Review: A Fine Mash-up of Bizarro
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 15, 2011
A fine collection of stories here, one that I slowly made my way through reading one at a time here and there as opportunity allowed. I probably liked it more for having read it that way, but that's typical with me and single-author story collections. I think what I liked most about these stories is they took me out of my comfort zone of genres I typically read. I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore, or horror, though I'm not saying this collection is either one of those. This is kind of a bizarro mash-up of several genres, all depending on the story. I like that about it. The gross-out stuff wasn't over-the-top gross-out, the whimsical stuff didn't piss me off, and the magic was of a gritty sort that I enjoy. Much of the more recent fantasy I have read recently (which isn't much) tends to be a little too clever for its own good, but Wendig, to his credit, stays well clear of that yawning chasm.Reading other reviews, it seems the lead-off yarn "Dog-Man and Cat-Bird" is generally the favorite. Not for me, I thought that one seemed to run a little long for my tastes; I actually caught myself flipping ahead to see how much farther I had to go. No, my favorites were "A Radioactive Monkey" and "The Auction." All in all, some good stuff.