Tales from the Gas Station: Volume 1

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What keeps this one from failing is the humor and the MC, who stumbles through the story without ever actually DOING very much. Normally, this would pull me out of the story a bit, but here, it works very well, leading to many laugh out loud moments throughout. Occasionally, the humor falls flat, but it's so rare--and even when it does happen, it's always immediately followed by a nugget of gold--it doesn't detract from the overall experience.

The dialogue is mostly good, thanks in part to the humorous approach, and while character development only really occurs with our MC, it's done well and the whole story is focused on him, not the other players, who mostly have small parts to play here and there. What can I say? This book really surprised me. I liked the title and read the synopsis and thought “what the hell, I’ll give it a shot”. This adventure was so crazy, so interesting, so quaint, so creepy, so funny, and soooo… cozy. Well, it’s closer to witty jokes, nevertheless, I was openly laughing quite often. Another thing you should remember is that you can’t knowingly go there. No matter what you do, how drastic, it is not possible.This was a unique novel. In many ways, the writing style reminded me of Jeff Strand with the injection of humor throughout. Like with Strand's work, it flows very well here. This was exactly what I expected from a Tales from the Gas Station story, was definitely not disappointed. Lots of unexpected twists that you wouldn't guess from the regular stories on Reddit. Finding out the missing pieces of the free stories (the Halloween incident, whatever happend to certain characters, deeper character motivations) just tied things together. Mrcreepypasta as narrator of the Audible version did great, as always. I can't wait for Volume 2. The year is 2018 and "Tales from the Gas Station" are published. There aren't many people who know about this book, but the vibe is similar. Small town. Random gas station. A protagonist who is either too stupid or too smart for paranormal shit that happens around. There is dark god, a group of radioactive racoons, excellent humor and great writing. Working at a dead-end retail job in the middle of nowhere can be hard. The long hours. The helpless customers. The enormous eldritch horror living deep below the building…

So, the best advice I can give you, is to break this one up into two or three parts. Read something in between, just to keep the humor fresh. The situations are over-the-top ridiculous and the characters wandering through the gas station are hilarious. I laughed out loud too many times to count.With an unreliable narrator, cosmic horror and the perfect adhd induced plot, I think the term suspending disbelief might be be too shallow of a phrase, maybe catapult or torpedo sane rational thought out the window instead? Most of the events and strange occupancies didn't seem to fit together very well. Many things were also not properly explained or tied in which left me feeling more confused than anything else when finishing the book. This book is not to be taken seriously or… I guess you could and just not have a good time, up to you. OFF is where your mind goes when you fully believe, even for a fraction of a second, something that goes against your personal logic, reason and life experience. In other words, to believe in something you think is impossible.