Patrick Wensink’s Sex Dungeon For Sale! is his collection of eleven short stories that are not your traditional short story. These stories have titles like “Chicken Soup for the Kidnapper’s Soul” and “The Many Lives of James Brown’s Capes”. One of the main draw of this collection is that the stories could be considered a little odd. In “Wash, Rinse, Repeat”, dishwashers are killing their operators with it’s new Kill setting and slowly transforming in to a Romeo and Juliet-esq tale.

My favorite story of the bunch is “Pandemic Jones” which also happens to be the longest story in the book coming in at a lengthy 18 pages. It’s a heartwarming love story about two people who met at pharmaceuticals company and work together to spread viruses all over the world. What I liked about this one is that the added length gives the reader time to get to know the characters while the other stories are brief and the characters do not really stand out. With some of the other stories characters play second fiddle to the oddity of the story. “Sex Dungeon For Sale!”, the book’s title story, is only 2 pages long and that kills me. I love the title of the book, and the idea of a real estate agent trying to sell a house with a built in sex dungeon seems really, really funny to me.

In the end, the stories were either hit-or-miss. I really liked some of them but the shorter ones didn’t leave any room for character development and could have benefited from being expanded upon. This is an odd collection of stories and if that is your thing then be sure to check out Sex Dungeon For Sale!. You can check out a sampling of his book on his web site.

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 4:30 pm.
Filed under: Book Review.