Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all.

That is, until his best friend reveals the body of a local politician hidden in the trunk of a car, setting off a chain of events with apocalyptic potential. Soon, Jack finds himself entangled in a supernatural conspiracy involving monster hunters, sociopaths, doomsday cultists, and…garden gnomes?

Armed with nothing but his wits, sarcasm, and alarming amounts of coffee, can Jack stay alive long enough to see another morning shift? Or will he also fall victim to the dark, ancient force infecting the dreams of everyone around him?

One thing’s for sure. He’s not getting paid enough for this.

I’d hoped that ‘Tales From The Gas Station’ would give off the kind of weird but wonderful vibe that I got from ‘Gil’s All Fright Diner‘by A. Lee Martinez, but I was disappointed. I ended up setting the book aside a quarter of the way through. 

It started well. It was trying for weird and snarky, with a main character who was more off-centre than he originally appeared and a litany of bizarre encounters, but it soon proved to be too chaotic for me. I felt like I was listening to a podcast that was all promise and no content, or scrolling through endless look-how-crazy-these-folks-are videos on YouTube. I suspect there are many people who would have enjoyed the experience, but I’m not one of them. 

There was a plot, but not even Jack, the sarcastic, laid-back, seen-it-all protagonist from whose point of view the story is told, seemed to care about it. Jack was like, “Yep, my best (possibly only) friend has a dead body in the boot of his car. Yes, someone identical to the corpse is also having a conversation in my gas station. No, I have no idea what’s going on, but hey, that’s life.” Well, it wasn’t a life that could keep my interest. I liked the idea, but I was bored by the execution.