Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One
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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…
As the only full-time employee at the twenty-four hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all. But when he decides to start an online journal documenting the bizarre day-to-day occurrences, he unwittingly attracts the attention of much more than just a few conspiracy theorists. With the body count steadily on the rise and a dark, ancient force infecting the dreams of everyone around him, Jack will do everything in his power to stay out of the way and mind his own business.
After all, he’s just a gas station clerk. It’s not like he’s getting paid enough to wage battle against the nightmarish aberrations plaguing his community. Besides, he already has his hands full attempting to manage all those mysterious lawn gnomes, the mutant raccoons, and the charming phantom cowboy who lives in the bathroom.
Based on the award-winning creepypasta by GasStationJack, Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One is a love letter to the pioneers of classic horror tailored to a generation that grew up in the era of smartphones and WiFi.
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2 primary books#1 in Tales from the Gas Station
Tales from the Gas Station is a 2-book series with 4 primary works first released in 2018 with contributions by Jack Townsend.
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Sort of just a truckload of weird stories dumped in a pile, but done with such style that I thoroughly enjoyed it. This didn't have much of a throughline plot, but what there was intrigued me - I would like to know more since it wasn't remotely wrapped up in this volume.This is very reminiscent of David Wong/Jason Pargin's [b:John Dies at the End 1857440 John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1) David Wong https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1189289716s/1857440.jpg 1858059] novels, and evidently it has a similar origin story - online tales connected and published as a book. I found Jack's stories less compelling than Dave & John's weird, gross, hilarious, and oddly philosophical romps, but they scratch the same itch. I'll definitely be tuning in to the YouTube stories to see what additional fun is in store!
This review is only going to be a stream of me gushing about how much I loved this book for a couple of paragraphs.
Townsend brought together some of my favorite world building elements, horror themes treated as par for the course and no big deal (think a WTNV kind of approach), a how are you still alive main characters who isn't even all that sure he wants to be there (something that will speak to any millennial's soul) and a grimy setting. There's a great sense of humor that ties it all together in an amazing and non-stop moving package.
Jack is amazing and he's probably my second favorite character of all times at this point (having lodged himself between Tommy Wildclown from The Apocalypse Series by G. Wells Taylor and John Taylor from The Nightside Series by Simon R. Green, I have a type and, apparently, they don't always have to be private investigators they can also be gas station attendants).
Now I'm going to try to pace myself and wait maybe a week before I start volume 2, wish me luck!
Edited to add (November 2, 2023), it's been a little over a year since I initally read this book and I still find myself making references to it fairly regularly and I've read literally hundreds of books since, it was just that good.
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