,' 'Eldritch Pastiche from Beyond the Shadow of Horror,' and 'Old School.') Others were good, except had too much gore, profanity, and/or toilet humor for my taste. Really, just a few of the stories(like 'Mr. Bear') made me queasy and left me feeling uneasy about More...

I was disappointed in this book. There weren't really more than 4 good works in this book. I liked a couple towards the front one in the middle and one at the end. The rest I had to kinda make myself read, which in turn I procrastinated a little. Kept thinking, there's gotta be a good one soon. Some of the stories I had to make myself read, and some were a little sick for my taste. The ones that were good were good though. I don't think I'll end up keeping this book, and most likely will never r More...