An Evening with Al Gore By: Charlaine Harris Star Rating:

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Synopsis

After meeting Al Gore and hearing him speak, Toddy Makepeace became a tireless environmental activist, and she had no trouble getting her husband, Mark, on board, too. After several years, though, they feel like perhaps they've gotten into a rut and need a major change, so they decide to move to Sweden. Wanting to go out with a big bang, they enlist the help of their friends, the Collvilles, to throw a lavish party, using their friends' connections to invite all the biggest names who aren't particularly concerned about the environment. Toddy does her best to persuade their guests to her cause, but what plans does she have in store for them if her mission isn't successful?

Review

"An Evening with Al Gore" is a stand-alone paranormal fantasy short story. It's about a (probably) middle-aged, wealthy couple who are staunch environmentalists. They think it's time to make a big change in their lives and they decide that change involves moving out of the country. Before they leave, though, they want to go out with a bang by giving America a gift. With the help of another couple who are their friends, they use their connections to put on a huge party for a number of the worst environmental offenders, trying to get them to change their minds, which leads to a twist when their guests aren't as generous and open-minded as they'd hoped.

Although I've watched both the True Blood and Midnight, Texas television series that are based on Charlaine Harris's books, this was my first foray into reading her works. Overall, I enjoyed the story and her writing style. I thought it was a little narrative heavy at the beginning with a bit of an info dump on who this couple are and how they became active in environmental causes, although I'll admit that I'm not entirely sure how else it could have been written in order to get the reader up to speed in such a short space. It's also rather predictable, so I more or less correctly guessed where things were going before getting to the end. However, I still liked it enough to be open to trying more of Ms. Harris's work in the future. "An Evening with Al Gore" can be found in the anthology Blood Lite.

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Charlaine Harris