Sin du Jour: The First Course

By: Matt Wallace

Narrated by: Corey Gagne

Everyone loves a well-catered event, and the supernatural community is no exception. Enter Sin du Jour, the expert caterers to demons, goblins, faeries, and everything in between.

In their first month on the job, Lena Tarr and Darren Vargas, the newest line chefs at the supernatural catering agency, have had to approximate angel meat, evade amorous lizards, and provide craft sacrifices for a Hollywood debut. Their coworkers have contended with zombified clowns, fought off the Easter Bunny's hit squad, and captured a golden fish for a goblin royal wedding. And as if their new jobs weren't weird enough, now they have to deal with a very personal transformation on the behalf of their mysterious employer. As if surviving as a New York City chef weren't hard enough.

This collection includes the first three Sin du Jour Affairs, Envy of Angels, Lustlocked, and Pride's Spell and the bonus short story "Small Wars".

©2015 Matt Wallace (P)2017 Macmillan Audio

Fun story, not my favorite reader.

Narrator mispronounced several words, and takes sharp audible breath before every line, which was very distracting.

A well written acid trip of social satire ...

Well now, that was quite a ride!!! Whew, Matt Wallace apparently had a whole lot to get off his chest while writing this set of stories, and he did a perfect job of it.

As a good example of what is 'normal' in this wild and wonderful world of chefs, about halfway thru the audiobook, the author killed off Bronco the Chef (who I'd already "developed feelings for", smiles); and later along in the book, a clerical error was discovered, and Hell booted Bronco back to the surface to live out his life, uninjured. This is a perfect example of what was pretty much a normal day for this crew of chefs trying to keep up with the strange and bizarre reality of gourmet paranormal catering.

The stories in this book center around the chef and his crew of cooks and supply appropriators in a catering company that serves the paranormal beings that live disguised on earth ... there are some very creative dinners served, and I wish I'd been there for the after party with the melted chocolate filled kiddie pools ... at least until the Devil showed up for a showdown with Dog ... smiles.

There's also a drunken Irish wizard in the crew who is particularly fun, as well as a Native American shaman and his granddaughter medicine woman, who are there to patch up, repair, and heal the injuries caused to the crew while finding, catching, cooking, and serving paranormal foodstuffs to paranormal diners. So many fun personalities.

There is a very creepy "governmental agent" who brings them assignments, and who shows up periodically to cause problems, like assigning them banquets to serve to demons. There's lots of interesting vengance, and kindness-instead-of-vengance, meted out here, in very satisfying proportions.

One of the parts I really liked in the book were the impressively perfect career paths created for former ex-military badasses, both male and female, in the "shipping and receiving" department of the catering firm ... basically the crew members who had to go out into the world and catch, buy or otherwise obtain the raw food supplies for the banquets. There are some really, really, likeable personalities here.

The author has done a magnificent job with this set of stories. These are not "cozy" stories, these are more like the rather glorious, Hunter S. Thompson tongue-in-cheek, crisp-edged satire, over-the-edge into stunned appreciation genre of story -- fun, but very edgy with quite a bit of violence. But so well written that it all hangs together beautifully and reflects the personalities of the characters perfectly. This is one well-written paranormal audiobook with very satisfying, fun, positive and memorable tales to tell.

Pure, well-written, well-produced fun

Firstly, this being Audible, Corey Gagne is a true talent. When you're able to enjoy the story without wincing at horrible accents, annoyingly bad character voices and poor pronunciations then it's magical. Corey celebrates the story and steps aside, leaving the author's vision room to shine. The story? It's perfect. Some people like to compare Matt to authors like Adams or Pratchett. That's wholly inappropriate because Matt's created something unique, that can stand just fine on its own. No matter who you are, you'll enjoy these fun, funny and touching stories.